Success Stories

Having a Past Doesn’t Mean You Don’t Have a Future – Finding Jobs for Offenders in Work Release
By Joseph L. Mitchell, DOC Communications Office

“The biggest barrier I faced in finding employment was being a felon,” said Anita Perry, a former offender from the Longview Work Release facility. “What helped me to overcome that obstacle was being honest with potential employers and sharing my plan for how I would succeed – what steps I was taking toward becoming a productive member of society again.”

Perry works as a guest service agent at the Comfort Inn in Kelso, a position she was able to secure less than a week after entering work release in November 2008. Her fiancé, Vance Baldwin, works across town as a welder fabricator supervisor at Fabricast Valve, a company that builds industrial valves and does custom design welding.  Baldwin was also able to gain employment shortly after entering work release. He will celebrate his one year anniversary with Fabricast on September 22.

Anita and Vance are both former clients of Vocations Unlimited, a program operated by Goodwill Industries to help individuals overcome barriers to employment. The program has been serving reentry offenders since 2002 with vocational training and education, job placement and employment assistance, and life skills training.

“We work with anyone who comes through our door,” said Madeline Loren, the Offender Reentry Program Manager. “Clients who come to us have many barriers.  Our mission is to change lives by helping people with disabilities or disadvantages go to work, and having a criminal conviction is certainly a disadvantage.”

The program offers a three hour class for new clients each Monday that includes a skills and personality assessment, a discussion about barriers to employment, and instruction on social and soft skills – how to fill out an application, the proper way to approach employers, and interpersonal communication.

“It’s like taking a big mound of clay and molding it into a new creation,” said Jerry Hastings, a job developer trainee for Vocations Unlimited who teaches the class. “In many cases, we’re taking someone who has never been in the workforce and helping them integrate into a whole new world.”

Hastings says that he tries to teach people in the class to be aware of the impression they are making on employers and how to handle rejection.

“We help them learn pro-social behaviors to deal with employers who have a negative view of work release and who won’t accept their application,” said Hastings, who also works with employers to hire program clients. He says that employers have to balance their desire to hire his clients with community issues, and that some are concerned with how their business could be impacted because of bias against offenders. 

“There are incentives available to companies who are willing to offer employment to offenders on work release, like tax credits and a free bonding program that provides state funded insurance coverage of up to $25,000,” said Hastings. “But the biggest incentive to hire people on work release is their dependability. Work release rules require offenders to be on time for work every day and the facility does random drug testing to insure that offenders in the program remain drug and alcohol free.”

The positive job performance of offenders from Vocations Unlimited over the past few years has helped to increase the number of employers who actively participate in the program from three to seventy. The program enjoyed a 97 percent employment rate among offenders at Longview Work Release in the past year.

“Employers should recognize their moral obligation and duty to society to help people come back and make a contribution,” said Syed Pasha, who owns and operates the Comfort Inn hotel where Perry works. “I hired Anita because I saw her potential and that she was trying to get back to a normal life. She learned her lesson and wanted to move forward, so we gave her a chance. She has turned out to be a good one.”

“Just because someone has a past doesn’t mean they don’t have a future. Most everyone has a past,” said Fabricast Valve Superintendent Steve Norby.  “Vance has a lot to offer, that’s why we hired him. He started out on the floor – the lowest man on the totem pole. He lit up and shined for us. He brought a lot to the table. He has a great mechanical aptitude and he’s proven himself to be a good leader.”

Anita and Vance met while serving their sentences at Longview Work Release. They began dating after they were released, and plan to marry later this year.

Longview Work Release houses both male and female offenders. Programming opportunities include chemical dependency and sex offender aftercare. Additional services are available in the community, including mental health, parenting, and anger stress management classes.