A sizable portion of my work involves individuals who struggle daily with the stigma and ostracism that accompanies a prison or jail sentence. Their road is certainly a difficult one that is fraught with barriers, obstacles and challenges. I also know these struggles firsthand, as I was convicted of felony marijuana cultivation in the mid 90s and completed a 16 month prison sentence in the California prison system.
H.R. 1593: The Second Chance Act of 2007 was created to begin addressing many of the issues facing prisoners as they re-entered society. It has been slow going, but there are efforts underway by
a variety of groups and organizations to improve the potential for community reintegration of prisoners upon release.
One of the most important components of any reintegration program, at least in my opinion, is education and/or job training. The ability to attend college was my ticket out of poverty and eventually my education began to outweigh the negative counterweight of my felony stigma, which allowed me to oh so slowly creep into the workplace.
Almost 15 years have passed since my conviction and today I can claim modest success and recovery. My "second chance" came as a direct result of education and - AND - the willingness of employers to take a chance on a convicted felon.
We can remove the barriers, train the individual, and set them up for success. However, if no one is going to give that person a chance to prove themselves, we're wasting our time and the lives of those who really are looking for a better way of life after prison.