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Life after prison: Communities heal by helping former inmates succeed

Akron Beacon Journal - 5/13/2021

Chris Ridley recently sat at the kitchen table, plotting out goals for the next few months.

He’s in the midst of trying to break several cycles.

In the six years since his last prison stint, he’s faced homelessness, a heart condition and a continuing battle with drugs.

He’s struggled with everything from finding a place to sleep to getting something to eat.

But as of May, he’s five months sober. And he recently got good news: He’s on track to regain custody of his 3-year-old daughter, Neveah.

Ridley is on a journey, and he said everything from transportation to mental health to sobriety is going to get him where he wants to be:

Whole.

“It’s like gathering pieces of a puzzle,” Ridley said. “And this puzzle is huge.”

Ridley, 49, of Akron, is one of many people trying to rebuild their lives after leaving prison. He’s on a path of healing, dealing with the traumas of his life before and in prison.

Jobs, housing and transportation are cornerstones of rebuilding a life outside of prison. But without proper mental health counseling, experts say, there isn’t any glue to hold those pieces together.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 27% of formerly incarcerated people are looking for a job but can’t find one. The national nonprofit group also found that people who have been to prison are 10 times more likely to be homeless.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics followed 401,288 people released from state prisons in 2005. Five in six were arrested within nine years of their release. Within the first year, 44% had an arrest.

Inner-city neighborhoods in Akron and elsewhere are showing signs of hurt. Homicides hit a record high in 2020, as did shootings. Police are taking more and more guns off the streets. Suicides are up for the third year in a row in Summit County, driven by the deaths of Black men.

As men and women return from prison and rebuild their lives, they can also help rebuild their communities. LaMarr Atchison, a reentry liaison at South Street Ministries, said they can be role models for their peers and redirect the young people who look up to them to better paths.

But before they can help others, they have to heal themselves.

“The community is hurting,” Atchison said. “If the community is hurting, everything that comes out of that community is hurt. So you have to put some things in there that's healed. And that's where it really starts for me with reentry.”

The ‘Scarlet F’

Healing for formerly incarcerated people is a long road, and there are obstacles.

Donovan Harris, reentry director at South Street Ministries, said the barriers he faced after leaving prison were what pushed him to work in reentry, an effort to help formerly incarcerated people successfully rejoin their communities.

He left prison 18 years ago, but not much has changed.

“It is shameful and sad to say that the barriers and the obstacles that existed 18 years ago are still in place,” Harris said. “It’s sad that 18 years later I still wear the title of felon, convicted felon, former incarcerated person, convict. I still wear all those titles 18 years later.”

Many of the barriers come down to what Harris and Atchison describe as a scarlet letter. The “F,” or designation as a felon, is a label formerly imprisoned people carry that leads to bias against them.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative’s report “Out of Prison & Out of Work,” unemployment rates among formerly incarcerated people were five times higher than the average person.

Unemployment is highest for people in the first two years out of prison, which is also when they’re most at risk of reincarceration, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

A felony record can exclude people from jobs or become a disadvantage when they’re up against other candidates.

When jobs are available, advocates say, they’re often low paying.

Joann Marie Sahl, a professor who helps run the University of Akron’s reentry clinic, said many of its clients are underemployed. They’re seeking to get their criminal records sealed or to get a Certificate of Qualification for Employment (CQE), a court-approved document that removes sanctions that bar formerly incarcerated people from working in certain fields and removes risks for employers.

She said without these steps, they often can’t get a living wage.

“You can’t become unstuck unless you become employed,” she said. “It’s such a basic human need.”

She said that even when a record is sealed, background checks still bring up felony records, and some licensing agencies and employers can see sealed records.

A felony record also excludes a person from getting subsidized housing or from legally living with someone who does. The housing that is available can come with a background check or a credit check. The Rev. Ray Greene Jr., executive director of the Freedom BLOC, said someone coming out of prison could be denied a place to live just because he or she lacks a credit history.

Atchison said it’s easier to heal away from the streets, but the barriers to housing often mean people return to the neighborhoods where they were raised.

The Prison Policy Initiative found that 141 of out 10,000 people incarcerated once experience homelessness, compared to 21 of every 10,000 people in the general population. For people with more than one prison sentence, it’s 279 out of 10,000.

The agency said many who aren’t homeless are in precarious living situations, something that holds true to Ridley’s experience.

Ridley lived in several places across Akron and in Georgia since his last release six years ago. One home he rented had to be condemned. Another halfway house where he lived had bedbugs.

