Despite new efforts, ex-convicts face cool welcome in workforce

By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent | November 7, 2004

Landing a job today is tricky enough with impeccable credentials. But it is even trickier for job seekers like Ricky Cannon, who has served time in prison.

Cannon, 45, made the most of a prison training program and has been working the last four months as a warehouseman for Shaheen Bros. Inc., a food service firm in Amesbury. Cannon served two years for assault-and-battery at the Middleton House of Correction and the Lawrence Correctional Alternative Center, a working farm. He was released June 19 and put on probation for a year.

Cannon, who lives in Dorchester, said being involved in a jail boot camp turned him around. "I learned that you have to change and that you only get out [of a job] what you put into it. Now, I love what I'm doing in a family-oriented business."

Paul Shaheen, general manager of the firm, said the company has been hiring former offenders off and on for about 20 years. "We've found them to be very good workers," he said.

In the last few years, corrections programs have paid more attention to preparing prisoners for work and then assisting them in finding employers, said Bruce Western, a sociology professor at Princeton University who has studied the employability of former convicts.

And returning them to productive lives is imperative, given that some 650,000 individuals are coming out of state and federal prisons annually, Western said. Twenty years ago, one-quarter of that number were being released.

The new emphasis on training and educational programs is due in large part, prison officials said, to spiraling prison costs and an increased recognition among corrections officials that bigger strides must be made to curb recidivism.

Based on 1998 data, the latest available for Massachusetts, 40 percent of the people who served their sentences in state institutions were back in prison within three years, according to the state Department of Correction.

Some progress is being made to cut back the recidivism rate, "but a lot depends on community support," said Lisa Jackson, director of reentry programs for the correction department. "But we're doing everything to make an impact." The department's fiscal 2005 budget is $429.6 million, up from $427.8 million in 2004.

Sheriffs' departments in Hampden, Essex, and Suffolk counties work with their communities to find jobs for former inmates. The efforts, these sheriffs said, are paying off little by little.

"Once a person goes to state prison, it is difficult for that person to come out and pull his or her life together," said Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral. "So, there are more opportunities at the county level" to get an offender pointed in the right directions, she said.

The state correction department, which runs 18 institutions, such as maximum security facilities in Concord, Shirley, and Walpole, oversees prison industries including basic manufacturing, and tries to steer inmates about to be released to available jobs based on vocational test scores. Rates of job placement and job retention are unavailable, department officials said.

In Hampden County, which covers the Springfield area, inmates get a taste of private sector life by putting in a 40-hour work week. "From the time he arrives, an inmate is involved in work, education, and counseling," Sheriff Michael Ashe said.

"We attack the mindset of the inmates, educating them generally and on important issues and holding them accountable for everything they do," Ashe said. That's a huge undertaking, he added, given that many convicts only read at a fifth-grade level. On top of that, he said, 85 percent of them come in with substance abuse problems and 93 percent "lack marketable skills and a continuous employment history, or a willingness to answer the bell every day."

The 1,300 inmates in Springfield work at a host of jail tasks, from maintenance to computer projects to making uniforms for other prisons. Many in prerelease programs, Ashe said, work for the Springfield Parks Department.

Each year, some 2,700 individuals leave Hampden jails, he said, adding, "We directly get about 500 jobs for them, both skilled and unskilled." Hundreds of employers are on his contact list, Ashe said.

One that's been hiring former offenders for the last five years is Meredith-Springfield Associates Inc., which makes plastic bottles.

Owner Mel O'Leary said he had to be persuaded that he would be doing the right thing. "I had thought that people who broke the law should be imprisoned and the key thrown away."

But working with Ashe's office, O'Leary has hired about 35 former offenders, who have worked as warehousemen and assistant supervisors earning from $8 to $17 or $18 an hour. Ten people left "to go on to other, better jobs while others left for unknown reasons," he said. He added, "By and large, these individuals have demonstrated commitment and discipline."

Juan Otero, 40, of Holyoke, is one of six former offenders currently working for Meredith-Springfield. He has been with the company for a year after serving 15 months in jail for violating probation on a drug conviction.

"I've learned that to be reliable and punctual is very important," said Otero, a senior inspector, who is divorced and the father of five. "I've also learned to appreciate the quality of the work that we do. And I am now able to pay my bills."

O'Leary had only praise for Otero: "He's a good man. As long as he's on a career path, he'll remain here."

In Essex County, 53 inmates are now participating in work-release programs, said Sheriff Frank G. Cousins Jr.

"We drive them to and pick them up at their jobs, whether it's restaurants, construction companies, auto body shops, supermarkets, and so on." He said about half get jobs, paying from $8 to $14 an hour. "Most of them didn't have jobs for four or five years before going to jail," he said.

Concerns about liability can deter employers and landlords from hiring or renting to former offenders, Cabral said.

Nonetheless, the Suffolk department, which administers an $88 million-a-year budget, now has reentry programs "that focus on skills training, drug testing, healthcare, and housing," Cabral said. Officials accelerate their work with inmates three months before releasing them, she said.

From March 2002 to March 2003, Suffolk County released 137 inmates who had participated in reentry programs, she said. "Forty-one percent of those who did not participate in the reentry programs subsequently committed other crimes, compared to 28 percent who were involved in the programs."

Her department collaborates with other organizations to seek work for ex-offenders. One such partner is The Work Place, of Boston, part of a network of 32 one-stop career centers statewide. These centers provide services once handled by the former Division of Employment and Training.

Every month, Ellen Mason, manager of the transitional service team at The Work Place, sees 15 to 20 individuals.

Although job figures are hard to come by, Mason said there have been some successes in placing people in fast food restaurants and in offices. Top office jobs, she noted, can pay $20 an hour.

"In the last five years or so, the attitude of 'we've got to punish these people' has changed for the better, driven by economics and public safety," Mason said.

Many of the 2,400 who are released annually from state prisons also are counseled by career center job counselors, said Jackson, the correction department reentry program director. Although there is no information on how many find jobs and keep them, the limited funds available for reentry programs represents "smart money," Jackson said.

If nothing else, more ex-convicts are now "being given a shot at being employed instead of being blown off by the system," Mason said.

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