Three Groups Help Ex-Offenders With the Tough Task of Finding Work

There is a 15-year gap on Paul Smith’s resume that he reckons will haunt him for the rest of his working life.

Smith (not his real name; he asked that it not be used) is an assistant manager of a property maintenance company in Orange County, but for most of the last decade and a half he worked at a variety of tasks such as clerical chores and auto repair.

He didn’t have far to commute to work each day because he lived on the job site--California’s maximum-security prison at Folsom, a forbidding stone fortress northeast of Sacramento.

But about six weeks ago, Smith stepped outside the prison gate with $200 in his pocket, bound for Orange County, where he had lived before being sent to prison.

“A convict is a strong man because he has the fortitude to come back,” said Smith. “I want to be a part of society, I want to produce, I want to be productive.”

19,000 Released Yearly

Smith is one of more than 19,000 prisoners released in Orange County each year. Of these, about 150 are from federal prisons, 1,550 are from state institutions and 17,700 are from county jails.

Most of those released have limited schooling, just a fistful of worn work clothes and, at best, enough cash to stake them through the first few days.

But three Orange County groups are helping these men and women cope with the outside world, particularly with the crucial step of getting a job. Despite the county’s vigorous economy and streams of job listings in local newspapers, the ex-offender’s journey to the work world is a difficult passage. And because more people are going to prison, more people are eventually coming out, crowding the programs that the organizations offer.

The ex-offender’s first few days and weeks on the outside can be a “treacherous animal,” Smith said.

Helping ex-offenders tame the animal is the mission of Chicano Pintos (pinto is Spanish slang for prisoner), My Break Transitional Center and the Orange County Halfway House. All three organizations are based in Garden Grove, and OCHH also has residential facilities in Anaheim and Buena Park.

Chicano Pintos was founded in 1971 by several ex-convicts and is financed by federal, state and county grants; OCHH was founded in 1975 and operates with state and county funds; My Break was founded in 1982 and is financed through the U.S. Department of Justice.

Struggle for Funds

Orange County spends about $660,000 a year on prisoner re-entry programs. Most of that money is spent on OCHH, a residency program operated from an apartment complex where selected prisoners live for the last few months of their sentences while they secure jobs and permanent places to live. The OCHH program grew from 64 beds to 88 last year, and only rarely is a bed unfilled.

Budgetary constraints limit what each of the programs is able to do, and the continual struggle for funds wearies the program directors. For example, Chicano Pintos Director Baltazar Perez cites figures indicating that it costs taxpayers $17,000 to $25,000 a year to keep a person in prison. Yet Chicano Pintos spends an average of just $1,200 on each ex-offender who comes through the voluntary program.

“We’re expected to put people to work, that’s the bottom line,” said Perez. Employment, and with it a sense of self-worth, are the keys to a convict’s successful re-entry to the community, he said.

“When you get out of prison, (the programs) are going to offer you every opportunity,” said a recently released inmate who asked that his name not be used. “It’s up to you to take advantage of it.”

County officials say that public financing of the programs is money well spent. The programs have “definitely been of service to the community,” said Joan Conroy, the county’s justice system analyst.

For each of the three groups that work with ex-prisoners, the difficulty of the task tends to depend on where the convict served time.

‘White-Collar’ Criminals

Those released from federal prison tend to be more educated, “white-collar” criminals who have been involved in fraud, embezzling, tax evasion or other nonviolent crimes.

Those who have served time in county jails generally have been convicted of lesser offenses and have served shorter sentences than those sent to state prisons, who have been convicted of serious crimes and generally have served long terms. Thus state prison parolees tend to be older and have greater difficulty meshing back into the society they have been absent from for so many years.

Although Chicano Pintos and My Break actively work to secure employment for the recently released prisoner, OCHH leaves it to the individual prisoner to find his own job.

“We focus on survival skills (and) goal setting,” said Kevin Meehan, OCHH director. A continuing wave of prisoners is returning to Orange County “whether we like it or not,” said Meehan. “So do we want (them) to learn a skill, or do the same thing?” In April, a typical month at OCHH, eight men went back to the same thing--crime--and were returned to prison. One man disappeared and is being sought. But 27 men found jobs and places to live and were paroled successfully from the program.

Most recently released prisoners fill jobs at the low end of the economic spectrum--assemblers, warehouse clerks, general maintenance workers. Many have difficulty filling out application forms and lack even basic verbal communication skills. But as Perez explains, “the best defense against crime is giving the (former prisoner) a job.”

“The big problem with the (ex-offenders) is when they fill out their (job applications),” said one Orange County man who served time in a federal prison. “They get to that crucial moment when they mention that they are in a halfway house. Most companies don’t give the fellows a break.”

