Parolees Stymied in Bid for Normalcy

If parole officers wrote a textbook called “How to Go Straight,” Derek Ingram would merit a mention.

Convicted at age 16 for his role in a 1971 gang killing, he left prison in 1976, kept his record spotless and earned glowing references during a 24-year career as an orderly and nursing assistant at health-care facilities in and around Philadelphia.

But when a background check in March 2001 turned up his second-degree murder conviction, he was summarily fired by a hospital that had eagerly hired him three months earlier. He has been unable to get another health-care job.

The firing demoralized Ingram, forced him to cut back on child support for his twin 6-year-old daughters and dashed hopes of getting medical coverage that would ensure quality care for the girls’ chronic health problems.

“This is truly affecting very innocent people,” he wrote in June in a long-shot application for a pardon to clear his record. “It is horrible when you cannot meet the needs of your children.”

According to advocacy groups working with ex-offenders, the number of parents getting out of prison has grown to about 400,000 a year. Many--like Ingram--face legal obstacles as they try to rebuild their lives and families.

The scope of those obstacles is detailed in a comprehensive new report by two advocacy groups--the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington and Community Legal Services Inc. of Philadelphia.

“As these parents struggle to make a fresh start, they will encounter a myriad of legal barriers that will make it extraordinarily difficult for them to succeed in caring for their children, finding work, getting safe housing,” says the report, titled “Every Door Closed.”

The barriers include state and federal laws, mostly enacted within the last two decades. “Every Door Closed” acknowledges that genuine public safety concerns are behind the laws, but the report urges authorities to apply them with discretion.

“Cumulatively, these civil consequences of a criminal record can be devastating and will continue to punish an ex-offender--and his or her family--long after his or her formal sentence has been served.”

Among the barriers detailed in the report:

* Employment: Criminal records often result in bans against working in certain types of jobs. In Illinois, for example, more than 50 job categories are off-limits to ex-offenders, including being a barber or working around children. “You can’t wash windows at a school or clean the grounds at a hospital,” said Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), who wants Congress to do more to help ex-convicts stay straight.

* Housing: Backed by federal law, many local housing authorities refuse to allow ex-offenders into subsidized housing projects, which sometimes are the only affordable option for low-income families. Although some housing officials mostly try to exclude violent criminals, others extend the bans to people convicted of car theft, disorderly conduct and misdemeanor drug possession.

* Child welfare: Parents who serve more than a brief prison term may risk losing their parental rights, especially when children are placed in foster care rather than with a relative. Under the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, parental rights can be terminated if a child has been in foster care 15 of the previous 22 months.

* Public benefits: The 1996 federal welfare reform law imposes a lifetime ban on welfare and food stamps for people with felony drug convictions, regardless of any progress toward rehabilitation. Though 30 states have lifted or modified the ban, it remains in effect elsewhere.

Donna Gathright, who served six months in prison after her 1991 arrest for selling marijuana in Lebanon, Pa., relied on welfare benefits after her release to care for two young children. She would have been ineligible for benefits under the 1996 welfare law, and testified against the ban last year in Pennsylvania’s Legislature.

“Being able to get welfare when I needed it made it possible for me to change my life,” said Gathright, whose current job includes counseling imprisoned women. “The women I work with now need help just as much as I needed it.”

One of the harshest consequences of Gathright’s conviction was losing her driver’s license for seven years. Upon release, the only job she could find was a night job across town; she had to walk to work.

“That was an awful barrier,” she said. “If you live in a rural community and you work a second-shift or third-shift job, good luck.”

Gathright persevered, earning an associate degree at a community college, marrying, and getting a job at a battered women’s shelter that she enjoys despite the low pay: $7.75 an hour.

At age 38, she would like to get a better-paying job but fears her criminal record will be an obstacle--for example, if she sought work in drug rehabilitation.

“I’m happy doing what I’m doing, but the pay is shelter pay,” she said. “To get any of the good jobs, that might be impossible.”

Vicki Turetsky, an attorney with the Center for Law and Social Policy, said interest in helping ex-offender parents seems to be increasing as many state governments rethink hard-line policies that caused prison populations to soar in the 1990s.

She notes bipartisan support for programs promoting fatherhood in low-income communities. Many of the men targeted by these programs have criminal records, but authorities are realizing that helping them also can help strengthen families, Turetsky said.

“For mothers and fathers, very often the only thing that gets them through prison is thinking how to do right by their kids,” she said.

The report includes scores of recommendations for improving the chances of an ex-offender to succeed as a spouse and parent. Among them:

* Allow ex-offenders to receive public benefits, unless their crime involved fraudulent receipt of benefits.

* Require public housing authorities to examine admissions and evictions on a case-by-case basis so families of offenders--in particular their children--aren’t unduly penalized.

* Promote contact between imprisoned parents and their children so that chances for reunification are maximized.

* Avoid rigid criteria in determining when parental rights should be terminated.

* Avoid rigid, broad bans on ex-offenders working in certain occupations.

* Make it easier for rehabilitated ex-offenders to clear their records.

Either of the last two recommendations might help Ingram, who blames his inability to get a new health-care job on a 1998 state law that bans any convicted felon from jobs caring for older people.

“It’s eating away at my soul,” he said. “I can’t even feel comfortable visiting with my kids now. I’m suffering and they’re suffering.”

Ingram, 47, has resorted to working in a warehouse more than two hours from his home, earning $8.25 an hour, without benefits. His hospital job paid $11 an hour, plus benefits.

His main source of hope is a legal challenge that he and Community Legal Services are mounting against the 1998 state law.

“At first, after I was terminated, I felt like a punch-drunk boxer,” he said. “Now, I want to fight back.”

Ingram also hopes the state Board of Pardons will approve his bid to clear his record, though his attorney, Sharon Dietrich, said the chances are slim.

Dietrich said Ingram is among many ex-offenders whose chances for getting jobs, loans and decent housing have been hampered by recent state laws.

“People like Derek, who thought they’d made it,” she said, “are finding what they did decades ago coming back to haunt them.”