HIGH POINT – High Point is adding a component to a crime-reduction strategy that has become a national model.

Officials with the High Point Police Department and High Point Community Against Violence are working to set up a contract with America Works, a New York-based company that helps find work for people with criminal records and other hard-to-serve job-seekers.

“This thing has been a long time in the making, and we’re anxious to get it rolling,” said police Chief Jim Fealy. “They have a class program that produces results. We have a class program that produces results. We’re going to put the two together and, we really think, have a home run.”

City Council last week approved the $100,000 contract, $55,000 of which was raised by business leaders in the community who comprise HPCAV’s advisory board. The city will fund the remaining amount.

The goal of the arrangement is to strengthen what has been regarded as the weak link in the police department’s strategy for dealing with chronic offenders who drive the majority of violent crime: placing them in jobs to direct them away from a criminal lifestyle.

“In the past, we’ve had people that were right on the tipping point,” Fealy said. “They were, we believed, sincere about wanting to make lifestyle changes, sincere about wanting to avoid crime, sincere about wanting to avoid prison, and we just weren’t able to strike with the resources they needed to make those changes quickly enough.”

Police and HPCAV representatives plan to choose 33 chronic offenders from a list of about 100 to undergo 40 hours of job readiness training, job placement and monitoring by America Works to make sure they stay in the position. All 33 will have felony convictions, some of which involve acts of violence.

“We’re going to try to take the most risky and use them first,” Fealy said. “The first year of the contract will be kind of a demo or pilot. During that first year of the contract, we’ll be looking for funding sources to sustain it.”

America Works “has been successful everywhere they’ve gone” in making living-wage jobs available to ex-offenders who have little or no employment history. It has operated in large cities in the northeast, California and elsewhere, but High Point will be its first foray into the Southeast.

“Our thinking is, if we have this tool available to latch on to them quickly enough, they will see the offer of help from the community as entirely sincere,” Fealy said. “They’ll be involved in the process and hopefully not return to that life of offending.”

pkimbrough@hpe.com | 888-3531