Surprising Comebacks

But some ex-offenders have made surprising comebacks.

Convicts who have been returned to Orange County are successfully running a variety of businesses of their own, including an oil- and gas-leasing business, a manufacturing shop for aerospace parts and a printed-circuit-board plant.

An ex-offender from Newport Beach has secured a patent for an engine oil filtration system.

Employers can get tax breaks of up to $6,500 over two years for hiring ex-offenders and also can be reimbursed for portions of training they provide.

Because many ex-offenders are intent on righting their course, employers often find that they are good workers. A spokesman at a Stanton company that recently hired an ex-convict described the new man as a “good worker, really an all-around good guy.”

But hiring ex-convicts sometimes can be frustrating for employers.

Don Dyk, co-owner of Buena Park-based Waterbed Gallery Inc., has hired three ex-offenders. One simply stopped coming to work, another developed “an attitude problem” and eventually left, and the third, with Dyk’s blessing, got a better job offer and accepted it.

But Dyk thinks a 50% success rate is a realistic goal and plans to hire one or two more ex-offenders a year. He works regularly with a church group at the California Institution for Men in Chino and talks of forming a transitional program for prisoners that would work closely with just a few at a time.

At Chicano Pintos, ex-offenders generally attend morning sessions for three weeks, learning how to approach employers, how to dress and speak, how to fill out applications and how to get such necessary documents as a driver’s license. “We deal with their barriers to employment,” said Perez. For many ex-offenders, whose education and social skills are severely stunted, those tasks can be extremely difficult.

‘Punctuated’ for Work

For instance, one newly released man at a recent morning session spoke of the importance of being “punctuated,” meaning punctual, for work. Other ex-convicts pulled on non-filtered cigarettes and nodded in agreement.

Even a routine task like dressing for an interview is a hurdle for a recently released convict whose wardrobe may be limited to prison jeans and shirts. A trip to a nearby thrift shop for clothing is usually one of the first stops for a recently released prisoner.

“It’s a very difficult adjustment to become a contributing member of society,” said Harvey De Meneces, executive director of My Break, whose title he hopes symbolizes the personal opportunity that each ex-offender has with the program.

About 80% of the approximately 125 former prisoners who come through the Chicano Pinto program annually have problems reading and writing, Perez said. About a quarter of the 150 ex-offenders who come through the My Break program have significant problems with basic reading and writing, which restricts their opportunities for work to minimum-wage jobs, said Don Stokes, job developer at My Break. Stokes described a recently released prisoner who had spent his last 36 years in prisons, had never had a job and could not compile a resume.

Thanks to Orange County’s vigorous economy, there are plenty of minimum-wage jobs, but “people can’t make it on $4 an hour,” said De Meneces. And Orange County’s economy has a “big gap” between the thousands of jobs at $4 to $5 an hour and the relatively high-paying jobs that call for advanced education and experience, qualifications that most ex-offenders lack.

Take Hank Jones (not his real name), for example. Jones, 33, is living at the Orange County Halfway House for the remaining months of his sentence while working as a hotel maintenance man. “The halfway house gives a person a chance to see what he’s fixin’ to go out there and see,” said Jones. What Jones has seen recently is the inside of a cell at Chino, where he served a sentence for selling cocaine, and he acknowledges that difficult days lie ahead.

His just-above-minimum wage will make it difficult to support his four children, especially because their mother is now in prison. And on a recent day, Jones missed work altogether because of pains in his back, a lingering result, he said, of a bullet fired by a man high on paint fumes who was trying to burglarize his sister’s car. Jones shows a visitor the second navel and the S-shaped scar that the gunshot created in his abdomen.

Despite all this, Jones says he will overcome. He has been accepted in a vocational school and says that a higher salary lies ahead, one he hopes will be enough to support his children.

“If I had gone straight out of prison I probably wouldn’t have gotten a job,” he said. “These people have helped me a lot. This gave me a chance to get myself together.”

Nine out of 10 ex-offenders get that first job through one of the programs, officials say, and as long as they keep working, their chances of returning to the wrong side of the law continue to diminish. As officials of the three programs point out, however, getting a job may not be the biggest hurdle that a good number of ex-offenders face: Instead it is staying away from drugs and alcohol, which are directly linked to 90% of all crime, they say.

Not Necessarily Free

“A lot of people say when the (prison) gate is opened, you’re free, but that is not necessarily the case,” said Geary Juanmijo, an instructor-counselor at Chicano Pintos, whose services are open to all races.

“On the inside,” Juanmijo said, “everything is done for you.” The outside world, with its daily dose of temptations and decisions, is the “treacherous animal” that some ex-offenders cannot handle. But for most of the ex-offenders, a decent job is the key to a new life, officials at all three programs agree.