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Nearly $1 million pledged to help youth on wrong side of law find jobs

Morning Call - 12/20/2019

Dec. 20--Young people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law in the Lehigh Valley will soon get a nearly $1 million nudge toward getting back on track by starting a great career.

State and local officials gathered in Allentown Friday to announce the Lehigh Valley Youth Demonstration Grant program, a partnership between Lehigh and Northampton counties and courts, regional community colleges and Workforce Board Lehigh Valley.

Funded through a $988,000 state grant, the program will target people aged 18 to 24 who are involved in the counties' criminal justice systems.

The participants, who can be incarcerated or on probation, will be offered tuition-free classes or vocational training through Lehigh Carbon Community College or Northampton Community College. They will also learn "soft skills," such as time management and the proper way to dress for a job interview.

Eileen Cipriani, Pennsylvania's Deputy Secretary for Workforce Development, said the grant, part of a $5.8 million investment the Wolf administration is making in occupational programs, is the first of its kind supporting young adults with criminal records.

"When I travel around the state I hear from people in industry that they cannot find enough skilled workers," Cipriani said. "We can fill that need while helping these young people assimilate back into the community."

Nancy Dischinat, executive director of the Workforce Board, said the details of the program are still being worked out, but will include an assessment to determine what kind of career the participants are interested in.

"It will be very personalized," she said.

The program is part of a reentry movement sweeping the state and comes about a year after Pennsylvania's one-of-a-kind Clean Slate Law was passed, sealing nearly 30 million low-level criminal records.

FBI statistics show that about 73.5 million people ? nearly 30% of the adult U.S. population ? have some kind of criminal record. After stable housing, employment is the greatest factor in preventing recidivism, according to the National Institute of Justice.

Pennsylvania's aging workforce and low unemployment rate has business owners scrambling to find employees, even sending recruiters into Pennsylvania's 24 state prisons, which began hosting job fairs last year.

Lehigh County Executive Phillips Armstrong, a former high school teacher, said the program has the potential to turn young lives around while saving public money.

"If we can keep people from going back into prison then we are doing good for the taxpayer while doing good for these 18- to 24-year-olds," he said.

Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure agreed.

"This is one of the best things, I think, to come down from Harrisburg. It will make a real difference to the youth of the Lehigh Valley."

Laurie Mason Schroeder can be reached at 610-820-6506 or lmason@mcall.com

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