Melanie Snyder, Consultant for Reentry, Trauma, Resilience and Trauma-Informed Care, leads Chester County’s Reentry Coalition kick-off meeting. (Submitted Photo)
By Michael P. Rellahan, Daily Local News, June 2, 2023
There is a scene in director Martin Scorsese’s classic gangster film, “Goodfellas,” where Henry Hill, the lead character, is released from prison after spending years behind bars. As he walks free, he looks outward and sees the figure of his wife, Karen, standing by a car, waiting.
She is alone.
And off Henry goes back into the world, with nothing to look forward to and no other means of support other than his life of crime and the Mafia family that had taken him in.
But imagine, if you will, if Karen Hill had been accompanied by a host of others — agencies, community groups, faith-based organizations, state and local officials, fellow former convicts — that were set up to offer Henry a better way of returning to the world outside the prison walls than figuring out which truck to hold up next. Would his story have ended differently than having to go into hiding in the Witness Protection Program?
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