David Rothenberg, A Marathoner For Gays And Ex-Offenders

David Rothenberg, the openly gay founder and executive director of the New York-based Fortune Society, a self-help organization for ex-cons, was praised in Village Voice writer Jack Newfield's annual honor roll as "a marathoner for two of this city's most discriminated-against minorities--ex-prison inmates, and gays and lesbians." Many of Rothenberg's constituents could fall into both categories quite easily. And, in this society, to be black, gay, and an ex-con is to be triply stigmatized, triply persecuted.

The Fortune Society, says Rothenberg, reflects the population of the prisons, 80 percent black and Hispanic. Each year nearly 2,500 ex-inmates cross the Fortune Society's threshold in order to utilize its services: a job placement unit, a vocational training and educational program, and a juvenile unit, all run by a staff of 26 persons.

Rothenberg, 53, who grew up in middle-class comfort in New Jersey, and gave up a lucrative career as a Broadway press agent to run Fortune, has, writes Newfield, "continued to explain the casual relationship between crime and poverty."

Charles Michael Smith: Are prisons as they exist today anachronisms?
David Rothenberg: Yes, of course, they are anachronisms. But because they're old isn't why they're bad. They're bad because they don't work. The word "penitentiary" comes from [the word] "penitence." The idea of the penitentiary began with the Quakers who thought that if people had done bad or evil things, you lock them away. Then they would contemplate what they did. They would come out and be better. We've never really changed that concept. They don't become better, they become acclimated to that unnatural surrounding.

CMS: You've made the statement that there are bad acts, not bad people.
DR: I say that because i don't know who is to judge and rule out people from coming back into society. We have people who have come to the Fortune Society who have all the labels--beyond help, beyond redemption, incorrigible, career criminal--all of those labels that have been imposed on them by society. In a support system we've watched them change and grow, accept themselves and what they can do in society. Most of the people that work here are people who were written off by society at one point.

CMS: What about the relationship of poverty to crime?
DR: There are many poor people who don't commit crime. It's not the poorness, per se, that causes it but it creates the situation of child abuse, of neglect, of rage, of hunger, of denial, of resentment. Those are all the ingredients that work together. If you go through the prisons and you talk to people who are doing time there, you'll find out that overwhelmingly they are poor people. Which has a lot to do with the cost of justice as well. Street crime and person-to-person crime gets more severe punishment. That tends to be poor people. Whereas, what is called white collar crime tends to be more white people, more middle class and wealthy people. The reason for that is poor people don't have access to the books to do the embezzlement. A lot of our guys couldn't forge checks because they can't write. So they steal or what they mostly do is sell drugs.

CMS: Where do you stand on the death penalty issue?
DR: I'm one of the most consistent and frequent spokespersons against the death penalty. The simple fact is that 99.9 percent of the crimes that take place, the death penalty wouldn't be an issue. In fact, when people commit violent, horrible crimes, they are irrational, violent acts. To think that a logical deterrent which would affect reasonably thinking people is going to deter the irrational is absurd. If you're really offended by murder, then you can't be in favor of the government being in the business. If people are really concerned about reducing victims, we should spend a little more energy on gun control and the manufacture of guns. That's the real issue.

This is an excerpt from an article that was published in the New York Native in ca. 1985 or 1986.