Convictions bar Wisconsinites from many jobs, making re-entry ‘a real struggle’ | Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Sonya Chechik and Kirien Sprecher (Wisconsin Watch)
June 2, 2021
Aftergraduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Janie Ocejo put her socialwork education and bilingual, bicultural background to work by supportingMadison’s Hispanic folks through positions at various community organizations.
Buta series of bad decisions landed Ocejo in prison. While there, she expected tofind work once she was released. After all, she had a college education, workexperience, strong interview skills and had even previously been on hiringteams.
However,rebuilding her life proved to be much more difficult than she expected, and ittook months for Ocejo to land a job. She applied for anything, even positionsshe was significantly overqualified for, and sought services and connectionsfrom organizations where she had once worked.
Becauseof her criminal background, no one would hire her.
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“Doorswere closed because of the stigma,” she said.
Today,Ocejo has found a new cause, prompted by her struggle after two years in prisonto  re-establish a career and a lifeoutside the bars. She now works for Madison-based JustDane, which helpsindividuals and families impacted by incarceration.
WhileOcejo found success, many incarcerated people are less fortunate, findingthemselves locked in a cycle of incarceration, unemployment and poverty.
In2018, one-fourth of the 5 million formerly incarcerated people in the UnitedStates were unemployed — five times more than the general population, accordingto the Prison Policy
Initiative(PPI), a nonprofit that studies and offers solutions to America’s massincarceration problem.
Thishigh rate is not due to lack of trying — 93% of formerly incarcerated peoplebetween the ages of 25 and 44 were actively looking for jobs compared to 83.8%of the same age range in the general population, the same report found.
Andsince Wisconsin and the U.S. disproportionately incarcerate people ofcolor  — with the disparity most pronounced among African Americans — thelong-lasting stigma of having a criminal record disproportionately burdens themas well.
InWisconsin, roughly 6% of the population is Black but makes up about 38% ofpeople who are incarcerated in the jails, state prisons and federalcorrectional institutions in the state, a product, many experts believe, of disproportionate
policing of Black people.
“There’s… that social contract that says if you violate, this here is your punishment.Once that punishment is concluded then you have the opportunity to reclaimcitizenship, your life. And that’s not the reality,” said James Morgan, aformerly incarcerated person who works with Ocejo at JustDane.
Advocatessay more funding for pre- and post-release services and efforts to counter thestigma attached to having a criminal record could boost the odds that peoplewill succeed after serving their sentences.
Reforming resources for re-entry
Wisconsininvests far more to lock up residents than it does to help them succeed outsideof prison. The state spends $1.35 billion a year on housing to incarcerateapproximately 24,000 people but just $30 million on training and re-entryprograms for people who have been released from prison — two-thirds of which isallocated for housing programs. That’s a huge problem, said state Rep. SheliaStubbs, D-Madison.
“We’reincarcerating people much faster than we are reintegrating them back into ourcommunity,” said Stubbs, a former probation and parole officer. “We spend waytoo much money incarcerating people, and not enough money coming back out intoour communities, to help our loved ones. These are our brothers, sisters,neighbors, friends in our community.”
TheUnited States provides only the “bare minimum” when it comes to services andtraining accessible to people during and after their incarceration, said Lucius Couloute, an assistantprofessor at Suffolk University whose research focuses on mass incarcerationand its impacts. Improving this is crucial to helping the formerlyincarcerated rejoin society, he said.
Wisconsin’sDepartment of Corrections offers a variety of programming to those who arecurrently incarcerated including work-release programs, job training andeducation, according to DOC spokesman John Beard. However, the COVID-19pandemic temporarily cancelled a few of these opportunities.
Work-releaseprograms offer incarcerated individuals a chance at making a living wagethroughout their sentence and can help cover income taxes, child support orrestitution owed to victims, or save money for after they’re released,according to the DOC. Prison and jail fees alone can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Butnationally, the majority of
incarcerated individuals are stuck working jobs within their facilities — inmaintenance or food service — earning less than $1 an hour.
Only6% of incarcerated individuals nationwide work in correctional industries,state-owned businesses that typically produce goods sold to governmentagencies. An even fewer find jobs through work release, according to a report by PPI.
Becauseof her circumstances, Ocejo was ineligible for work release — and the $9 to $13pay rate it could provide. Instead, she started out earning 26 cents an hourworking in the prison kitchen. Throughout her incarceration, Ocejo worked herway up to the top rate of $1.60 an hour, driving a forklift for Badger StateIndustries, Wisconsin’s correctional industry.
