Program for ex-convicts loses US grant

Federal authorities have turned down an application from a prominent black clergy group and the Boston Police Department for money to extend a program that aims to prevent ex-convicts from returning to criminal activity.

The rejection, which occurred last month, raises questions about whether the program will continue when its current funding runs out next summer.

Officials of the US Department of Labor, which made the decision, would not explain why the application was rejected. Spokesmen for the police and the Black Ministerial Alliance, which includes well-known clergymen such as the Revs. Bruce Wall and Eugene Rivers, declined to speculate on a reason.

But applicants for funds from President Bush's Prisoner Reentry Initiative were required to demonstrate a record of success in rehabilitating ex-convicts. The proposal from the ministers and police supplied scant information about the results of its program, which has received about $1.1 million in local, state, and federal government funding since 2001.

The rejection ''is a blow to the Black Ministerial Alliance and a blow to the city of Boston," said Wall, head of Bruce Wall Ministries. His is one of four local, faith-based organizations working in the program, called the Boston Re-Entry.

Police spokesman John Boyle said the reentry partnership is ''too important a program for us to move away from. We are currently exploring our options and discussing fund-raising strategy with our partners."

The reintegration of former prisoners into society is a critical concern in Boston and other cities. Efforts to crack down on gang violence in the 1990s sent to jail many gang members who are now returning to their old neighborhoods.

Boston did not lose the new grant altogether. But instead of funding the well-known ministers-police partnership, the Department of Labor awarded the grant of $660,000 to Span Inc., a nonprofit agency that for 29 years has been helping prisoners in the Greater Boston area reenter society.

A Globe review of grant documents, along with interviews with the directors of the ministerial alliance and Span, suggests that Span may have edged out the Black Ministerial Alliance and police because it was better able to demonstrate that its programs work.

The request for proposals included multiple requirements that applicants demonstrate measurable outcomes from work they had done in reintegrating former prisoners into society.

A copy of the executive summary of the ministerial alliance-police department application contained results for only one year of the four-year program. On the key question of whether ex-offenders who went through the program returned to lives of crime, it reported on only 137 of the nearly 600 offenders it said had participated.

Asked about the other 463 participants and how they fared in the program, Harold Sparrow, the partnership group's executive director, said: ''When we write a grant, we want to put forward the strongest argument, put our best foot forward. We chose the data to do that."

Sparrow complimented the winning agency. ''Span has been doing reentry work for 30 years," Sparrow said. ''They have more experience than most community- and faith-based organizations."

Lyn Levy, founder and executive director of Span, said her agency closely tracks clients after release to see whether they followed plans they made for reentry. She said Span was able to offer data on how many of the former prisoners it dealt with completed job training programs and education programs, and how many got and kept jobs.

''You absolutely have to be able to show outcomes and demonstrate successes or you're not going to be able to get the money," Levy said.

With the city experiencing a rise in shootings and homicides, Mayor Thomas M. Menino as well as federal grantmakers are looking hard at how well existing programs are functioning.

Most of those programs have their origins in Boston's last major crime surge, in the mid-1990s. Back then, a successful collaboration of the clergy, police, and state and federal agencies succeeded so well at curbing crime that their effort became a national story that won the city federal funding and acclaim.

Some people who took part in that effort say the effectiveness of the ministers now is much reduced, and that other key elements of the 1990s success -- especially the presence on the streets of an effective antigang unit -- also have atrophied.

Bill Stewart, deputy chief probation officer at Dorchester District Court, who was a key player in the 1990s collaboration, said the black ministers ''still have a message, but they also have a lack of unity," as a result of which ''there is an obvious problem. The message isn't being delivered properly."

But Sparrow, the alliance director, said his organization remains potent and able to acquire grants.

''I don't know why we didn't get" the grant for extending the reentry program, he said, stressing that the alliance this autumn received a $1.4 million extension of its major federal funding -- through the three-year-old Compassion Capital grant program, which works to strengthen faith-based organizations. These funds cannot be used to fund the reentry program.

As a result of the rejection, the Boston reentry initiative, one of the primary local anticrime efforts, may have difficulty continuing even at current levels beyond June. That is when $1.1 million in funding amassed by the police from a variety of state and federal sources will be used up, said Boyle, the police spokesman.

The two federal grants that the department used to pay for its contracts with the faith-based groups are nonrenewable, he said.

''We are going to have to be more creative" in fund-raising, Rivers said. Ending the program ''is not an option for the black community."

The Black Ministerial Alliance is a group of 50 churches and 104 clergy and community leaders who serve Boston's African-American community.

With offices in Roxbury and a $2.5 million annual budget, the alliance primarily raises money to support the churches and provide them with technical assistance, Sparrow said.