In Hard Promises, Allan Haber reaches that determination early in his prison sentence. In the movie as well as real life, he made it stick through a combination of determination, education and aspiration. However, the vast majority of convicts go back to jail at some point. Nationally the 2012 recidivism rate, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is 70.4%. A combination of budget cuts for rehabilitation and disregard for prisoner reentry programs has created and sustained a destructive cycle of recidivism.

“I had something I wanted to accomplish,” says Haber. “That helps. But for every effort I made there were people willing to help and programs that afforded opportunity. I don’t think we’ve done much better at that as a society. In fact we may have gotten worse.”

Haber, who is the only three-time felon currently practicing law in the US, aggressively pursued education programs while in prison. He also immediately worked at a counseling program called Offender Aid and Restoration upon release.

Recidivism has been at the top of the news lately as it has entered the presidential election dialogue is regard to immigration policy. It has also been the focus of a controversial program in New York City. Announced in August, the city announced that Goldman Sachs will invest nearly $10 million in a jail program, with the pledge that the financial services giant would profit if the program succeeded in significantly reducing recidivism rates. It will start with a mission to reduce the rate at which adolescent men incarcerated at Rikers Island reoffend after their release.

“Sounds like another way to dodge the issue to me,” says Haber, who did time at Riker’s in the 60s. “The prison system needs a commitment from society as a whole, not from Wall Street firms.”

Haber is a firm believer in education as a conduit for opportunity. Data and research studies support his beliefs, but more data is needed. “I believe the takeaway message is that correctional education does promote successful prisoner reentry,” said Gerald Gaes in a 2008 study called The Impact of Prison Education Programs on Post-Release Outcomes. “However, we only have an approximation of the true impact – the actual effect size. Even small effect sizes can produce substantial net cost-benefits especially for criminal justice costs that include adult corrections.”

However, expect the private sector to become more involved. As Jeffrey B. Liebman, a professor of public policy at Harvard University told The New York Times: “This will get attention as perhaps the most interesting government contract written anywhere in the world this year. People will study the contract terms, and the New York City deal will become a model for other jurisdictions.”

1. No Country For Old Men:  The essential American movie.  The Coen Brothers took arguably the best novel of the past 25 years brought it straight to the proper darkness it needed.  Note: There is no soundtrack.  The dialog is timed to perfection and more chilling than shark eyes.  Javier Bardem plays a villain of mythic proportions without a missing a beat of dark humor, friendo.
2. The Pope Of Greenwich Village:  Find me a more charismatic performance than Mickey Rourke’s Charlie Moran and I’ll take it off my list.  It makes me laugh, cry and shake my head in awe everytime, and I’ve watched it a lot.  This movie is so good that even after Geraldine Page unpredictably steals it in the middle, you slip right back into Rourke’s casual cool genius.
3. Hugo:  This is why they make movies.  A mundane world of a train station imagined through the innocent eyes of a lonely and abandoned child.  Every scene is imagined with beauty and executed with compassion and respect.
4. Ordinary People:  First movie I ever saw in a theater, and to this date maybe the only one with a completely authentic ending.  No family is perfect.  Huge lesson for me. And it uses silence almost better than No Country For Old Men.
5. Kill The Irishman:  It’s based on a true story about some amateur Irish hoods who are really good at blowing up cars in 1978 Cleveland.  The reasons they’re blowing up cars is because New York members of the Gambinos are driving them and they don’t take well to that in Cleveland.  Nobody very famous or very pretty is in it.  It’s gritty, explosive and nasty.
6. Kings:  An Irish film that nobody saw.  It’s a dark and drunk story set around a group of alienated childhood friends who reunite for the funeral of one of their own.  Great dialogue, much of it in Gaelic.  Perfect lighting, palpable tension and a sense you actually went to the wake when it’s over.
7. Seven Beauties:  Giancarlo Giannini takes this film from minute one and makes it a masterpiece.  Whether he’s talking up a young village girl or a Nazi prison guard he owns the screen and the emotional tide of this wide-ranging film.
8. La Dolce Vita:  It was made to show the beauty of life.  Everytime I watch it, I think life is beautiful.
9. American Gangster:  Pretty ballsy move to make a 2:45 crime movie with more twists and turns than a canyon road.  But it holds you.  Denzel. Denzel. Denzel.  Three reasons this was a great movie.
10. The Lion In Winter:  Like I said, I like scripts with energy.  Find me a more wisecracking, snappy script and I’ll take this one off my list, too.  When Hepburn says “I even made poor Louis take me on Crusade.  How’s that for blasphemy?  I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus.  Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn… but the troops were dazzled,”  …..it’s game over for me.

