Out Of Prison, Out Of Work

Nine months out of prison and David Enck is still out of work.

He attends job fairs. No offers.

He calls the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services. No jobs.

He phones local companies.

“No one’s called me up at all,” Enck said. “The wind is out of my sails.”

The 39-year-old Rogers resident is one of 109,346 unemployed Arkansans looking for work in a slow economy. His search is more difficult because of his felony record, he said.

“When I go in and they see my tattoo and I tell them I was in prison for drugs, I can see they’re not interested,” Enck said.

Most business owners don’t want to take a chance on hiring someone with a criminal background, said Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville. Collins co-owns Crown Partners Executive Search, a Fayetteville firm that helps companies recruit management-level employees. Collins said the economic downturn led to layoffs that forced seasoned professionals back into a job market with fewer available slots. Many of those people are still looking for work, he said.

“It’s even harder if you have a major black mark in your history, like a felony charge,” Collins said. “If I’m an employer, I’ve got lots of people to choose from with more job experience and better records.”

Some former inmates, including Enck, have been through prison job-training courses. Even with training, many cannot find work and revert to criminal behavior, officials said.

“The bottom line is, if we don’t find away to deal with their job prospects, they may well end up back in prison,” said Rep. Jim Nickels, D-Sherwood.

In Arkansas, 40 percent of felons return to prison, according to a 2010 report by the state Department of Correction.

Enck, who has been to prison six times since 1996, always managed his time well behind bars, attending life- and job-skills courses and working at trusty jobs, which are awarded only to responsible prisoners who apply for them, he said.

“Every time I’ve been in prison, I’ve been a model inmate,” he said.

His record never prevented him from finding work before the economy soured, he said.

“Places that used to hire felons don’t any more,” he said. “Ten years ago, I could go to any restaurant and get a job right off the bat.”

Learning Job Skills

Some local prisons teach inmates job skills, including lessons in resume-writing and dressing for an interview. Others place inmates in area plants and factories for regular eight-hour shifts in hopes they can prove themselves as trustworthy future employees.

Whitney Wray counsels more than 30 inmates at a time in three-month classes at the Northwest Arkansas Community Correction Center in Fayetteville. The classes include tips on getting hired and finding housing. Every graduate leaves with a typed resume and a list of companies that may hire felons.

Wray said inmates also learn the importance in the work world of assertiveness and self-confidence.

“Mainly, we focus on how to reintegrate into society,” Wray said. “When they gain their voice, they learn basic social skills that everyone needs.”

Portia Keaton, a member of the class and an inmate for almost 10 months, said she knows how bad the economy is.

“I'm kind of freaked out about it,” said the 26-year-old mother of three.

Keaton might not be out of prison until April, but she already has begun preparing applications to send to companies in Stilwell, Okla., where her family lives.

“I'm still a person, and I still deserve to be able to support my family,” she said.

At the Northwest Arkansas Work Release center in Springdale, 40 inmates leave the prison on buses every day for jobs in area factories and plants, including George’s Inc., a poultry processing company, prison officials said. The inmates return at the end of the workday.

Jim Brooks, program supervisor for 21 years, said inmates are paid the same as regular employees. Sometimes inmates are hired at the end of their sentence.

“If they want to succeed, they can do it,” he said.

Only a few inmates gain entrance to the program, Brooks said.

“They have to apply, and we screen them and pretty much pick the best of the best,” he said.

Other former inmates find work through contacts they make in prison church groups or recovery programs. A few days after being released from the Washington County Detention Center, even before he had begun applying for jobs, Curtis Romero found a job on a construction crew. He got the job about a month ago through a pastor who visited him in prison.

“One day he said, ‘Curtis, would you like to come to work today?’” Romero said.

Romero, 40, sat at his kitchen counter in Springdale on a recent afternoon, smoking a cigarette. The apartment contained only a walnut kitchen table and a few other furnishings donated by members of his support group at Celebrate Recovery, a national outreach organization with branches in Arkansas.

Romero credits that organization and the pastor for their help.

“I would not have a job right now if it wasn’t for him,” Romero said of the pastor.

Disclosing The Past

Innovative programs in other parts of the country are having success in putting inmates on a path to stability, officials said. One such program, Lifelong Information for Entrepreneurs, teaches felons at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Oregon, how to launch their own small businesses. The inmates learn to run electrical and optometry businesses, among others.

Inmates are eager to enroll because 20 percent to 30 percent start their own businesses, said Doug Cooper, assistant director of Mercy Corps Northwest in Portland, Ore. The nonprofit organization manages the program for the correctional facility.

The program’s success rate, with only three of an estimated 100 graduates having returned to prison, has received national attention.

Maggie Capel, warden at Northwest Arkansas Community Correction Center, said the job-skills program at her prison has been in operation for three years. Prison officials cannot determine until after three years whether a job-skills program is successful in helping to keep former inmates out of trouble, she said. The Oregon program is in its fourth year.

Corrections officials nationwide are considering other ideas to integrate felons into the work force, said Ann Jacobs, director of the Prisoner Reentry Institute at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Officials in San Francisco are contemplating a proposal to allow former inmates to disclose their criminal history only after proving they are qualified for the job, she said.

“Every time you sit down to fill out a job application, it asks if you’re a convicted felon, so it doesn’t matter if it was two years ago or 25 years ago,” Jacobs said. “When does somebody get to quit being an ex-offender?”

Romero said having to disclose criminal records puts felons at a serious disadvantage.

“That’s a biggie when you’re going up against people who are half your age, who will take less money to train,” he said.

Judges in Arkansas can expunge a criminal conviction, effectively hiding it from employers who perform background checks in the State Police database, said Brad Cazort, administrator of the Field Services Division of the Arkansas Crime Information Center.

“If you get arrested, the police could see it, but employers could not,” he said.

Offenders are allowed just one expungement after their first offense, Cazort said. Employers would be able to see a repeat offender’s criminal record, he said.

Nickels, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, said businesses should not be permitted to reject an applicant because that person is a felon, but doubts the Legislature would approve a measure protecting felons during hiring decisions.

“I’ve heard of many corporations that, if you’re a felon, just won’t hire you,” Nickels said. “Until that changes, I think it will be very, very tough.”

Some local employers declined to discuss whether their companies would hire former inmates or participate in prison work-release programs that place inmates at worksites. Worth Sparkman, public relations manager at Tyson Foods, said the company has participated in work-release programs in Arkansas, and still does in some areas of the country, but is not currently involved in work-release efforts in Northwest Arkansas.

Susan Daniel, director of the Arkansas Workforce Center in Fayetteville, said the agency encourages former inmates to take whatever job is available and work their way up.

“That's the best advice for felons, not to turn up their nose to entry-level positions,” she said. “Oftentimes an employer hires from within, so that’s the best way to successfully increase wages and find stability within a company.”

The center offers career guidance and provides material useful to anyone seeking a job, Daniel said.

“They can utilize our resources like referrals for jobs, resume preparation, our fax machine or copier or anything that would help them with their job search,” she said

Rebecca Lane, who has been at the Northwest Arkansas Community Correction Center for eight months, is enrolled in the job-skills program and said she has learned not to be afraid of judgment or rejection.

“When I came in here, I was a very shy, quiet person,” she said.

Lane, 21, has a son who will be 2 years old in September. She wants to be a pediatric nurse practitioner, but must first find some way to support him, she said.

“I'll take whatever I can find,” Lane said.