1 of 2
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Danny Ludeman
2 of 2
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Carrie Pettus-Davis
Danny Ludeman is accustomed to doing big deals involving big money. As CEO of Wells Fargo Advisors, he oversaw a trillion dollars in assets. That’s trillion with a T. What Ludeman is attempting to do now not only has a higher degree of difficulty but also puts in play vast human, social, and political capital that is impossible to quantify and hard to control or predict. In his “retirement,” Ludeman is trying to solve what he describes as the nation’s third-greatest societal problem: He skipped over poverty and disease and chose mass incarceration. He’s trying to keep prisoners released from prison from going back to prison. Nationally, 77 percent are arrested again within five years. Ludeman and his partners in crime prevention hope to reduce that number by one-third.
“The question we asked was, with the proper resources, leadership, and using the best evidence-based practices, could we materially lower recidivism? We answered yes to that,” Ludeman says. “The second question is, can we do it in a scalable fashion to do it elsewhere?”
In entrepreneurial terms, Ludeman’s new nonprofit could be considered a social justice startup. The idea is to use academic research to select the best programs, spend private funds to pay for those programs, and make certain government policy helps facilitate the process. Named the Concordance Initiative, the collaboration has two parts. The Concordance Academy of Leadership provides services for those leaving prison, and the effectiveness of those services will be studied by the Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, based at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University.
On the public side, Gov. Jay Nixon, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, and Mayor Francis Slay all signed up early to support Ludeman’s initiative. In early April, those last three leaders announced they were partnering to pitch in $2 million for the Concordance Academy.
The effort will start with small numbers and comprehensive services. Academy employees will be placed in prison to begin interaction with prisoners six months before their release dates. The first classes will have 60, 80, and 110 participants. The Academy’s 18-month program will provide services in education and job readiness, employment, substance abuse treatment, mental health therapy, cognitive and relational skills, housing, and family support and community engagement.
Years down the road, Ludeman hopes that fewer ex-prisoners re-entering the system will yield a litany of downstream benefits, including a reduction in crime. “If we are successful in reducing the incarceration rate by one-third, all the public officials and police chiefs agree that there would be nothing that would have more of an impact on lowering crime in St. Louis, in Missouri, and in the nation,” Ludeman says.
Carrie Pettus-Davis, the director of the Concordance Institute, says Ludeman’s involvement changed the dynamic of devising the best ways to prevent re-incarceration. Limited funding always was an issue. Ludeman’s backing included his own initial $1 million gift, his role in raising another $10 million, and his getting 500 hours of pro bono professional services donated to the cause. With that support, Pettus-Davis says she was given the chance to “design something at the beginning where not having enough resources was not a constraining factor.”
For years, Pettus-Davis has been looking at what works at preventing ex-prisoners from returning to prison. The institute analyzed 107,500 different programs worldwide to find the most effective methods. Using data gleaned from that work, she will supervise randomized control trials to gauge the effectiveness of various approaches, comparing those in the Concordance Initiative and those receiving normal services. Ludeman believes holistic, comprehensive, evidence-based programs will save lives and money. The direct cost to house a person in a Missouri state prison is $22,500 per year. The projected one-time cost of the Concordance Initiative is about $15,000 per person, with the hope that that person will avoid re-incarceration.
When talking about Concordance, Ludeman doesn’t necessarily cite his faith, or his decision to obtain a master of divinity from Covenant Theological Seminary after leaving Wells Fargo. He does recall the year that he was the head of a United Way campaign and discovered how compassionate St. Louis was. Drawing on that experience, he doesn’t think that doing well and doing good are mutually exclusive. As he has shown with the Concordance effort, having means can help you achieve ends. “If you have the best plan in the world and you can’t fund it,” he says, “it’s not a plan, it’s a dream.”
Ludeman believes that compassion drives action. “I believe we are all called to use our God-given talents and resources not for our own benefit but to help others who are struggling and hurting right in front of our eyes in our community. We all need grace, mercy, and reconciliation. That is what drives me and why I believe what we are doing will have a tremendous impact on the lives of these individuals and the community around them.”
Recidivism by the Numbers
2.7 million children (1 in 28) have a parent in a U.S. prison. Children with a parent in prison are six to nine times more likely to go prison themselves.
It costs $22,500 per year to house a person in a Missouri state prison
83 percent of adults released from a Missouri prison have a substance abuse disorder, and fewer than 10 percent of those released with a substance abuse disorder receive treatment after release.
77 percent of released prisoners nationally are arrested again within five years.
