I read non-fiction books to get a better understanding of topics that are outside of my own experience. I had basically no knowledge of the parole or probation system in America, and this was an insightful and fascinating look at a topic that I really did need an education on. Jason Hardy worked as a parole officer in New Orleans for four years. This book details his experiences working with his parolees.

This book is heartbreaking to read - both because of the stories of the individuals he worked with and also the state of the justice system in this country. Many of Hardy's biggest challenges related to our prison system working as both mental health and addiction treatment centers. Many times, Hardy had to resort to sending people to prison simply so they could receive the help they needed. It's such an abomination that we've gotten to this point - mass incarceration is at the root of so many problems here.

I appreciated Hardy's honesty (especially about how naïve he was when he first started on the job) and his research into some ways that we've ended up at this point. It was a little tough for me to tell the specific parolees apart in the beginning, but I did appreciate how Hardy told the story, using the evolution of his time on the job to illustrate how he could (or oftentimes could not) help the people he was assigned to. I would have loved a more definite ending to each person's story, but I get that people's journeys are not always tied up in a neat bow at the end. This was still a powerful read that I would recommend to anyone interested in learning more about how incarcerated and/or formerly incarcerated people are treated in the US.

Just could not get into this book, so I did not post a review. I don't like to DNF books, but there are so many great ones. Thanks for the opportunity.

Mr. Hardy was having a hard time finding a job that suited his needs. He had a college education but was struggling to make ends meet. He found he had the qualifications needed to be a parole/probation officer and deduced to give it a shot.

This work of nonfiction shows his life as he works that job. Its heartbreaking and beautiful. We follow a few different individuals as we see what their lives look like in and out of the prison life. Discovering how they can manage life after their sentence is complete, and function alongside society.

Hardy shares with us how he coped, and sometimes didnt cope, with this occupation. The entire piece sheds light in how hard life can be for both the parolee, and the parole officer. I throughly enjoyed learning the efforts that Hardy took to enlightening others about that life and what we can do to trt and fix such a broken system.

My brother is in prison and I have seen firsthand how difficult this life is for all involved. This personal level is what drew me to requesting this book. Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read it.

It's an okay book giving a bird's eye view of a parolee trying to make ends meet.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

An eye-opening and sobering look into our parole system by a former insider, a book that everyone should read. Hardy’s client stories broke my heart. So many good people who become P.O.s with intentions to make a difference in their clients’ lives find themselves beat, buried under mountains of case files and within a system fraught with budgetary constraints and too few advocates. The prisons are where the government money is thrown, not in rehabilitation efforts. We are better than this, America!

At first glance this book looks like something you might pass on and you might say, “I don’t want to read about probation and parole.” But then you might pause....taking a closer look at it and think about that one person you know or heard about that’s in prison and decide I’ll just take a look. And I hope that happens because I think you’ll enjoy it!
My husband had a life sentence and has now been out of prison for over 15 years. He has the privilege of working for and representing a place for the formally incarcerated to transition back into society. It can be done and it’s a big job but it can be done one person at a time.
This book is well written and gives us a glimpse of the system at large. The author takes us through his daily duties and lets us meet all the challenges he sees and the endless struggles. Addiction, poverty, and the homeless. It’s a compelling story with his honest view of the system and I hope you struggle with it as much as I did. I definitely recommend this book and want to thank the publisher for allowing me to read this.

This was a NETGALLEY gift and all opinions are my own.

An interesting story of Jason Hardy and his role as a PO in New Orleans. To have that many cases that you are in charge of/reviewing at a time is mind boggling and it must be exceptionally hard to dedicate your time to who needs it. The book highlights the system and the things that are wrong and need to change. It took me a little to get into the book, but perseverance and it is a really good read.
Thank you for the ARC of this book, i enjoyed the stories.

The author, Jason Hardy, has tremendous skills to write this insightful, informative and heartbreaking book with compassion and at times, humor. The writing style kept me so interested and striving to absorb the knowledge he is imparting to the reader from his time in public service as a parole officer in New Orleans, LA.

I usually read fiction and I wish this book were fiction, since it is distressing to know that the contents of this book are real and there is no solution to the situation in sight.

I recommend this book so very highly! To be very honest, when I decided to read this book, I was not certain I wanted to. I am so glad that I went ahead and ventured into the pages. I have come out on the other side understanding the trappings of what life can be for the less fortunate that are caught in a world I was blessed to never know.

