Celebrating a Decade of Second Chances: NJ Reentry Corporation Highlights Community Support

For ten years, NJRC has provided essential services to people seeking help in returning to community, particularly after spending time in jail, prison, or military service.

Many organizations have aligned themselves with NJRC’s mission to support people who have been forced to reenter their community without a job, an ID, a driver’s license, or even a home. These sponsors offers resources such as education, workforce training, and proper health care. 

As NJRC’s Executive Director, former Governor Jim McGreevy expressed his commitment to providing support and empathy to people trying to live a new life in a world that fails to do so.

“The most important aspect [about our work] is that any one of us, myself included, could be in a situation that puts us behind the wall. That none of us are immune…,” said NJRC Executive Director Gloria Bachmann. “So I have empathy, I have caring, and through my religious background, I have the calling to help. To make a difference.”

McGreevy also touched upon the challenges people continue to face during reentry. Specifically, he stressed these individuals’ need for health care to cope with mental illness, drug addiction, or both, especially with drugs growing more deadly amidst the ongoing fentanyl crisis.

“What we see is for people coming home from prison, whether its addiction or alcoholism, that people need the right level of support and also particularly for mental health,” said McGreevy. “Approximately 75% of our clients suffer from addiction and upwards of 45% in co-occurring mental health disorders.”

McGreevy pointed out how such problems apply to people coming home from combat as well. They, too, face mental health issues and try to cope with trauma, anxiety, or addiction without a home or medical care, often leading to disastrous results. 

Thus, the NJRC had acted as a lifeline that veterans and former criminals can rely on to help them take care of themselves, move on from their past, and resume their lives.

NJRC’s success stories include Anthony Difrisco, a man who spent thirty-three years in prison, with seventeen of them on death row. Since his release from incarceration, Difrisco found a new life as a reformed activist promoting NJRC’s mission of supporting prison reentry.

“The work [NJRC does] is so important,” said Difrisco. “There are so many obstacles we overcome…. We need support. It doesn’t stop.”

Likewise, Hudson County Executive Craig Guy, who has long partnered with McGreevy and the NJRC to make a difference in the people’s lives, touched upon the issues he’s seen standing in the way of people remaking their lives, specifically housing.

“We need to do a better job in providing housing, affordable housing, workforce housing to these folks that are, were incarcerated and now have turned their life around,” said Guy. “We have to make sure we give them the best opportunity to succeed, and the most important thing is to have a roof over their head.”

Overall, the NJRC and its supporters have made great strides in helping people reenter their community life after serving in prison, in jail, or on the battlefield. 

Having only scratched the surface of this widespread issue, they have encouraged more people to help provide the compassion and resources those in reentry need to become the best version of themselves as fully functioning members of society.

“As we often say, we all fall down, but we get up, and Reentry is that community that helps us get up,” said McGreevy.