Learning The Ropes Outside Prison -- Volunteer Network Of Support, Referrals Eases Inmates' Transition To Freedom
On the eighth-floor of the King County Jail, an inmate picked up a telephone that linked him to a caseworker on the other side of a glass partition.
After you're released, where are you going to stay? caseworker David Calahan wanted to know. How will you find street clothes and get a job?
Those questions were the inmate's first step to New Connections.
As the name implies, the volunteer-staffed program helps make the transition from jail to the outside world for inmates who otherwise might be released without knowing where to turn for shelter, food, clothes, a job or treatment for addictions.
The St. Vincent de Paul-sponsored program contacts inmates while they're still in jail. And while it provides none of the basic needs, it does make referrals so inmates have a network of support and places to go for help once they are released.
The rest is up to the inmate.
"The folks who contact us are trying to turn their lives around," Director Adam Vogt said. And, he added, many do.
While nationwide statistics show that 70 percent of inmates return to jail within two years, the rate is 30 percent among inmates seen by New Connections, Vogt said.
The program was started at the King County Jail four years ago by Sister Patrice Eilers, St. Vincent de Paul director Harry Coveny and Catholic layworker Niko Colalla.
"To me, it's real clear: People who have a criminal history are going to resort to the same behavior when they get out if they are not encouraged, supported and challenged to make different kinds of choices," Colalla said. "If we're real serious about making our community safer we need to provide (inmates) with some basic human needs. It's not giving handouts."
The program now also serves the North Rehabilitation Facility in Shoreline, the Washington Correction Center for Women at Purdy, occasional outreach to the state's maximum security prisons and the new Regional Justice Center Jail in Kent.
Vogt and Calahan are the two paid staff people in the program, which operates on a $50,000 budget. Most of the initial contact with inmates is made by 20 volunteers.
Jack Gibney, a retired Army colonel, is one of them.
Once a week, he goes to the Seattle jail to meet with inmates who have filled out "kites," requests to see someone from New Connections.
He begins the interviews with, "How did you get here?"
"The answers run the gamut from society is down on me to I've screwed up miserably. I have more optimism for the ones that take responsibility," he said.
Kenny McNary knows about the importance of taking responsibility.
Several years ago, his life was controlled by drugs and alcohol. When he was released from jail after doing time for burglary, he got help from New Connections.
The agency told him where to get treatment for his addiction, and later helped him get a job and an apartment.
Now he prides himself on many fronts: for being clean and sober for nearly three years, for having an apartment in Tukwila and a steady job at a hotel, and for gaining custody of his 10-year-old daughter. He said, too, that he's engaged to a woman he met in church and has returned to the values with which he was raised.
"When you're involved with drugs and alcohol you don't care," he said. "I just thank those people down there (at New Connections) because anybody can do it. I'm not looking back anymore, I'm looking forward."
Give us your ideas: If you know of a person or project making a difference - from fighting crime to cleaning the environment to helping kids - call the Making It Work voice-mail line, 206-464-3338, or write describing your nominee: c/o Rick Zahler, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. Include a phone number for more information.
Nancy Bartley's phone message number is 206-515-5039. Her e-mail address is: nbar-new@seatimes.com
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While women volunteers are welcome, men are especially needed to work with inmates at all New Connection locations, particularly the new program at the Kent Regional Justice Center Jail. For information call 206-625-1499.