I want to thank Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for allowing me to read the Advanced Reader Copy of The Second Chance Club. This review is my own opinion, not influenced by reading the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
This is an excellent look into the lives of parole officers and parolees. Each person ki n the author chose to focus on in the book had such varying degrees of need for social services and it is incredibly sad that these people can get the support they need. The caseloads are extremely high which makes it hard for the officer to triage the probationers. I really admire the efforts these employees go to help and understand the probationers. He really points out where the system is greatly lacking and the various reasoning behind that.
I highly recommend this book.

This is a great memoir for all those interested in what it's like to be incarcerated! I recently started doing outreach in a prison setting and find books like this extremely helpful and eye opening to working what that population! I highly recommend this book to anyone who works with or has family in that situation!

Jason Hardy’s The Second Chance Club takes the reader into the world of parole officers and their charges in New Orleans. Hardy has 220 parolees under his care and instructs the reader in the way parole visits work (or fail to work). He discusses problems that many Americans are aware of, even if we might not think about them every day: the racial disparities of incarceration, the spread of heroin, re-offending, lack of funds and programs and the sad fact that our country leads the world in incarcerated populations.

At the time that Hardy takes his job, parole has shifted from using jail for minor offenses to using jail as a last-ditch tool to save the lives of repeat drug users, or to save members of the community from the offenders. Hardy helps the reader see how risk is assessed (risk of doing drugs, risk of committing violence, etc.) and shows the places where the system is weak. There are no easy answers in The Second Chance Club, but some possibilities are offered. These include: offering jobs that pay a living wage to those released from prison, keeping drug users away from other users, try more solutions in the first two years of parole instead of stretching things out, and get the community to invest in homeless shelters and food banks.

“Solving a crime,” Hardy writes, “is easier than solving a person.” Parole officers are charged with “solving” a great many people but we, as members of the community, need to help provide tools to enable them to be “solved” and helped. Second Chance Club can provide some of these tools and some insights into a problem that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

If you are a fan of Evicted by Matthew Desmond, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and Dreamland by Sam Quinones, this is a great companion book. The author writes about his experience as a parole officer in New Orleans. The goal is to make sure those who leave prison will not return, but this is too lofty a goal when you are without money and resources. Jason Hardy brings you along as you visit those on his caseload, share his frustrations at the lack of resources, and smile at the few, too few, success stories. His goal is to shed a light on the uphill battle those who are newly released from prison fight bc they have no re-entry training. Without any resources, a return to prison is just a matter of time and a financial drain on the community.

A hard hitting look at the criminal justice system from the POV of a parole officer through a look at several of his cases. I read this in close proximity to Beth Macy’s Dopesick about the opioid problem in the US and was a good pairing.

The Second Chance Club is a book about Jason Hardy’s experience as a parole officer in the city of New Orleans. There are seven fascinating people/stories he focuses on in the book. Each story makes you feel regretful for the person on the other side of the law. They live in poverty and do not know how to get out. Jason does his best to create opportunities and options for his offenders but struggles internally with how to help everyone. Jason grew up in the area and had a fondness for New Orleans. The book delves into the inner workings of the day to day life of a PO, a parolee, and the judicial system when offenders are given a chance after chance to change before heading to prison. It is heartbreaking to read about the missed opportunities that some of these young people had. It is also heartwarming to realize that there are so many POs out there willing to get up every day and do their job. The Second Chance Club was a great and inspirational book by Jason Hardy.

This is a book that needs to be read in order to understand our justice system, those that commit crimes, and ways to help them to not reoffend. This is also an eyeopening look at the life of parole officers and the jobs they do. I highly recommend this book.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

This book is a huge tour de force on jail and poverty. There are so many things the common person doesn't think about. Is it really jail or their home for prisoners. When they are released where do they go? How do they make a living? With SO many released at once or in close proximity is there enough jobs and housing? Thank you for such an informative read!

In the beginning of the book, Hardy explains that he really only went into P&P because he didn't know what to do with his life. He was meant to write this book. This book is so important for people to understand the reality of our criminal justice system and the harsh truths about poverty and its correlation with offenders. Written so well, Hardy follows the lives of 7 offenders with whom he worked with during his four years as a P&P Officer. Each one came from a different situation, a different charge and arrest record, and different plans to help them get back on track. This book is a great piece for anyone interested in the criminal justice system. I will be purchasing for my friends when the book is released.

