Joe Malinconico

Paterson Press

PATERSON — By the end of this month, library officials plan to begin offering prison reentry services at their main branch on Broadway after a discussion about community concerns at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

The “Fresh Start@Your Library” program, funded through a federal grant, would include classes to help dropouts get their high school diplomas, social workers providing job services, and referrals to social service agencies.

“The word is ex-offender,” Tracy Pearson, president of the library board, told the City Council. “They’ve done their time. They want to change. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t even come to the library.”

Councilwoman Ruby Cotton said some people are worried that the presence of the former inmates could compromise the safety of children who use the library, while Councilwoman Lilisa Mimms asked about convicted pedophiles.

Paterson Library Director Corey Fleming told the council that pedophiles would not be part of the program. Fleming also said the reentry service and children’s programs would be in separate sections of the building.

Paterson is one of six places in the state — along with Newark, Trenton, Long Branch, Atlantic City and Cumberland County — participating in the “Fresh Start” program, which is being run through the New Jersey State Library funded with a two-year, $628,744 federal grant.

The classes for the GED, or general education development, diploma will be limited to 50 people, but the library plans to provide the other reentry services to as many people as possible, Fleming said.

Fleming told the council that the State Parole Board would refer clients to the Fresh Start program in Paterson. Participants would come from all over Passaic County, he said.

The prospect of non-Patersonians coming to the city for reentry services bothered some council members. Mimms compared the situation to the problems activists attributed to outsiders using the needle exchange that had operated on Broadway, about a block from the library, until two years ago.

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“Things that sound great in the beginning — the fallout is a massacre for Paterson,” Mimms said.

The main library branch is in one of Paterson’s worst neighborhoods, where open-air drug transactions take place in broad daylight and prostitutes walk the streets at all times of day.

Community activist Roger Grier said during Tuesday night’s meeting that he thinks the reentry program should not be placed “in the belly of the beast” so that the former inmates would not be tempted by the nearby drugs, crime and prostitutes.

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