Community & Corrections Working Summit 2025: Setting the Reform Agenda for Next 20 Years

By Tom Moran, Criminal Justice Reform Task Force Chair


The 2025 Community and Corrections Working Summit was held on January 7 and 8 at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ. The weather was bitter cold and windy, which made navigating the various halls, breakout rooms, and the lunch hall a bit of a challenge.

The event followed the published program: 2025 Working Summit Program.pdf

There was a stirring keynote address by Jerome Harris, who participated in the original Working Summit of 2003. The culmination of the WS conference was an address by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman, who as a NJ Assemblywoman sponsored some of the key legislation that came out of the 2003 WS and which marks in large part the criminal legal reform accomplishments of the 20+ years since. This WS was tasked to set the reform agenda for the next 20 years.

Working Summit Breakout Session Facilitators

At the time of the 2003 WS, there was no such thing as a “returning citizens” group, never mind a returning citizens movement. In this WS, every one of the breakout sessions, where the main business of the summit is conducted, was facilitated by at least two returning citizens. Several of these returning citizens are now employed by legal system entities, among these being the Department of Corrections, the Corrections Ombudsperson’s Office, and the Public Defender’s Office. There was robust participation in all aspects of the Working Summit by these very official entities and others. This after all is the second part of the “summit.” A summit is a high-order meeting between two parties or sets of parties who often feel themselves to be in conflict. A successful summit is one where those two sides enter into a good-faith effort to listen to each other’s issues, concerns, and grievances; the goal being to approach a path forward.

Activists like FaithAction, the Latino Action Network, the American Friends Service Commission, and many more were also fully engaged in the summit. A number of nonprofits run by returning citizens were also present and spoke to the issues in the breakouts.

Latino Action Network Foundation support staff and interns welcoming and checking-in Working Summit attendees.

If I had to identify one salient theme of the conference it would be the role that “credible messengers” play in impacted communities and the hope and demand for an expanded role that they will serve going forward. It has been argued for some time that the presence of credible messengers, in the community and on street teams is an underappreciated part of the decline in crime, especially violent crime in cities across the state. More than that, credible messengers are the leading edge of a change in the mental health life of these communities. Our ally, Antonne Hatcher likes to point out that “Only healthy communities are safe communities, and only safe communities are healthy communities.” The returning citizens support groups want focus on the mental health crisis in communities of color, and the need to address this as we embark on the next 20 years of reform.

Jennifer Sellitti, NJ Public Defender, addresses the Working Summit.

In addition to this theme, many facilitators focused on the inhumane conditions in NJ correctional facilities, especially the men’s prisons, and on the culture of dehumanization that permeates the culture of corrections in NJ. One bad aftertaste of the reforms that came out of the 2003 WS is the complete failure to implement the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act (ICRA) in any way in any of the men’s prisons.

There was also significant discussion of the continued lack of process and support for incarcerated people leading up to and upon release. This is a primary focus of the returning citizens support groups that now exist around the state. These groups provide a significantly higher level of support, guidance, material assistance, and social involvement than the DOC does. However, the level of funding available, especially to the community groups that provide the bulk of the services to help those being released to make the transition back to society is nowhere near sufficient to meet the needs.

The returning citizens are pushing for some form of accreditation for credible messengers. This is a tough climb and I have had conversations with Charles Loflin about how FaithAction might play a role in promoting and forwarding this idea.

Working Summit Facilitators pose underneath the UU FaithAction NJ slide. UU FaithAction NJ was a proud sponsor of the 2025 Community and Corrections Working Summit.

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