Ex-convicts Face Uphill Battle with Jobs, Assimilation

Pamela Henderson's bible is filled with the notes she wrote while in prison. (photos: Daniela Caride, BayStateBanner.com)

The following excerpt is from BayStateBanner.com.

Christina Mercogliano, 25, has nine years of retail experience. You name it, she's worked it - everything from the cash register to stocking shelves to overnights in shipping and delivery.

But none of that counts these days when she goes out on job interviews.. When potential employers see her criminal record - which includes multiple assault, battery and armed robbery charges - they don't answer her follow-up calls.

"They look at me like I'm a menace to society," says Mercogliano.. "A lot of people believe you should live hung for your crime for the rest of your life."

Released from prison last July, Mercogliano now lives in a sober house in East Boston (an area of Boston, Mass.). Her life has become a symbol of a well-known vicious cycle.

Life without a job is hard enough. Life without a job and with a criminal record is even worse.

"It's very stressful," she says. "It's overwhelming even today."

Mercogliano had been in prison for 18 months. In addition to food and rent, she must pay monthly parole and probation fees while battling a now-controlled heroin addiction that once dragged her into crime.

Even with all that on her plate, Mercogliano is luckier than most offenders leaving prison in Massachusetts. She applied for membership in SPAN Inc. while still in jail, and the nonprofit organization not only found her a sober house, but also paid her rent for five weeks. She attends meetings, gets psychological support, looks for jobs and eats at SPAN Inc.'s downtown Boston headquarters.

"If it wasn't for SPAN, I'd probably still be sitting in jail looking for a place to go, 'cause it's so hard to get into a program," says Mercogliano.

The problems

Getting a job is only one of a series of challenges people like Mercogliano face, says Lyn Levy, president and founder of SPAN Inc., an organization that helps ex-prisoners reenter mainstream society.

Levy says ex-convicts must reinvent themselves and unlearn many of the habits they acquired in prison.

And ex-inmates must face other challenges, she says, like getting used to deciding what to dress, eat and read; being a good daughter, father or neighbor; taking the steps to get an education, a loan or health insurance.

One major hurdle for many ex-convicts is overcoming drug addiction.

According to Levy, at least 75 percent of people incarcerated have been through some kind of substance abuse.

Mary Nee, executive director of hopeFound, the third-largest homeless service organization in Boston, says that about 80 percent of the homeless people that hopeFound serves have some form of addiction.

Because it's "quite typical" that a large percentage of people end up having criminal records when they have long standing addictions, Nee estimates that 50 percent of the 3,500 people who use hopeFound services every year have a criminal history.

Treatment, says Levy, is often difficult to find in Boston. Residential treatment programs "are full and bursting," she says. "So being able to come out of prison into a residential setting is very, very difficult."

Repeat offenders

With no one to turn to, ex-convicts have a greater chance of relapsing, which may take them back to prison. According to Harold Clarke, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC), the recidivism rate is around 20 percent in prisons run by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Pamela Henderson, 51, born and raised in Roxbury [an area of Boston], knows the drill.

She has been in and out of prison for 15 years for repeated incidents of shoplifting.

Influenced by her older brother, who robbed people and brought her gifts, Henderson said she started selling drugs in 1977. By 1981, she said, she was using them and soon started shoplifting to support her habit.

On one day in 2003, Henderson found herself struggling with her cocaine habit on the streets of Atlanta. All of a sudden, she said, she fell to her knees.

The next day, ashamed of her appearance, she tried to steal a dress to wear and got caught. This time, she said, she spent the whole year in prison studying the Bible, looking for answers to overcome addiction.

She still keeps the first Bible she had in prison - pages aged by the constant handling, heavily highlighted with yellow and pink markers, underlined in pencil and pen, scribbles in the margins.

When she was released in 2004, she had problems getting housing and a job in Atlanta. Three years later, she moved back to Boston.

After living in shelters with her four granddaughters, of whom she has custody, Henderson finally found a subsidized apartment in Dorchester. SPAN Inc. helps her pay the rent.

After a year looking for a job, she finally got a temporary one last month, in the packing department at the Dancing Deer Baking Company. She says she now feels better than ever.

Like Henderson, Buggs had to find his own way to battle addiction.. He went back to life in the community only after spending four years at Fresh Start Recovery Coalition, a nonprofit in Malden that offers housing and counseling for people with substance abuse problems.

Buggs needed a place to live and a way to make sure he wouldn't return to drugs, he says.

Once out of jail and free of drugs, Buggs restarted his life, getting a job in upholstery while living in Everett, Mass. But many don't have the opportunity he had to learn a trade in prison.

Lack of skills

Mercogliano is the typical example. Instead of attending hairdressing school while at MCI-Framingham, she chose to get her GED. She dropped out of high school in the 10th grade. Scheduling conflicts prevented her from taking both courses.

But now, with her degree, she wants to go to college or back to school to learn a trade.
Mercogliano's story is common, according to commissioner Clarke, who manages 11,000 offenders in the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts]'s 18 correctional facilities.

"We are facing a number of challenges in terms of getting offenders prepared," says Clark. "Better than 50 percent don't have work skills.."

Sixty percent of inmates read below a 6th-grade level.

Inmates' level of education, though, is not the only problem.

"We need to increase our capacity to be able to serve more offenders [and] we need some enhanced case management strategies to get the inmates who are going [to programs] but may not be engaged," adds DOC Program Services Director Christopher Mitchell.

Mary Nee from hopeFound adds that Boston has neither enough drug rehabilitation in prison nor enough programs to ensure that all people coming out of prison have solid plans of where they will live and how they will get a job.

To raise the number of convicts attending programs, though, is not simple, says Clarke.

The main impediments are limited capacity, resistant inmates and insufficient monitoring.

Ideally, says Levy, inmates should get counseling and training in jail and keep working on it after release. The reality, though, is still far from Levy's dream.

According to the DOC's 2007 annual report, 39 percent of released inmates had no supervision when they got back on the streets.

Levy explains that if inmates build relationships with someone in the community while incarcerated and if they feel they have a support system, their chances of staying out of jail "are a whole lot better."

Tough future

DOC Commissioner Clarke's staff is now trying to assess the department's needs, so he can then ask for the funding to match them.

Historically, says program services director Mitchell, the DOC has built capacity as funding became available. The department is preparing a report for Gov. Deval Patrick about its situation.

But inmates' fates depend on other variables as well. How the community treats them will influence their future greatly, says Mary Nee from hopeFound. And today, she says, communities in Massachusetts are not organized to give ex-convicts a chance based on their present behavior.

"Obviously people need to be accountable for behavior and the well being of other citizens needs to be protected," adds Nee. "It's just that right now, what we don't have in our system of government is a way ... that after a period of time, [people can] demonstrate that they've changed."

As Mercogliano puts it, the community loses if ex-convicts are not accepted. Without opportunity and hope, they often go back to crime.

source:  BayStateBanner.com

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Clarence Buggs speaks about his new life after prison, with a job in the upholstery industry. (photo: Daniela Caride, BayStateBanner.com)