VETERAN INMATES FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
Jail’s Stars and Stripes re-entry program helps those who served
“Who are we?” “Stars and Stripes!” “Who are we?” “STARS AND STRIPES!” The sound bounced off the concrete walls and metal picnic tables on the sixth floor of the Harris County Jail. Four dozen men stood in formation, stiff and ready.
“Thank you for the work that you’ve done for your country,” said Jennifer Herring, the director of re-entry programs for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. “And thank you for the work you’ve done for yourselves.”
The jail dedicated a new wing Friday for its Stars and Stripes unit, a 60- to 90-day re-entry program for inmates who are military veterans. The men have backgrounds in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, but on Friday they all wore the same orange uniform.
An inmate tank at the county jail may seem like an unlikely place to honor exservice members on Veterans Day, but to these veterans, there was no better place to celebrate the sacrifices they’ve made — in the military and in this room.
Stars and Stripes is one of the jail’s reentry programs; it’s designed to give veterans the skills and mindset they need to leave jail and never come back. The inmates volunteer to be separated from the
general population and housed together with other veterans in two inmate tanks. They work with case workers and with one another, learning job skills and ways to cope with trauma, stress and depression.
‘Good men, good leaders’
Flag and eagle murals are painted on the walls in this windowless box of a room — a room that, despite its institutional trappings, has been a saving grace for some incarcerated vets who have used the program to put their lives back together.
“You know what I always say: It’s a shame that you have served our country, you have fought for our freedoms, yet you don’t benefit from them,” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told the inmates. “You’re good men, you’re good leaders, and we’re excited to be able to celebrate this on Veterans Day weekend.”
Hundreds of veterans have gone through the Stars and Stripes program since it started in 2014. Most of them — 75 percent — have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Gonzalez said the Sheriff ’s Office hopes to expand services eventually to help the veterans even after they are released from jail.
Some Stars and Stripes alums were on hand Friday to share their stories with current members, including Karl Branch, whose six-month sentence ended at the end of October.
Branch, 37, painted one of the patriotic murals that cover the walls. A former active-duty Marine, Branch had a family and a six-figure job, he said, before “my addiction got the best of me.” He started with opiates, then switched to heroin. When he went to jail last spring, convicted of theft and drug possession, he didn’t think it would turn his life around.
“When I walked in there before, I had no intentions of changing whatsoever,” Branch said. He volunteered to try the Stars and Stripes tank because he thought it might win him some sympathy in court.
“But I tell you what, I am 100 times the man who walked in there before,” Branch said Friday.
‘I am y’all’
The group therapy and counseling he got in the Stars and Stripes tank made him realize the cause behind his addiction, he said, and working through that has allowed him to start over fresh. He has a job, he’s mending broken relationships, and he wore a sport coat instead of a jumpsuit in jail this time around.
“I am y’all,” he told the men in the tank Friday morning. “Y’all are me. But this” — he pointed to himself — “is your future.”
Less than 10 percent of the veterans who go through Stars and Stripes end up back in jail, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Eric Rothenberg, a Navy veteran in the Stars and Stripes tank now, says he won’t be coming back.
“This program has literally saved my life in so many different ways,” he said.
Rothenberg left the Navy with a service-ending injury, and that’s when things went bad. He landed in jail several times, never able to stay away from trouble. But “this time I got help,” he said.
When he entered Stars and Stripes, Rothenberg said, “I found out I had PTSD. Thirty years I’ve had PTSD; I had no idea.”
But treatment through the veterans program, he said, “enabled me to go deep within myself and find out exactly where I went wrong.”
At Friday’s dedication, several inmates stepped up — sometimes spontaneously — to share their stories. Zavarius English fought back tears as he thanked Gonzalez, Herring and the case workers for the program.
“It’s because of you all we have hope,” English said. “And we will be better men when we leave than those we were when we came in here.”
“We will all be better men when we leave than those we were when we came in here.”
Zavarius English, Stars and Stripes program participant