Program Schools Ex-Cons in Breaking Into Workaday World

In the post-lunch torpor of a sunny afternoon, the class is restless. Large men squirm in desks built for schoolchildren. Some stare out the window. They’re learning how to find work, and instructor George Lino is dissecting a sample job application line by line.

The class is drifting, so Lino jumps to the key question:

“Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

Bodies shift. Heads turn. Eyes lock on Lino. The answer, for everyone here, is, “Yes.”

Many have quit drugs. They’ve learned job skills. They insist they’ll never commit another crime. To have a chance at redemption, they need jobs. But who wants to hire an ex-convict?

*

In the back row, Victor Alvarado listens intently. At 39, he’s older than most of the others, and he stands out in his suit and tie. With his neatly trimmed mustache, he could pass for a small-town banker.

But not so long ago, Alvarado was a fearsome street thug, arrested again and again: drugs, guns, robbery, attempted murder. “About the only thing I can say in his behalf,” a prosecutor once said, “is he hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

Alvarado swears he’s changed. The rage he felt as a young man has given way to middle-age mellowness.

He has been free on parole for more than a year. And now he’s here, in this classroom run by South Forty Corp., a nonprofit agency that trains former inmates to become employable.

It’s hard. Alvarado knows. He worked for a few months at a furniture factory that never asked about his past. But he couldn’t keep up with the demands of the job and quit. Now, having finished a yearlong drug-treatment program, he’s attending school to become a certified drug counselor.

But thoughts of a job always lead to The Question. Lino, himself a onetime felon, offers straightforward advice.

“You don’t check ‘yes.’ You don’t check ‘no.’ You don’t leave it blank,” he says. “You put down, ‘Wish to discuss during interview.’ ”

Answering ‘yes’ or leaving it blank almost guarantees rejection. Answering ‘no’ is lying and grounds for dismissal. By trying to discuss it in an interview, Lino says, applicants can plead their case that they’ve turned their lives around.

Alvarado listens, but he’s skeptical.

*

John Rakis calls it the three-legged stool for ex-convicts: housing, employment and counseling support.

“If one is missing, it’s going to topple,” says Rakis, executive director at South Forty and a former New York prison system official. And finding work may be the toughest part.

Hiring an ex-convict is a gamble. For every three inmates released from prison, one is back behind bars within four years. Many employers don’t want to take a chance.

“It’s Russian roulette from their point of view,” says Eleanor Pam of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Who’s been totally rehabilitated and who is going to, at first opportunity, rob me or murder me?”

Many states prohibit employers from discriminating against ex-convicts unless the conviction was for a crime closely related to the employer’s business. A bank could refuse to hire a former bank robber, for example.

But discrimination is hard to prove. Employers seldom give reasons for turning down applicants.

“Employers, when they see conviction records, are somewhat careful and pay attention to that. Absolutely,” says Matthew Bartosiak, a senior consultant with The Employers Group. The nonprofit association in Los Angeles advises employers to consider not just the applicant’s offense, but training and experience as well.

*

A week after the South Forty class, Alvarado has some luck. He finds temporary, part-time work driving social service workers who provide in-home lunches for the elderly. No one asks about his past. But a few days later, he is handed a job application. When he gets to The Question, he leaves the line blank.

“There wasn’t a doubt in my mind,” he says, sitting on the bed in his tiny room in a city housing project. “I’d rather be out of a job six months from now than be out of a job tomorrow just because they read the application and found out I was an ex-convict.”

Twice before, Alvarado had answered ‘yes’ on applications. Both times he didn’t get the job. This time, he says, he can’t take a chance. Employment is a condition of his parole. He needs the money to pay $150 a month for the room he rents. He needs to pay tuition.

Writing “let’s discuss” was impossible, Alvarado says. “If I had something to fall back on, if I had money, if I had a family taking care of me, I could think like that. But I’m in a desperate situation.”

His boss threw the application into a drawer. Alvarado wonders if she’ll ever look at it.

*

The stigma of a criminal record is just one problem keeping ex-convicts from work. Drug, alcohol and psychological problems are the big obstacles. But little ones arise too. Rakis recalled an ex-convict who failed to show up for work one rainy day. The reason? He didn’t have an umbrella.

“It’s the basic stuff we have to stress and teach,” he said.

At South Forty, Rakis and his staff teach how to dress, speak and behave at a job interview. Show up for work every day, the clients are told; be respectful; stay out of company politics.

“My favorite saying,” says Lino, “is, ‘What you do today, you’re not doing it for 15 minutes--you’re doing it for the rest of your life.’ ”

*

Two weeks after submitting the application, Alvarado’s omission hasn’t been noticed. “They didn’t get to me yet,” he says nervously.

Some co-workers know about his past, but not the boss.

If she asks him why he didn’t answer The Question?

“I might tell her I didn’t fill it out because I have a record,” he says.

If, instead, she asks directly whether he has a record?

“I might tell her no.”

*

Yellow Pages open, South Forty staff members work the phones. They call companies and try to persuade them to hire people who have done time. Even in times of low unemployment, it’s not an easy sell. The agency offers incentives: government-subsidized grants and tax breaks are available for employers who provide on-the-job training for ex-felons.

“We don’t appeal to employers primarily on the basis of charity,” Rakis says.

Mario Ragonesi is a satisfied customer. He has hired several South Forty referrals for TWR Express, a New York limousine service. Ragonesi knows something about convicts: He spent 23 years working for the city’s Corrections Department.

Not all of the hires have worked out; one had a relapse with drugs. But Ragonesi says that’s a chance employers take with anyone they hire. In general, he said, the South Forty workers are among his best.

“They come in on time, they mind their business, they do their job, they go home,” he says. “They just want the opportunity to work and get along with their lives.”

*

Alvarado’s employer never did ask him whether he had felony convictions. It didn’t matter. After three months, the temporary position was ending.

Then South Forty came through: A job was available driving vans to transport the elderly to medical appointments.

The timing was perfect. A day before his temporary job ended, Alvarado had an interview. He didn’t have to worry about lying. The interviewer already knew he had a criminal record.

“He asked me why I was in prison and I told him,” Alvarado says. “He said that everybody makes mistakes. He felt that I was at that age now that I shouldn’t be making any more and I should be a good worker.”

After passing a driving test, Alvarado was hired.

Now, for maybe the first time in his life, Alvarado has some real plans: work hard, go to school, become a drug counselor.

Talking earlier about what it meant to be out of prison, he’d said:

“Basically, any little thing that you might consider is not important to you is important to me. Crossing the street, waiting for the traffic light to change. . . . Or just sitting in the park watching the pigeons with nobody bothering me. . . . All that stuff. It’s like, you can’t put a price tag on it now.”

He’s only making $250 a week but feels like he has hit the jackpot. Two days into the new job, he sums up: “It’s excellent.”