A lawyer’s unusual crowdfunding campaign to help her client raise $5,000 for housing and basic needs after his release from jail shows how difficult it is for former inmates to reintegrate into society, experts say.Michael Storms has been in pretrial custody at the Toronto South Detention Centre since his arrest for just shy of 600 days, almost all of it in segregation at his own request. He was charged with forcible confinement and uttering threats after taking three women hostage at a Toronto massage parlour in June 2017. Storms has not yet had a trial. It is possible that the case could be resolved soon through a guilty plea and Storms is a good candidate to be sentenced to time served, his lawyer Caryma Sa’d said.“The main roadblock to getting him out has been our inability to formulate a solid (post-release) plan to take back to the Crown,” Sa’d said. They have to find him a stable place to live after he is released, she said. Other supports including mental health treatment and basic needs like food could be arranged through his social worker at the jail, she said.But there are years-long wait lists for nonshelter housing and, in Storms’ case, a shelter is not an ideal solution in part because he has spent so long alone in segregation, Sa’d said. “I would have real concern for his well-being in that kind of scenario,” she said. “I think that could pose a huge setback to any kind of progress he has made.”The crowdfunding campaign is a last resort to overcome what now is largely a financial problem, she said. “We set people up for failure, and then we wonder why recidivism rates are so high, why people stay enmeshed in the system. It’s because you get released and there is limited support available,” she said.The campaign lays out the basic details of Storms’ case, including that he called the Toronto Star during the hostage-taking, telling a Star reporter he had initia ...
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