Job Recruiters Find Eager Audience at Jail

It made little difference Thursday to job recruiter Kristy Littauer that her next batch of potential employees all had something in common: a criminal record.

With a job market hungry for labor and a record low unemployment rate nationwide, she said, prisons often are an untapped source for enthusiastic workers.

“The hardest thing these days for an employer is to find someone who’s reliable and really wants to work,” said Littauer, branch manager for a job placement firm.

There was no shortage Thursday at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles, where a morning job fair (“From Custody to Career”) allowed recruiters to interview about 50 soon-to-released female inmates.

A joint project of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, the fair was an opportunity for the women to market skills learned in the district’s vocational education programs. It was also the first job fair to be held at the women’s jail.

“I was very much impressed with the attitude of the young ladies,” said Robert D. Price, who was there to recruit for the brick mason apprenticeship program he directs. Demand for workers is growing with the boom in construction projects such as the Alameda Corridor, he said.

And with the average age of bricklayers about 55, Price said, the trade needs to “recruit and train, or we’re going to lose it.”

Recruits who happen to be former inmates, he said, are treated the same as everyone else in the program.

“We take them in without reservation; we don’t put any red flags on them,” he said

One inmate who expressed interest was 22-year-old Christine Ruppel, who is serving three months for domestic violence. In jail, she said, she realized that a series of bad relationships had left her without necessary skills for independence.

“I want to be able to depend on myself,” she said. “I don’t want to ever come back here.”

The job fair, she said, made her realize she could be earning up to $22 an hour in three years as a bricklayer.

“There’s so many opportunities for women nowadays,” Ruppel said. “They don’t want to do what their grandmother did.”

Although some job fair participants brought opportunities for work to the jail, others offered educational programs or help refining interviewing skills.

“This is a person who had a mishap, but they are worth a second chance,” said Patricia Pascua, a recruiter from Long Beach City College. “We are letting them know we’re here for them.”

That was a pleasant surprise to inmate Alicia Davenport 35, serving eight months for prostitution.

“It’s kind of amazing to me that they would even want to come here and interview convicts,” she said. “Here there are people who are actually wanting to do something for us to keep us from coming back. It’s really a big hand.”