Perry Clark, founder of Truly Reaching You, said these obstacles can put formerly incarcerated people in a place where they feel stuck. It makes it much easier for them to turn back to what they knew before prison.

Truly Reaching You is a nonprofit group that provides housing, job training and wraparound services to help men transition back into the community after prison.

Clark said he wasn’t out of prison for more than 48 hours in 1997 when someone tried to put 9 ounces of cocaine in his hand to sell. He refused.

Clark and Steve Wewer, TRY’s chief operating officer, said many men find themselves in this position after serving a prison sentence.

They could be struggling to put a roof over their head, get a valid driver's license or even put food on the table.

Faced with few options, Clark said, some will turn back to crime to survive.

Both Harris and Atchison went into prison at 18. Harris served 13 years before getting out in 2003. Atchison served 15 years and came home for six years before serving a second four-year stint. He was last released in 2017.

Harris said they’ve both become restored citizens. They’re raising families, working jobs, paying their taxes and giving back to their communities. But whether it’s a job, housing or even getting a speeding ticket, their record follows them.

Removing the title of “felon” would go a long way, Atchison said.

“You want to prevent creating biases, then remove the scarlet letter,” Atchison said. “Then you remove the bias. The bias is always going to exist as long as the scarlet letter is there.”

Healing from past trauma

If employment, housing and transportation are building blocks for a formerly incarcerated person, mental health services and peer support are the mortar.

“It doesn't start with just coming out and getting a job or coming out and getting transportation,” Atchison said. “Because if you can't hold and maintain it, it's nothing. It’s meaningless.”

Atchison said for many men who commit crimes, there’s trauma that led them down that path, and it often isn’t addressed.

For Ridley, his earliest childhood memory is his parents fighting right before their divorce. The next thing he knew, his stuff was packed in a U-Haul headed for Atlanta.

He moved with his mom into the College Park neighborhood and was in first and second grade during the Atlanta child murders.

“The temperature and the vibe of whole community, I can remember clear as day,” Ridley said. “If you had a Black child, you were in fear for your child's life.”

Between 1979 and 1981, 29 Black children and teens were killed. Children Ridley’s age were disappearing and found dead days later. He still remembers the moment of silence at his school for a child who was a victim.

He family would move, but even after that, Ridley continued to have traumatic moments.

His mom worked for a phone company, and they were barely getting by. Ridley wore a size 12 shoe when he was 11. His mother once told him, “I don’t know what’s worse, feeding you or clothing you.”

Ridley remembers being home with his sister when they heard a big crash. They hid in the closet as people robbed the home.

It wasn’t until middle school that he got into a fistfight with another student. That’s when Ridley remembers getting a reputation as a “tough guy.” He started trying to keep up the image, getting into things like bullying and petty crimes. He was about 13 when he and a friend stole his mom’s car to drive to a rap studio in Atlanta.

“The streets were kind of like me spreading my wings,” Ridley said. “And at the time, I thought my rite of passage into manhood.”

When he was 15, he said he was too “off the hook” for his mother to deal with anymore. She bought Ridley a one-way bus ticket so he could live with his dad in Columbus.

Soon after that, a person his dad was romantically involved with pulled a knife on him. Ridley ran away from home. He was homeless for a while, sleeping in abandoned homes and using drugs while he tried to survive.

“Anything that was going on in the streets, I was in it,” Ridley said. “Anything you could think to do to survive, I did it.”

Ridley was about 17 when he got involved with a local gang. A man called Baby Crunch lived near Ridley’s girlfriend at the time. He drove nice cars, wore expensive jewelry and ran a big gang in the area. Ridley wanted in.

Baby Crunch started giving him drugs to sell. That same dealer would turn around and send other men to rob Ridley at gunpoint.

Not long after Ridley was robbed, a rival gang member from out of state shot him.

Fearing her son would be dead by 20, Ridley's mother pleaded with him to move back to Georgia. Ridley said he went back, got his GED and become a barber’s apprentice. But eventually, his cousins and the lure of money got him back into the streets, he said.

Ridley’s first adult conviction — for fraud — was in Akron when he was 23. He was sentenced to four to 25 years and served five.

From that point on, he said he served life in prison “on the installment plan.” He’d spend years in prison, get out, do something and go back.

Ridley said he doesn’t want to blame his past for the choices he made. But he knows the lasting trauma is something he has to deal with before he can heal.

Prison time often adds to the trauma. Atchison and Harris said many people experiences post-incarceration stress syndrome.

