Autumn Years Summer 2023

BONNIE O’BRIEN Empowering Second Chances By Emily Kratzer

When you play the Monopoly game, you might draw a “get out of jail free” card. We know that in real life, no one gets out of jail free. However, in Bergen County, former inmates can draw on Transition Professionals Re-Entry Services, which helps them get free from the stigma of a jail or prison record. Prior to release from incarceration, inmates meet the team assembled by Bonnie O’Brien to start the process of bringing them from being a tax-taking inmate to an employed taxpayer.

T ransition Professionals offers sup port by social workers, drug and alcohol counselors, paralegals, attorneys and others. Hoping to cut re cidivism, the 69-year-old former Para mus resident commutes to Hackensack from Toms River, where she lives with her husband Rick. The trip is part of an effort that evolved from her experi ences in the early 1990s as a volunteer at the jail. The team effort resulted in her founding Transition Professionals in 2014 as a non-profit, one-stop way for ex-offenders to be rehabilitated. She still relies on interns and volunteers as well as retired probation and parole of ficers, but the paid staff gives continuity to ex-offenders who need to find housing and get jobs. People on the pathway to productivity can get job preparation as sistance, drug counseling, training and

with the drive to “do better” instilled in her by family values and growing up in a low-income environment. “In Jersey City, all five us were in one bedroom with the beds pushed together,” she says of life with her siblings. Her mother had saved a little money and sent her to the now closed Queen of Peace High School in North Arlington, where she was a high achiever in the business curriculum. At age 14, she got a job and did whatever she could to earn money because her father had become disabled. The family had moved to Lyndhurst, and she got a second job in Rutherford, wrapping presents. By the time she was 17, she had saved enough to buy a car. Reflecting a typical teenage sentiment, she says, “It was hard to keep up with friends—they had more than I did. That’s probably what drove me to want more.”

education, housing vouchers and several forms of behavioral therapy. The center allows them to complete court-mandated community service, as well. The $50,000 Russ Berrie Making a Difference Award she received in 2017 allowed Bonnie to augment the money she spent on the programs offered at the Bergen County Jail. Today, funding comes from the state and from dona tions, although the effort does not have the caché of major hospitals or animal rescue groups. “I am not a bleeding-heart liberal,” she says. “If you do the crime, you do the time, but you shouldn’t be penalized for your whole life.” Recalling her awe the night of the Berrie award, she says, “I had gotten awards in the past but no money, this was a game-changing moment!” Bonnie’s pathway to service began

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AUTUMN YEARS I SUMMER 2023