Class Teaches Ex-Cons the Secrets of Working

Darrin Evans stands tall and proud before more than 30 men and women in the back room of a Chicago Baptist church. If they look at him at all, it’s with skepticism, as if he were telling them something they’ve heard too many times before.

They’ve come of their own volition, but they’re a tough crowd. All ex-offenders, many are a couple of bad days or a few puffs of weed away from returning to their criminal lives.

Evans is talking about work, honest work. Finding a job, keeping it, leaving their past lives behind. He asks the group if they’re willing to swallow their pride, if they’re willing to spend four weeks learning how to get a job, how to get their lives on track.

There are a few subtle nods. Then Evans’ voice booms as he passes judgment on the lot of them.

“How dare you walk around and blame the world for the decisions you made!” he shouts. “How dare you! This cannot happen anymore. It’s time to man-up, to woman-up, and be accountable for what you’ve done.”

Now he has their attention. He tells them the program has no guarantee. It’ll take work on their part, and determination. He’s not here to sell them dreams.

But give the program four weeks, Evans says.

“We get you ready to work.”

*

Evans’ orientation was on a Friday. The following Tuesday, 26 people showed up to begin the course, called U-Turn Permitted.

There’s Zita King, in an old Boston Celtics jacket with a skullcap pulled just above her eyes, recently home from a 9-year prison sentence for attempted murder. She carries a street-wise attitude and an edgy wit, along with a heart full of guilt over the years she spent away from her four children.

There’s Linwood Little, an only child and one-time tough guy who spent 14 of the last 15 years in prison, now looking quiet and focused, maybe even a little scared.

They’re all here because they’ve been unable to find work, the greatest obstacle an ex-offender faces. Most of the approximately 20,000 men and women who will return to Chicago from prisons across the state this year will struggle mightily to find any employer willing to overlook a felony record. About two-thirds of them will end up committing another crime, and about half will be back in prison within three years.

Programs across the city are designed to help ex-offenders, teaching basic resume and cover-letter writing and explaining proper behavior in the workplace. But experts say there are enough programs to help, at best, about 15% of parolees.

U-Turn Permitted is an intense four-week course involving anger management, behavior modification, mock job interviews and assistance with job placement. Those who complete it have a better chance of finding a job. About 70% eventually get hired, compared with about 40% of ex-offenders who get no help. Still, it’s an uphill battle, as members of this class will learn.

One of the first homework assignments is to answer a question central to employment: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Instructor Derrick Sanders goes around the room, and each person says, “Yes, I have been convicted of a felony for ... “

Drug possession with intent to distribute.

Aggravated battery.

Trafficking of firearms.

Forgery.

Sanders, who himself has six felony convictions, knows that admitting wrong is not easy.

“It hurts,” he said. “It’s tough to get them to take ownership of whatever it is they did.”

So he recites to the class what will become a mantra:

“If you always do what you’ve always done,” Sanders says rhythmically, “you’ll always get what you always got.”

*

Zita King and Linwood Little are convinced they’re on a path to honest lives.

A couple of weeks into the class, Little sits in the living room of his mother’s home in Oak Park, near a photo of himself wearing a blue cap and gown, a rolled-up high school diploma in his left hand.

He talks about how he could’ve gone to college, how he ran astray, how after years of drugs and crime, God finally “hit me upside the head, as if to say, ‘You ought to know better.’ ”

The U-Turn Permitted class is going to work, he says. “I think it’s teaching me a lot about myself, a lot of things that I forgot or lost. It’s like starting a fire back up. ... I can feel it.”

In a room at a halfway house on West Madison Street, King thinks about her past.

“I was real evil back then,” she says. “But 10 years will turn a beast to a priest if you have a conscience. I chose my own path. But this is my second chance in life.”

She flips through certificates from courses she took in prison: a general equivalency diploma; business management; fundamentals of public speaking. She says she almost ripped them up her first few months home, when door after door slammed in her face.

“This U-Turn program sounded real promising. I hope they’re not playing,” she says. “Please let this be it!”

*

Although most ex-offenders are quick to talk about how they plan to straighten out their lives, few possess the skills to make it happen.

Dwight Battles, a U-Turn Permitted instructor who controls the room with a stentorian voice and the passion of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, asks each person a simple interview question: “Tell me something about yourself.”

Several people begin with, “I’m a hard worker ... “

Battles cuts them off.

“According to who?” he booms. “Who says you’re a hard worker? I don’t want to hear that. I want you to tell me something about yourself, something real, something you’ve done.”

Discouragement washes across the class as members realize what they’re up against.

Keion Oates, 21, is unable to formulate a job objective.

“I’ve never had a job before,” he says, embarrassed.

Battles presses him: “What kind of work have you done in the institution?”

Oates says he mopped floors.

“That’s a start,” Battles says. “You’ve done custodial work.”

Battles explains why each of them needs to take any job they can get, do anything to develop a work history and some foundation to build on.

He tells Oates that he should be thrilled if he can find a job as a custodian: “While you’re down there pushing that mop, you’ll have time to think, and pretty soon you’ll realize, this is hard work, and you’ll start growing up and you’ll figure out what you want to do. And once you figure it out, you won’t have to worry about not having worked before, because you will have worked pushing that mop.”

*

By the third week, the class has started to come together. Some have even launched job searches.

Some, to Battles’ dismay, still have moments of behavior that would never work on the job: speaking out of turn, using threatening body language, not following instructions.

He coaches them to answer questions politely and directly, gives them pointers on proper work attire and hygiene.

On the final day of the third week, Battles shows the class a drawing. It’s a profile of an elegant woman, but Battles says to look closer and find other faces hidden in the picture.

Some see the faces and start helping those who don’t. Within moments everyone is huddled in groups, cheering as the faces become clear to each person.

Battles hushes the class.

“People,” he says, with a sly smile, “do you see what’s happening? You’re changing, ladies and gentlemen.”

He pauses and looks at the faces before him, most appearing satisfied for the first time in weeks.

“You’re helping each other,” he says. “And that’s what work is all about.”

That success doesn’t mean the class’ struggles are over. Students go through another week of intense mock interviews, with scathing critiques and tough questions designed to prepare them for any employer.

They graduate at the end of four weeks, but many remain works in progress, still unlikely to prove themselves job candidates strong enough to overcome their criminal backgrounds.

What they’ve been given, Battles says, are tools they need to move forward with their lives.

“There’s great potential in this class,” he says. “The question is, will they use it?”

Just days after the class ended, Zita King got a job shuttling rental cars from O’Hare International Airport to a rental company’s main lot. She was involved in an accident in the company’s lot on an icy night and lost the job, but has since gotten another one working for a telemarketer. “I’m feeling good,” King says. “I think I’m going to make it.”

Linwood Little has had a couple interviews and remains confident that something will come along.

Of the 26 people who started the class last October, 18 graduated -- five women and 13 men. Seven have jobs.

None has abandoned the search for work; none has been arrested.

Theirs are stories of temporary success, 18 stories with uncertain endings. But in the world of ex-offenders, temporary success is a step forward.