Jason Hardy's account of 4+ yrs working in New Orleans as a Probation & Parole Officer is very informative; he explains the difference and dovetailing of P&P, by honing in on 7 different clients. "Louisiana led the US in incarceration, and the US led the world." It is incredible to me that this had ever been a point of pride for the US Department of Corrections. I think one of the most interesting angles Hardy covers is how trends in that industry have changed throughout America's recent past. He brings up racial disparity that "nearly half of black children in New Orleans live in poverty, compared to 9% of white children" and also enforcement disparity, in that the rich and poor consume about the same number of drugs, whereas only the poor end up in the criminal justice system for it. "While middle-class kids were training to be better off than their parents, poor kids were training to survive." The belief that ones early exposure to addiction inoculates, is basically heart-breaking. It makes no sense that our national incarceration levels would be historically high, while our national crime rate historically low.

Once I got to the Epilogue I was hoping for an update or recap on the 7 parolees Hardy introduced us to; I have to say I was a little disappointed not to find out what came of them all, though Hardy's change of career and venue are totally viable excuses. If he writes another book about law enforcement in New Jersey, I'll read it.

I cannot review this book. I am not interested in this type of story.
I apparently did not read what this book was about.

I've read a fair number of works on the criminal justice system, but none focusing on one of the arms of the jail/prison system that is often the most present in "offenders'" lives: probation and parole (P&P). Hardy is a born-and-raised Louisianan who, after not finding luck in other jobs and wanting to make a difference in the criminal justice system, applied to be a probation and parole officer. He went into the job thinking that all POs were just as bad as cops, and he wanted to be the one new guy who kept people out of prison. But, soon after meeting his coworkers in New Orleans, he discovered that almost all parole officers, regardless of political belief or tenure, wanted that same goal.

POs are the criminal justice system's closest personal link to an "offender," offering on-the-ground community supervision, going into homes, and really getting to know their cases as humans. POs are half-cop, half-social worker, fulfilling duties to inspect homes, carry out drug tests, provide an ear to vent to, and connect offenders to social services and programs. They have a duty to the public and put people back in jail or prison if they pose a danger to the people around them, but they also have discretionary power to not throw people back in the system for failing a drug test or another minor offense. POs want to see their cases do well: kick nasty drug addictions, stop dealing drugs, get a job, go back to school, find a stable living situation, get mental health treatment, etc. But most of the time this is aspirational, and POs sometimes just have to focus on "disaster prevention" - stopping overdoses or violent attacks on others.

But, as is the problem with nearly every facet of the criminal justice system, P&P is under-resourced, under-staffed, and underfunded. Hardy had a caseload of 220 offenders, so many that he was only able to focus on the 50 with the highest risk/need out of all of them. In this book, Hardy goes into detail on about seven of his offenders, who he says are emblematic of the issues he saw in all of his cases. They all struggle with some form of the following: drug addiction (mostly heroin), homelessness, mental health issues, "addiction to the lifestyle" of being a drug dealer, and refusing to accept help when it was offered. Hardy, like all POs, does his best with each person, getting to know their unique circumstances and trying to connect them with services. When that doesn't work, he focuses on disaster prevention.

Hardy sums up the main challenge here: "The most effective solutions to violent crime were social services that made upward mobility attainable for everyone willing to work for it, but transformative social services were expensive." The federal P&P system allocates a lot of money to social services and sees the reward - only 16% of federal parolees are sent back to prison before the end of their sentence, compared to 43% in Louisiana. P&P is vastly cheaper than sending someone to jail or prison, but the state does not realize that those cost savings will only come into play if offenders are kept out of the system, which requires investment in support services. These services can take a variety of forms, from drug court to detox/sober living facilities to Day Reporting Centers to mental health treatment to reentry/job services. It's not a perfect system - addiction is of course, notoriously difficult to eradicate, and going from a high-flying drug dealer's lifestyle to 40 hours of minimum wage work is a hard pill to swallow. But these services are proven ways to dramatically reduce rates of revocation and concretely improve offenders' lives.

Some of the seven cases that Hardy details here were success stories, or as close to that as you can get amid all of these immense macro- and micro-issues. Some of them were not. Three of the cases ended up back in prison for various reasons, but from my perspective, Hardy did his best. When you're fighting against deeply-rooted issues of race, class, family circumstances, bad neighborhoods, drugs, gangs, crime, violence, and more - the small wins matter. Hardy did what was in his power to do, advocating for individuals in front of judges based on who he knew and hoped his offenders to be, exercising his discretion to know when to give someone a chance, and connecting them to the support that was available. He notes many changes that have come into effect since his leaving P&P, and the many more that are still necessary. I was surprisingly left with a feeling of hope for what's to come, and how powerful it is for on-the-ground, good POs like Hardy and his coworkers to get to know their offenders as people and to offer help in the ways they can.