James Walker: Released? Handcuffed in freedom’s circle

How many more? That is the question I have been asking myself since I decided to write a column about a young man who had been released from prison but found himself trapped in a circle, potentially leading him right back.

I learned about his situation — as I do so many others — during my daily commute to work. At the time, I was the city editor at The Hour newspaper in Norwalk and he was a fast-food worker at a restaurant on Westport Avenue in the same city.

I had forgotten about the young man I mentored for more than a year back in 2009 until a chance remark by a bus driver about the challenge many low-income people are facing getting back and forth to work brought back the memory.

But that challenge is not what is driving this column. I decided to write about my experience with the young man I will call “R” to protect his identity because he was a drug dealer who served two years in prison.

And in retrospect, I wonder if I hadn’t taken the time to help a frustrated young man trying to reverse his life, if the roadblocks he was running into wouldn’t have sent him on a detour back into the pipeline.

Getting people back on their feet once they are released from prison is the centerpiece of prison reform and re-entry.

But like many people, when I think about reform and re-entry and the men and women being put back on the streets, I visualize hard-nosed, violent criminals who rob and steal, break into homes, and have little regard for society's laws or the suffering they cause. I have no heartbeat for them.

The man I call R, who was 22 or 23 years old when I met him, didn’t fit that description.

But I eventually learned he did fit another description described to me many times by prison reform advocates who said many of the young men getting out of prison wanted to do right but simply didn’t know how to find a job, how to fill out applications, didn’t know how to dress for interviews and many didn’t believe opportunities existed for them because of their past.

The young man I helped believed because of that past, nobody of consequence would help him — and again, in retrospect, I believe he was ashamed to ask for help for things he probably felt he should have known. This is his story.

As I said, I met him during my daily commute to work. As is so often the case, people who commute have a favorite seat or area of the bus or train where they like to sit so normally, you’re next to the same people day-in and day-out.

I talked to R for months about general things such as sports and work until one day, he was no longer on the bus.

Months later, I boarded the bus at a different time and ran into him again.

And that is when he shared his story with me.

He told me he had been caught selling marijuana, had served two years in prison, never wanted to go back and was now trying to do the right thing.

But he said nothing he was doing that was supposed to help improve his life was working. And he had little faith things were going to change.

His schedule at the fast-food restaurant where he worked piecemeal hours had been changed to the evening shift. It forced him on a minimum-wage salary in a job that didn’t offer him 40

hours a week to take a cab to the train station in Norwalk to get back to Bridgeport where he lived. Once there, depending on the money in his pocket, he either attempted to share a cab or walked home.

As readers can imagine, his paycheck didn’t put or leave much cash in his pocket.

He said he had no choice because he was on probation and had to keep a job to meet the terms of being set free. Worse, his managers knew it and he believed they plugged his schedule with difficult hours because they needed to fill holes and he couldn’t refuse.

When I asked why he didn’t try and get a better job, he shrugged his shoulders and said resignedly, “I have a felony.”

I guess it was his raw honesty and the dejection in his voice as he talked about being afraid he couldn’t stay the course and he

would disappoint those who loved him that made me want to help him.

When I told him the system was designed to ensure he did not have to pay for that mistake the rest of his life, he told me it was I who didn’t understand the system.

I told him I would prove him wrong.

I made a phone call to the manager of the cafeteria at Norwalk Hospital, who agreed to interview R.

That’s when I found out that those reform advocates were right.

R was eager but didn’t know what to do. His fast-food job had been arranged for him so he didn’t have to sell himself. This was going to be the first time he would be interviewed on his own merits.

I sent him to the thrift store to buy a pair of khakis and a white shirt and when the big day arrived, he asked if I would go with him and I agreed.

We both laughed when I met

I guess it was his raw honesty and the dejection in his voice as he talked about being afraid he couldn’t stay the course and he would disappoint those who loved him that made me want to help him.

him at the hospital and reminded him to tuck in the shirt.

He was clearly nervous and his confidence low as we filled out the application and he waited for the interviewer, saying over and over “this is not going to work, you’ll see.”

But what I saw was a young man who despite his misgivings, wanted to believe I was right.

When he saw the interviewer coming to get him, he was shaking as he stood up and said to me with panic in his voice, “I don’t know what to say. What do I tell him?”

I told him to tell the truth. Thirty minutes later, he walked toward me with a surprised, but beaming face.

He had gotten the job, better benefits, full-time hours and a better hourly wage than his fast-food job.

And I saw a young man’s confidence take a huge leap knowing that he could indeed put his past in the rearview mirror and move forward.

I have lost touch with R — and I have only addressed one of the barriers he faced in this column, which included a tedious fight to get his diploma from Bridgeport High School — but I know that nearly two years after getting that job, he was still there and had turned his attention to Norwalk Community College.

What this proved to me is that there must be better resources to help nonviolent offenders who are making a sincere effort to change their lives.

And more older people must reach out and help younger people who face more than the traditional challenges to succeed — and may be too ashamed to ask for help because they lack the ABCs of life.

I started this column with a simple question: How many more?

I ask because as I outline this column, I am sitting on the Green in Bridgeport. I prefer to outline my columns in open spaces because I feed off the energy of the people around me.

I see the same guys every day or night that I come down here. I know by their conversations that they, too, have prison tales.

I don’t know their stories but wonder if they, too, were once like R — released, but handcuffed in freedom’s circle.