The following was written by guest contributor Matthew Jedras, summer intern with Getting Out, Staying Out , the 2010 Mutual of America Community Partnership Award winner . Jedras is currently a cadet at the West Point Military Academy.

The Washington Post writer Jonathan Yardley described Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street as, “[unsparing] and important…An informative, clearheaded and sobering book.”

I had read the book as part of a sociology class that made up my sophomore year curriculum. As a cadet at United States Military Academy at West Point, my school, an hour north of New York, is culturally far removed from the inner-city experience that Anderson details.

Many of Anderson’s subjects are roughly the same age as cadets, but between the two populations there are substantial differences in demographics, income level, language, and, likewise, the minutiae that make up day-to-day interactions: everything a sociology class would and should cover.

So, after I volunteered to spend part of my summer working with Mark Goldsmith, CEO of Getting Out, Staying Out (GOSO), an organization that helps re-integrate former Riker’s Island and NY state inmates, I reviewed Anderson’s book and the notes I had taken on it.

Before coming to New York, I realized that many of the soldiers with whom I will spend my years of my service come from backgrounds similar to those of GOSO participants and, more often than not, do not come from well-to-do Boston suburbs.

For the record, I come from a Massachusetts suburb where many of my grammar school peers resembled, especially in regards to race and parents’ income, those from college. So, in other words, reading Code of the Street had been my first brush with a society about which I had had only a superficial understanding, and working at GOSO would be a sort of trial by fire.

The organization’s high-level of success, I believe, comes from the ability to effectively articulate what our society expects from men of this age bracket (all participants are between 16 and 24 years). In a manner that is at the same time friendly and professional, Mr. Goldsmith and his staff have served the New York community for six years. During that time, their work has reduced the recidivism rate of former inmates from over 60% to less than 20%. The interpersonal tact of the workers here bridges the gap between two cultures that simultaneously exist in the city. Needless to say, my experience has been invaluable, and I have found my time here to be just as Yardley found Anderson’s book: informative, clearheaded, and sobering.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet with Frances Hesselbein and to express my gratitude for the Leader to Leader Institute’s friendship not only with West Point and the US Army, but also with Getting Out, Staying Out. My experience with GOSO has undoubtedly benefited my development, and I am grateful for chance to express that to you readers.

Thank you.