What is Memphis Doing about effective prisoner rehabilitation?
According to this letter and the money involved, $545 million, a conspicuous amount, they are doing nothing but stealing the money and misusing federal funds.
Michael Hooks brougfht in because he has connections to launder it?

From Letters to the Editor, Commercial Appeal, 28 July 2008
Sometimes it's who you know

The merit of hiring former prisoners to work on fatherhood-healthy marriage programs serving an incarcerated population is supported by best-practice literature. It is a policy I strongly advocated when I was manager of Project REACHH, the original name of the federally funded program at the Shelby County Division of Corrections cited as recently hiring ex-prisoner Michael Hooks Jr. (July 23 article).

However, this is not why Hooks was hired. Like virtually everyone else working on the program at this point, he was hired because he has connections in high places. Look at most of the staff working on Project REACHH today and you will find a blood, friendship or fraternity relationship to Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton; Walter Crews, deputy director of the county's Division of Corrections, or Division of Corrections director Andrew Taber.

As the Corrections Division's grant-funded program manager in 2006, I designed Project REACHH and wrote the proposals that got it funded. I had in mind the needs of Memphis area families and children affected by crime, poverty and incarceration and the interests of the entire community at heart.

However, my intentions were quickly short-circuited into a five-month paid suspension when I objected to the patronage and misrepresentations that followed the funding. I took a job offer in another city early this year and now direct a similar program in five medium- and maximum-security prisons, soon to expand to four more prisons.
Programs for prisoners, their families and their children are sorely needed and can work. They should and could be staffed by former prisoners who have truly transformed their lives and have the qualifications and ability to motivate those still struggling to find the right path.

Unfortunately, in Memphis, misuse of funds, failure to deliver services and other highly inappropriate behavior have taken place under the guise of providing programming.

I am sorry I had any part in this misuse of taxpayer dollars and in the false face that is being placed on a needed and cutting-edge program. As he was in the Tennessee Waltz investigation, though, Hooks is again just the tip of the iceberg.

Randi Blumenthal Guigui

Mount Kisco, N.Y.

That is hard testimony to refute or ignore.
Something needs to be done about SCCC and this most recent theft ring!