Pelosi, Christie attend re-entry center ceremony

JERSEY CITY (AP) — A who's who of current and former New Jersey elected officials along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi officially opened a new prisoner re-entry center on Monday.

The attendees included Gov. Chris Christies and former Govs. Brendan Byrne, Tom Kean and Jim McGreevey, who's now the executive director of the Jersey City Employment and Training Program and was a driving a force behind the new center.

Martin's Place, which sits in one of Jersey City's high-crime neighborhoods, offers on-site addiction treatment, housing assistance and job training programs for ex-offenders.

Separately, Christie and Pelosi spoke forcefully about offering treatment to non-violent drug offenders instead of putting them in jail. Christie, as he has in the past, labeled the so-called war on drugs a failure and urged putting aside politics and having a frank conversation about drug addiction and incarceration.

"A lot of people in my party talk about being pro-life," he said. "Well, it seems to me if you're going to be pro-life you have to be pro-life for the entire life, not just when they're in the womb. It's easy to be pro-life when they're in the womb; they haven't done anything to disappoint us. The kid who's sitting in a jail cell in Hudson County, strung out on heroin, having robbed a liquor store to feed his or her addiction, it's hard to be in favor of that life. But that child is one of God's creations just as much as anybody else and we have to be there for that person as well."

Christie, seen as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016, and Pelosi, the highest-ranking House Democrat, held hands during a serenity prayer and chatted for several minutes as the ceremony was winding down, but didn't comment afterward.

"We have work to do in the criminal justice system. We must do away with mandatory minimum sentences," Pelosi said during her remarks. "Give the judges the discretion; the judges come to us when they come for their budgets and they say 'do away with it.' They know that justice is better served if you leave it to the discretion of the judges rather than carve out a place that pre-determines, regardless of the facts, what the sentence will be."

Other attendees were Mayor Steven Fulop, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, U.S. Reps. Albio Sires and Donald Payne Jr. and additional local officials.

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