Although she would’ve preferred a higher paying job outsidethe institution,  “(Badger StateIndustries) gave me a chance to feel like I was doing something to help myselfand a sense of purpose with some income coming in that otherwise I would nothave received.”
MelissaLudin, a regional organizer for the Wisconsin ACLU’s Smart Justice Project,said employment, housing and access to services are often in short supply forthe formerly incarcerated.
“Peopledon’t feel the impact of what that felony does until you get released and yourealize how you are discriminated against,” Ludin said.
Criminal records often barrier
Wisconsinlaw bars discrimination against a person because of a criminal record— unless the crime is “substantially related” to the job. In addition, a“ban-the-box measure” passed in Wisconsin in 2016 prevents government employers
from asking about criminal records on their initial application forcivil-service positions to reduce discrimination.
Butsuch bans do not keep employers from easy access to criminal records throughpublicly available sources such as the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access Program(CCAP), said Linda Ketchum, executive director of JustDane.
“CCAPmakes it really easy for people to do anonymous checks on people and makedecisions you will never be able to prove,” Ketchum said.
ColleenRogers, director of human resources at Madison Kipp Corp., said themanufacturer offers employment to currently and previously incarcerated people— part of its social responsibility to reduce barriers to re-entry.
“Employersneed to put their biases aside, if that’s their problem, and give these folksan opportunity … adults make mistakes,” Rogers said. “They make bad decisionsmaybe when they’re younger, and why not give them opportunity to live?”
Certain jobs off-limits
Additionally,people who have committed crimes face greater restrictions in licensing oremployment within specific industries, even if their crime
is unrelated to the job they would perform.
While Ocejo committed crimes — of fraud and forgery — sheemphasized that she “never used or misused my positions to leverage to commit acrime.” Still, it was especially difficult for her to find positions similar towhat she had before her incarceration.
KippCorp. sees hiring currently and previously incarcerated people as a win-winsituation — giving people skills and an opportunity to gain income and workexperience while helping fulfill Kipp’s needs as a busy manufacturer, Rogerssaid.
“They’reour employees. We don’t care where they came from. I need your skills and we’regoing to invest in you,” she said.
Peoplewith criminal records likely recognize that they’re in a fragile position inthe labor market and — when they are given a second chance — they work extrahard to prove their worth, Couloute said. Research from Johns Hopkins bears this out,finding that such employees actually perform better than people who had notbeen incarcerated.
Rogershas seen this counter narrative play out in real time as Kipp benefits from theskillsets people acquired prior to going to prison and their motivation towork.
“They’regreat employees. They want to work,” she said.
Ocejo ultimately landed a job at a nonprofit. Then she beganworking for JustDane, which hired her because
of her background so she could put her lived experience to work as thebilingual resource specialist and peer support program coordinator.
“There are many agencies who work with and say they supportindividuals like me, but I can’t necessarily say they will actually hire us,”Ocejo said.
Advocates: New strategies needed
JeromeDillard, statewide director of Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing, saidWisconsin has been slow to embrace the types of reforms that could help formerinmates succeed.
“Actually,we are still under the tough-on-crime rhetoric, and I want to say that re-entryis a real struggle for many returning from our state prisons in Wisconsin,” hesaid.
Buthe is heartened that DOC Secretary Kevin A. Carr in January cut the 18 standardrelease conditions in half. That change has helped drive down “crimeless
revocations”which send people back to prison for rules violations — not new crimes — andinterrupts one’s ability to rebuild.
“Ireally feel that Secretary Carr has heard us and felt the pulse of thepopulation and realized — and he said it publicly — that corrections can’tcontinue doing business the way it is,” Dillard said.
Couloutesaid policy changes — such as additional funding for education, mental healthand to treat addiction — will effectively cut incarceration.
“Whenwe think about mass incarceration, we often think about it as an individualproblem, as people making bad choices. But at its root, it’s people who aregiven bad options,” he said.
Eventually,things started to fall into place for Ocejo. A second chance was all she everwanted.
“Maybemy story is unique,” Ocejo said. “I could’ve fallen through the cracks andstayed there and not be the person that I really am. Because really it’s just aseries of mistakes — decisions I made that were mistakes — and to be never letout of those mistakes, it’s horrible.”
This
story was produced as part of an investigative reporting class at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication
under the direction of Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin Watch’s managing editor. The
nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with
WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism
and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by
Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison
or any of its affiliates.