THE LONG, HARD ROAD HOME FROM PRISON
Housing, employment and reestablishing family relationships are just some of the challenges confronting ex-offenders
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Here's a scenario most of us never think about and, fortunately, will never have to. Let’s pretend anyway.
You just spent five years in a state prison for a felony conviction. You never finished high school. Your job experience as an adult is pretty much limited to the work assignment in prison. You may be single or have a spouse or an ex-spouse. You have a child. Your child knows you only from infrequent visits because the correctional facility where you did time is hundreds of miles from their home. You have little or no money.
Now, you’re out of prison. You’ve just been paroled or finished your sentence. Now what? Where do you go? What do you do? How do you start over? How do you not go back to or drift back to or get pulled back into the old life and lifestyle that got you put away in the first place? Even if you accept that you need help adjusting to being back in the world, where do you find it? How do you get a job? A place to live? You’re an ex-offender, a convicted criminal. In some states you don't have to divulge that until you're offered the job. Then, if the employer bothers to check, they're going to find out. Who’s going to give you a chance? How many people even care if you get a chance? Too bad. You should have thought of that before you committed a crime, some people will think but not say aloud. And some people will say it.
More than 600,000 men and women -- roughly the population of Baltimore -- are released from state and federal prisons every year. Many, maybe most of them will face severe challenges returning to society. Some will end up back in prison. With rare exceptions, even the most determined ex-offender committed to going straight will have a hard time adjusting to this strange new world, at once familiar and alien.
"The biggest one is: do you have a place to stay? That's number one." says Rob Carmona, co-founder and former CEO of STRIVE, a New York City-based workforce development agency that helps and trains ex-offenders. Carmona is himself a former felon.
If the ex-offender is lucky, he or she can return to live with their own family or extended family members. Too often that is not the case.
"Did you burn your bridges so badly that they don't want you back?" Carmona says. "If you haven't that's a plus."
Rob Carmona
Many end up discharged to shelters. Few are able to find places in halfway houses.
For an ex-offender, renting an apartment can be difficult, if not impossible. A criminal record is an obvious barrier. So is money. Not everyone can afford first and last month rent without income, and even if you have it, many landlords won't rent to anyone without a job and work history.
Re-establishing relationships with family members, especially their children, can also be challenging.
"I have two sons," says Steuben Vega, an ex-felon who is now deputy director of workforce development at the Osborne Association, a Bronx-based organization that assists those making the transition from prison to society. "My oldest son, I got arrested the day before he turned three, and my second son, he was eight days old."
Vega spent the next 17 years in prison in New York State before he was paroled.
"I remember my oldest son saying 'I don't know how to call you dad.' I remember telling him, 'I understand. It's not your fault that you grew up without me there. There are decisions I made and I have a lot of regrets. It's okay if you never call me dad again. as long as I'm a part of your life and you're a part of my life.'"
Steuben Vega credit: Osborne Association
Vega was fortunate. He was able to reestablish that relationship. and for his sons to accept him as their father.
One of the key services that Osborne offers is counseling to help ex-offenders learn how to re-establish or, in some cases, establish for the first time family bonds.
"When you get back into that family environment, you have to do things to atone and demonstrate through consistency: I'm here," he said.
Many people leaving prison return to their old neighborhoods and the friends they used to hang out with. That can lead to returning to the lifestyle that led to their incarceration.
"You can come back with the best of intentions, man, but after a while, your homeboys and people around there are going to wear you down," Carmona told me. "You have to be a spectacular individual to just do it all on your own. Not that there aren't some who do it, but it's rare."
One of the greatest difficulties any ex-offender will have to overcome will be getting a job. That was true before the Covid pandemic. It's probably even harder now, even with the national labor shortage.
"After leaving prison, ex-felons have poor employment outcomes, low earnings when working, and little attachment to the formal sector," according to a 2018 Brookings Institution report, Work and Opportunity Before and After Incarceration.
The report found that about 49 percent of ex-prisoners earned less than $500 in their first year after release. Thirty-two percent earned between $500 and $15,000 in that first year. Twenty percent made more than $15,000. Median income was $10,090 and average income was $13,890.
And those are the people who had jobs. The non-profit Prison Policy Initiative estimates the unemployment rate for ex-offenders at 27 percent (2008 figures).
"Despite the overwhelming benefits of employment, people who have been to prison are largely shut out of the labor market," wrote Lucius Couloute and Daniel Kopf, authors of the 2018 PPI report. "Formerly incarcerated people want to work, but face structural barriers to securing employment, particularly within the period immediately following release. For those who are Black or Hispanic -- especially women -- status as 'formerly incarcerated' reduces their employment chances even more. This perpetual labor market punishment creates a counterproductive system of release and poverty, hurting everyone involved: employers, the taxpayers, and certainly formerly incarcerated people looking to break the cycle."
It's probably no surprise there are racial and gender components to the employment picture. White male ex-offenders have the lowest unemployment rate, 18.4 percent. White women, 23.2 percent. Black men, 35.2 percent. Black women, 43.6 percent (2008 figures). White male ex-offenders are the most likely to work full-time jobs. Black women are most likely to work at part-time or occasional jobs.
Osborne teaches former offenders that New York State law prohibits an employer from asking an applicant if they have a criminal record until and unless they are making a job offer. Which is fine in theory, except as soon as the applicant says, however diplomatically, "I don't have to answer that question," they just functionally answered it.
I was surprised that women leaving prison have an even harder time getting a job than men. Carmona explained: "You add all the complexities of sexism, which all women face, much less Black and Brown women, and if you think that a guy is stigmatized when you go to jail, when a woman goes to jail, it's worse by a factor of three. 'She must be the demon from hell. I'm not giving her a job for nothing!'"
If ex-offenders cannot find gainful employment, there is a good chance they will turn to crime.
"If we don't do something to help these people secure employment, if we don't help them get jobs and if they don't secure employment because of their conviction, then in order to support themselves financially then they're going to resort to whatever it is they know best and, for some, it's crime," Vega told me.
"The importance of a livable wage job to self-esteem and (how it) impacts recidivism -- big!" Carmona says.
So, what can be done? Some advocates say prisons should better prepare inmates by teaching them modern technology and how to use it. When Vega went to prison, there was no such thing as email. When he came out, he had to catch up. Some people leave prison with no idea how to do a Google search, or even what Google is.
Vocational training in prison can sometimes be hopelessly outdated, according to Vega.
"When they come out into the work force and meet employers and they ask what they know, they're telling them, 'I know how to use this equipment' and employers are saying, 'It's been ten, fifteen years since we used that. That's antiquated,'" Vega said.
The Prison Policy Initiative has issued a series of proposals, including correctional systems issuing a temporary basic income -- a stipend -- to ex-offenders to provide short-term financial stability. providing bond insurance and tax benefits to employers who hire ex-offenders to "protect against real or perceived risks of loss," and ending laws that permit state licensing boards to deny an ex-offender a license for a job such as barber or cosmetologist.
Roy Castro credit: STRIVE
About ten years ago, when I was first introduced to STRIVE, I met a young man named Roy Castro. Castro had served ten years in federal prison for drug dealing. Once he got out, he was unable to find work. He was close to giving up and going back to his old life. But a friend told him about STRIVE. When he finished its job training program in 2003, STRIVE helped connect him to a job cleaning out freezers for an ice cream company.
Today, Castro has his own ice cream distribution company, DM Ice Cream, a $6 million a year business that is one of the largest ice cream distributors in New York City. Because someone gave him a chance.,Cover photo credit: Getty Images