The Case for Habilitation

This article and others can be found on Mr. Laracuente's LinkedIn page.

Every April, Second Chance Month rolls around with well-meaning calls for redemption, reentry, and reform. Politicians tweet about hope. Nonprofits launch campaigns. Panels discuss the power of second chances. But beneath the banners and hashtags lies an uncomfortable truth:

Many of us never got a first chance.

The phrase “second chance” assumes a baseline of opportunity that, for millions of Americans—especially Black, Brown, and low-income—simply never existed. It presumes systems were once fair, that institutions once served us, that society offered something to fall from. But for those born into redlined neighborhoods, policed childhoods, and underfunded schools, there was no fall—only a lifelong climb up a cliff that others never had to scale.

This is why I use the word habilitation, not rehabilitation. Re- implies you once had something to return to. But how do you return to stable housing, consistent schooling, or community investment when you never had access to it in the first place?

As Glenn E. Martin wrote in his article, Only Black People Go to Prison. Yeah, OK, the criminal legal system touches the lives of over 80 million Americans with some form of criminal record. Yet narratives around redemption often erase this vast reality, reducing people to stereotypes or exceptional “comeback” stories. Even within reform circles, Martin critiques how racial identity, geography, and political affiliation still shape who gets invited into the conversation—and who gets sidelined.

I know this personally. As someone directly impacted by incarceration and now doing advocacy, education, and curriculum development work in prisons, I’ve seen how “second chances” are too often reserved for those who can perform redemption in ways that are palatable—silent about their trauma, grateful for any crumbs of dignity, and willing to carry the burden of proving their worth again and again.

But the truth is, the system failed us long before the cages came.

Systems of Betrayal

The Correctional Association of New York’s statement on the death of an incarcerated person at Mid-State Correctional Facility wasn’t just a tragedy—it was a brutal reminder of how routine neglect and institutional violence are built into the system. This wasn’t a one-off. It’s what happens when people are treated as disposable.

Earlier in the pipeline, the child welfare system disproportionately investigates and removes Black and Latino children, while public schools in historically divested communities focus more on compliance than creativity. Add to that housing insecurity and a labor market that actively excludes people with records, and you’ve got an entire ecosystem that produces incarceration by design.

Living Proof of Resistance

Yet in spite of all this, people return home and rebuild. Initiatives like Columbia Law School’s Paralegal Pathways Program and Resilience Education’s Reentry Platform prove that when real access is provided—education, mentorship, employment—transformation happens. Not because of the system, but in resistance to it.

Faith-based organizations like Forgiven Ministries also play a critical role, especially in emotional healing, relationship rebuilding, and spiritual recovery—filling the void that the system either abandoned or exploited.

A New Frame for Justice

This question was front and center at the Symposium on the Second Look Act, held March 27th at Union Theological Seminary. I sat among fellow advocates, scholars, and system-impacted people as we discussed the urgent need to revisit extreme sentences through legislation that acknowledges growth and transformation over time. The event wasn’t just about policy—it was a collective refusal to let the criminal legal system define a person’s worth forever based on a single moment.

Too often, Second Chance Month becomes a celebration of resilience without an indictment of the conditions that made resilience necessary. It focuses on individual transformation, while leaving the structural conditions untouched. Worse, it subtly implies that people must prove they’re worthy of inclusion after incarceration, instead of asking why they were excluded to begin with.

The First Chance Agenda

What we need is a new frame—one that centers habilitation, not just redemption. One that asks not “how can we forgive the formerly incarcerated,” but “how can we repair the institutions that failed them long before prison?”

This April don’t just offer second chances. Offer truth. Offer justice. Offer a first chance to those who never had one.

Wilfredo Laracuente is a curriculum designer, advocate, and member of the Community Peace Advisory Board. His work focuses on prison education, reentry, and the intersection of social-emotional learning and justice reform.