Congress Needs to Invest in Returning Citizens

Photo via Flickr

A little after five on frigid, dark Buffalo mornings, Audrey Mayo fires up her van to begin picking up her team for the 6:20 AM meeting to drive to Gamma North, a global major window contractor.

Because of various transportation schedules and the 40-minute commute, Mayo moves quickly and deliberately through her route to avoid long wait times in the cold and prompt arrival to the job.

Her passengers – all participants in the transitional job program at the Buffalo office of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) – will clock in for their transitional jobs building window frames.

Mayo is a supervisor at CEO, a nonprofit organization with branches in New York and 11 other states.

CEO helps formerly incarcerated people gain employment skills and jobs as they return to their communities.

Alongside Gamma employees, she manages and mentors participants, helping them develop new skills, gain experience, and build their autonomy and confidence at work. She knows the value of having a pathway to a quality job after leaving prison – one that provides skills, experience, and importantly, daily pay – because she was once a participant herself.

These New Yorkers are incredibly valuable workers motivated to find a career that will enable economic mobility.  But the challenges for the one  in three Americans with a criminal record are often severe.

 Research shows that only 55 percent of individuals returning from prison report earnings in the year post-release. Even with a job, they make less on average than the earnings paid by a full-time job at the federal minimum wage.

Audrey Mayo

The COVID-19 crisis has made it even more difficult for returning citizens, and underscored the need to address racial equity and worker hardships.

Recently, the New York Association of Training & Employment Professionals related experiences of Mayo and her team—and others in similar situations to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee.

It’s an opportune time. Congress is at last considering changes to our nation’s public workforce system to assist individuals with barriers to employment.

The more than 600,000 individuals released from prison each year and one  in 47 adults on probation and parole cannot be left behind in this workforce investment.

Our labor market has extensive reach. Each area of our country delivers skills training to a portion of adults and dislocated workers who experience long-term unemployment.

Yet, nationally, of individuals receiving adult training services, less than 31,000 served had a criminal record, despite more than 16,000 releases from New York prison each year alone.

Congress must invest in workforce development at the scope and scale necessary to meet worker needs and business demand.

Job Funds for Ex-Incarcerees Down 40%

Over the past two decades, public investment in federal programs like the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, passed in 2014, has declined by 40 percent.

We spend more than $80 billion on prison and corrections alone annually, yet only dedicate about $100 million in federal reentry employment training to ensure that individuals have a quality job and do not return to prison.

Additionally, we know that success for individuals returning to the community requires access to paid training and community-based organizations that specifically facilitate the transition from prison to a career.

Melinda Mack. Photo by Katie Ladota Photography

Whether returning to New York City or a more rural home in upstate New York, individuals should be able to access transitional jobs and other paid work-based learning, receive support services like transportation, and assistance obtaining a driver’s license which may have been revoked due to predatory legal debt.

Finally, Congress must specifically support sectors and employers that are providing high-paying jobs to individuals with a criminal record. For example, transportation departments partner with CEO in six states to provide transitional jobs and possible career pathways.

Our builders and laborers’ unions in New York open their construction sector training centers to individuals with a criminal record, and provide pre-apprenticeship training with union membership pathways.

We need more of this nationwide.

If she could talk to lawmakers, Audrey Mao would explain how hard it can be to relate to a training instructor who hasn’t stood in their shoes, who doesn’t know what it’s like to exit prison and wonder if anyone will ever hire you, worried about your math and literacy skills, a place to live, facing health challenges, and food security or just putting your trust in anyone.

For the sake of all of our family members impacted by prison, we must do more, and Congress must act.

Jessica Centeno

Melinda Mack is the Executive Director of the New York Association of Training & Employment Professionals. Founded in the late 1970’s, association represents every county in the State, and includes federally funded local workforce boards, union training funds, community colleges, literacy, education, job training, and employment service providers. Collectively, NYATEP’s members serve over a million New Yorkers each year.

Jessica Centeno is the Deputy Regional Director over New York for the Center for Employment Opportunities. Founded in New York, CEO is the country’s largest nonprofit reentry employment training organization, with locations in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, and cities within 11 other states with high rates of incarceration.