WESTFIELD, MA (WGGB/WSHM) - For weeks, Westfield parents and residents fought to keep a re-entry facility for former prisoners away from two local schools. On Thursday — they won. Community resources for justice announced that morning it is cancelling plans to relocate to a site on Southampton Road, which is less than one-thousand feet from those schools.

Robert Parent is a Westfield father with two daughters at one of those schools. He has been one of the loudest voices against this plan since the beginning. He said it felt like a victory for his family and for the entire city.

CRJ had planned to move its West Springfield re-entry program to Southampton Road in Westfield — just under 1,000 feet from two schools. That sparked weeks of protests and community pushback. On Thursday morning, CRJ announced it will not move forward with that location.

“Once seeing this formally announced today, it’s just a huge weight off my shoulders. And I think off the community’s shoulders,” Parent said the community’s concern was never about the program itself — but about how close it would be to children, “Specifically, because it was less than a thousand feet away from our school, our teachers, our educators, our kids — they’re our most vulnerable. And we want to protect our most vulnerable at all costs. And I think that having a facility that close would put a lot of parents, a lot of those teachers, the educators, on edge every day, just taking their kid to school or just showing up to work."

State Senator John Velis, who represents Westfield, also praised the decision. His office said in a statement that the concerns raised were never about the value of re-entry programs. But about what his office called, “the extremely poor choice in location — only steps away from two local schools and the absence of early and substantive engagement with the community.”

“I think any time a community bands together as strongly as we did and provide as much attention to this in the media, companies and organizations like this don’t typically like that much attention. They kind of just want to get their work done and move on. So, I do think our community efforts and our outreach — I think they definitely worked. And I’m super proud of the community and super proud of Westfield for getting behind this cause,” Robert Parent said.

But there is a consequence, CRJ’S West Springfield program, the one slated to move to Westfield — will now be discontinuing services and training. Officials said they are working to find a solution to continue the state-mandated residential re-entry program.

Westfield residents won this fight — but the state still requires this program to exist. There is no clear answer on where it goes from here.

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