Harris said he saw people get killed, raped and abused in prison. It was a time when he felt his lowest and most hurt.

Harris said many people going into prison experience mental illnesses, lack of opportunity, lack of fathers in the home and bad neighborhoods but never deal with those issues in prison.

Men and women leaving prison need a safe place where they can discuss their trauma with their peers so that can start working on themselves, Atchinson said.

“The key is getting the mind together first,” Atchison said. “Because if the mind isn’t together, nothing else is going to work.”

TRY’s Wewer said many men come to the program in their 30s or 40s without work experience or positive role models. Wewer said if they used drugs as teens, that further stunts their emotional growth.

Clark said it’s hard for private businesses to give formerly incarcerated people a chance before these issues are addressed.

Having peer support specialists available at companies would be a huge help for formerly incarcerated people entering the workforce, Atchison said.

‘Walking beside them’

In 2018, Ridley was living in a drug house in Akron, hooked on methamphetamines. He had stopped contacting family members or posting on Facebook.

That’s when he said Atchison stepped in.

“He came and rescued me from there,” Ridley said. Ridley lived with Atchison and his family before moving to another sober-living home.

Atchison walks alongside men like Ridley. Some days, it’s giving them rides to work. Sometimes it’s connecting them to jobs or mental health services. In Ridley's case, it was picking him up and inviting him into his home.

Harris and Atchison help men work on themselves, so they can be redirected into something different.

“Restoration is an individual sport. It’s like boxing,” Atchison said. “You have to be mentally ready to defeat the man across from you. And guess who the man across from you is? It’s you.”

Harris said what sets programs like South Street and TRY apart is lived experience. He, Atchison and Clark can show people what they did, not just tell them what to do. And in times of need, they’re there.

Harris said people aren’t looking for a handout — they’re looking for a way out.

He said everyone likes to use the analogy of crabs in a barrel, pulling each other down. The issue, he said, is that the crabs aren’t trying to grab each other. They’re reaching for anything they can to get out.

Harris said he has to put everything he has behind someone who’s ready to change, because they become another person who can help.

“Because I know together, we can put everything we have together to help the next person,” Harris said. “And suddenly, instead of crabs in the barrel, everybody trying to pull on the other one to get out, we created a chain where now we just walking out one at a time.”

Trusted messengers

In the communities most impacted by violence, people coming out of prison are often role models. Recidivism has collateral consequences, but so can redirection.

Greene said since coming out of prison in 2001, he’s been able to show people better paths to take. He could only do that because he had credibility with the kids around him, he said.

“I was only able to do that because of my experience in prison,” Greene said. “They respected me as a trusted messenger.”

Atchison said he, Harris and others they work with still have respect in these neighborhoods. That gives them the access they need to show people a better way. It also lets them introduce things they may not talk about on their own, like worrying about mental health.

“Those young boys are going to relate,” Atchison said. “Why? Because a lot of the same mental health issues he had or some of the trauma he’s had, I've had.”

The key to the children and teens, Atchison and Harris said, are the people in their 20s and 30s who come home from prison. That’s who they trust, and who they’ll emulate.

Harris said empowering the people coming home can prepare them to give back to the communities they once hurt.

If they can be redirected, given resources and healed, they can turn around and become ambassadors in their communities.

“Our ultimate goal is for that person to become a bridge for the children, so that our children never have to experience prison at all,” Harris said.

Moving forward

Ridley wants to be there to give his youngest daughter a better life.

Once each week, Ridley visits with his daughter at a local library. He lost her to child protective services in 2019 in the midst of his and her mother’s addiction.

They’ll read together, talk and play on the playground, he said.

During a visit, his daughter turned to him and said, “You’re the best daddy ever.” At first, he thought it was because of the candy or Barbie dolls he brought her, but he realized it was because he was showing up.

Ridley has a 26-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son. He said his prison time kept him from being a part of his older children’s lives.

Neveah, he said, gives him accountability, because he has a chance to be a part of hers.

It gives him a reason to move forward.

“I can’t trip on something that’s behind me,” Ridley said.

Moving forward isn’t easy.

Specialists are helping Ridley with his addictions. Peers are helping him rebuild his life. And even something as simple as food in the pantry or in-home laundry are helping him break the cycles.

He said he’s in the best place of his life, and he’s ready to keep taking steps.

“I’m breaking the chains of recidivism,” he said.

Reach reporter Sean McDonnell at 330-996-3186 or smcdonnell@thebeaconjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Life after prison: Communities heal by helping former inmates succeed

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