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Less than a week after former Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey opted to scrap plans to open Martin’s Place – a prisoner re-entry program – next to Sacred Heart School in Jersey City, he met with community leaders and advocates in Asbury Park.

Attendees at the weekend meeting in the basement of Second Baptist Church on Atkins Avenue included school officials, mayors and council members from Asbury Park, Neptune, Neptune City, and Belmar, as well as area residents.

“There was a time in life that every church basement and a lot of well-meaning people had early childhood education because they wanted to make sure they were providing a service to the community,” McGreevey said.  “What I want to do is make a partnership with all the programs that are doing re-entry but I also believe firmly that treatment has got to be a component of it.”

McGreevey said 70 percent of people behind bars are addicts.

Martin’s Place, named in honor of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was to be located on the roadway named for fallen civil rights activist. The center, funded by a $4.2 million state grant, will serve as a hub for ex-offenders leaving the prison system to not only acquire addiction treatment services but also aid in obtaining housing and employment.

“If you really believe in change, if you really believe in the redemptive power of the spirit, if you really believe that people have the capacity to do something differently, then who came up with the idea of putting them with some of the worst folks in the community for long periods of time and say get God; it’s not going to happen,” McGreevey said. “So, we take some kid from Asbury Park and we put them in state prison with somebody who might have committed a triple homicide; what lessons are we going to give that kid.”

McGreevey said the number one cause of death for the nation’s youth is drug overdose, surpassing vehicular homicides.

“Addiction is a disease, we have to treat it,” he said. “We can’t turn a binds eye to it…because it’s happening and they are our children and they are our babies and they deserve a second chance. We all fall down but we all get up. We have to allow people the opportunity to get up.”

A vital part of the program’s goal is to require those imprisoned for drug offenses to go through treatment programs while incarcerated.

“If you have cancer you go to a doctor, if you have heart disease you change your diet or you take your pill,” McGreevey said. “If you have addiction you need to be treated because if you don’t do anything you will go back on that same street corner with that same supplier or with that same gun and do the same stupid stuff you did when you went in. We have to change this.”

McGreevey said the nation spends $74 billion dollars on the prison incarcerations but only 11 percent of those in prison are receiving addiction treatment services.

“I know that there are a lot of people that say ‘well Jim not in my backyard,” he said. “And I go over there and they say go over here and I go over here and they say there. We have to get real – right.”

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