In 2003 I met a man that changed my life. He was the catalyst that completed what I see as my own becoming a man.
He gave me a job and an opportunity to do something that I became invested in, which is helping people find jobs. For the past seven years I have served individuals living with disabilities with MN Vocational Rehabilitation Services, the first two were spent working with the man I mentioned above.
I could and maybe should write a diary dedicated to my late friend, his ego was enormous and he would spend hours telling me about the things I left out as his lovely wife of forty plus years, rolled her eyes in the background.
I left the state around the Christmas holiday and have landed softly across the river.
The people I work with now have been released from prison within the past six months and have a diagnosed disability.
I normally spend my days in a small office or on the street trying to talk to businesses but today I went to prison.
I went to a F.C.I. (Federal Correctional Institution) up the road a bit and spent the day doing mock interviews for a group of guys ready to hit the street running in a variety of states.
I've been to a prison once before to visit my uncle when I was twelve. Today I was in "the yard"!!! The answer is, yes I was scared, really scared, I tensed up when I was walking around the halls and guys were just walking around. I thought it was going down and I would be that guy someone was going to freak out on, plastic spoon to the neck like a hundred times in one second like they do in the movies (It's making me laugh just thinking about it.) but I was sure of it.
They are doing good things in that place with what they have. I have a lot of respect for the employees that work at the site and the gentlemen I met today.
What we did today is about trying to prepare these guys for what's coming at them in a week to six months. Granted most of the terms were drugs from 5 - 10 years, no lower, only one higher. I walk in to a room with 8 tables our name tents and a folder with a stack of about twelve resumes and about 25 applicants, sitting in chairs staring at us. The applicants were the inmates in this case and we went through 25 to 30 minute mock interviews for all the people who signed up that were leaving soon. Each inmate got interviewed and their resume critiqued about 10 times by all of us that made the trip.
At the end of the day most of the people we saw stood up and thanked us for making the trip and giving them what advice we had. We returned the favor and expressed our gratitude for allowing us to come to what I viewed as their house to be a part of a new direction or just getting back going in the direction they were before bad choices came in to play.
Some of these guys got hopes and dreams and are really looking forward and some didn't fall hard enough or maybe they've made a soft landing like I did. Either way it was one of those things that makes you want to dig your heels in a little bit. Right now I am kind of a noob when it comes to the re-entry stuff but I'm hooked now.
Going to this place just flipped my whole script, getting a little glimpse of the lives of these men, not only on the inside but what they had on the outside, just totally blew my mind today and it would blow yours to.
People are coming out of prison on a daily basis. Many of them just want a shot and fear that there are no jobs for people that make mistakes.
At one instance in my life, I was literally a single car length, from sitting on the other side of the table...I just sat here and processed that last sentence after being inside the prison today...it's hard to think about losing that much.
I'm not even sure why I wrote this, I guess I just would like to have people think about it for a second or two.