However, The Tombs, where Haber spent fix months in 1970, is by the far the most storied prison in New York history and maybe the entire US.  When Haber was remanded there in 1970 after being arrested for possession of drugs and firearms, it was a horror show.  The original prison was erected on 1838 on the site of New York City’s famous Five Points intersection where immigrants scratched out a crime-ridden living.  It was built on a swamp.  Conditions were so awful that a new structure was built in 1841.

Still,  The Tombs was a primitive facility.  According to the New York Times in September 1970, more than 94,000 arrests were made that year, and every one of them as some point was processed through The Tombs.  It was operating at 210 percent of its capacity.  Toilet paper was scarce.  Guards were brutal.  Family visits were denied.  Food was inedible.  Medical care was poor.  In fact, conditions were so overwrought that on October 1, 1970, the inmates took over the prison, taking eight guards prisoners. It was the first of dozens of prison riots that flared over the US the next year, including the infamous riot at Attica.

Allan Haber was a prisoner at the Tombs during the riot.  He was warned by several black prisoners to get off the floor before the violence went down. But no floor was unscathed.  As it turned out, The Tombs riot was not only a turning point for the movie, but a turning point in American history.  From 1970 to 1971, almost every prison rioted in New York state as well as major riots in Oklahoma, California and Idaho. It also started a new movement for prisoner’s rights. Several of the eight indicted inmates mounted successful visits for their actions. And four months after the riot, The Tombs was back to 100 capacity according to the NYC Corrections Office.

The reason can be reflected in society, as so many Hollywood trends are.  Get outside of the world of sports and it’s hard to find a good redemption story anymore.  Tiger Woods is on his way to redemption.  LeBron James achieved it.  Even Mike Tyson is moving that way.   A quick flick of the headlines turns up stories of society and the individuals who are selected or elected to lead it spiraling into darkness.  Even a 60s liberal and idealist such as Kurt Andersen wrote in The New York Times on July 4, “what has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late ’60s isn’t contradictory or incongruous.  It’s all of a piece.  For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant.  Selfishness won.”

Allan Haber’s story is a great argument against that viewpoint.  Haber would call “bullshit” on Andersen.  His story shows that the judicial system from the street cop to the parole board can be corrupt and indecent.  It also shows that it can be transcended.  His story shows that individualism need not be selfish.  It can be a gift to society.  Capitalism is greed; it’s also reality.  In the embrace of this duality, Hard Promises becomes a special film.

We want to know who these people are…..the ones that believed when no else believed. The ones who gave second, even third chances.  The ones who made the climb uphill possible and whose support enabled you to succeed. Feel free to comment below or submit your own posting and tell us about your personal guardian angel ….or some else’s, of course.

And, Allan Haber eventually overcame all that to become an educated functioning member of society who earned a law degree at Columbia and became a capital crimes attorney in Manhattan.  Today Allan Haber is also a husband, father, and grandfather.

Do you know of an Allan Haber?  Is there an Allan Haber in your life? Tell us about him……we love stories about overcoming adversity and redemption.

We fondly look back at these years today as the “Age of Aquarius” — an awakening of youth culture, hippieness, racial and sexual equality, and greater experimentation with drugs.  What are your memories or reflections of this period in time? Was it more Brady Bunch or All in the Family?  More The Mama’s and the Papa’s or Jefferson Airplane? More Hello Dolly or Midnight Cowboy?  Clearly it was a time of great turmoil and dichotomy.  Feel free to comment below with your thoughts.  And don’t forget to check back often for other posts and entries related to this time period.

Follow this section to hear other people’s tales of recovery……..or, as we refer to it as rehabilitation and redemption.  And, feel free to post comments on your own thougths regarding recovery and specific programs.  How do you feel about 12-step? Cold turkey? Methadone treatment? Relapse……and on and on.  We want to hear what you think.

Addictions come in many forms today……and with many different consequences.  Is an addiction to pornography the same as an addiction to opium? Or is a food addiction the same as a nicotine addiction?  And what are the ways we as a society deal with addicts, recovered addicts, and relapse addicts?  Why is anonymity so critical to twelve step programs and does that not add an entirely new level of emotional turmoil to the addiction?  And is there a “one size fits all” answer to dealing with addiction.  In Allan’s case, he would say no……he overcame his addiction and desire for “a taste of heroin” through sheer will power.  How about you?

Follow this section and feel free to comment in any way you would like with your thoughts and experiences with addiction and recovery.