00:00People generally judge what they don't know, but when they get to know people, they will
00:18ultimately put their guards down, let their guards down, because they'll see that this
00:23person, although he made a bad decision, he is probably not the same person that made
00:28that decision.
00:32I think it's difficult when you know that you're going to be judged for the rest of your life
00:39for prior bad decisions that you've made.
00:42I think there's a great loss to society by just flagrantly discriminating against people
00:48with records.
00:49The reentry work that I do is to help ameliorate the lives of others who have criminal justice
00:55involvement, help support the employment of people. But oftentimes individuals go to meet
01:00with employers and they discriminate against employers and they discriminate against them.
01:06I went for the fingerprint thing and they came back and said we can't use you. They didn't
01:10say they couldn't use you because of your conviction, but you feel like that was the reason.
01:12Yeah, after they got my fingerprints, they said they can't use you. But they didn't say we're not hiring you because of your conviction.
01:17One of the biggest obstacles that hold people back is the issue of the stigma of incarceration.
01:23Because when you come out, you automatically know that you're not on equal footing. You know that you're not on equal footing.
01:37So you're not on expert.
01:43back is the issue of the stigma of incarceration.
01:48Because when you come out, you automatically
01:50know that you're not on equal footing.
01:53You know that people are going to discriminate against you.
01:56You know that off the bat.
02:01No matter what I do, no matter where I go,
02:04somebody will always have something to say.
02:07She's a formerly convicted felon.
02:09She did time in prison.
02:11We can't trust her.
02:14People shouldn't constantly deny a person coming home
02:17thinks that they need to survive because they
02:21was formerly incarcerated.
02:23I'm still having a hard time with housing.
02:26Everybody doesn't want to rent me an apartment.
02:30If they do a credit check on me, I have no credit history
02:33because I did 20 years in prison.
02:36I am a man that has morals and has values and loves the family that I have.
02:50And when you meet me, you say, wow, this guy, I never would have guessed that he was in prison.
02:55I'm someone who's about to start a PhD program.
02:58I'm about to start teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, of all things.
03:03So I go from being someone who deprecated my community by engaging in criminal activity to actually teaching criminal justice in a college.
03:12One of the issues that I was not prepared for is, I think, the interaction with parole.
03:28So we're on 135th or so in Lincoln Avenue, which is the, I think it's Bronx 1 Division of Parole.
03:39There are maybe around 20 or 30 guys out here already, and it's approximately 825 in the morning.
03:48I'm feeling like I got to get to work.
03:49I mean, it's already half my day almost gone after parole.
03:54I've dealt with it by being patient.
03:58Parole could definitely improve its practices.
04:01And, you know, a lot of times people are often painted with the same brush.
04:04I think they're trying to change that now.
04:11I am currently living right now in the Upper West Side, Amsterdam Projects, with my aunt, who is 86 years old.
04:20And I stayed there with her.
04:21I helped take care of her.
04:23Where's your Jell-O kitten?
04:26I had Jell-O.
04:27You had Jell-O earlier?
04:28Her son, who was sent to a program, he's in a program now.
04:32So when he comes home from the program, I have to find housing because he's on parole.
04:36Both of us cannot be on parole together living in the same household.
04:40I cannot come to my mother's house because my case came from this building.
04:53I caught my charges on my case while living at my mom's house.
04:57It's not the management that's telling me I can't live there.
05:03It's actually parole that says I cannot go back there.
05:07But the bottom line is that there's really nobody here that knows me.
05:12If I don't find an apartment before my cousin is released from the rehabilitation center that he's at, I don't know what I'm going to do.
05:20I don't know where I'm going to live.
05:25Okay.
05:26For example, you mentioned employment.
05:31So we do have a couple of employment programs.
05:34And we have, so I mean if he's looking for housing.
05:37A person that's coming home from incarceration needs to work as bad as anyone else.
05:42And so if that person cannot support his or her family, then the expectation is probably that this person will engage in some criminal activity that might put that person back in the predicament that they were in to begin with.
05:55So we do not afford people opportunities like education, like employment, like equal housing opportunities.
06:02Then we're always going to be right back at square one.
06:05It becomes a vicious cycle because you can't expect people to pull themselves up from their own bootstraps when they don't even have boots.
06:14I realize why people go back to prison now.
06:21I realize people go back to prison because nobody wants to give them a job.
06:25Nobody wants to trust them with a house.
06:27Nobody wants to support them.
06:30So they go back to doing what they knew how to do to survive.
06:34To mommy.
06:35Hey mom, what's going on?
06:37I'm trusting my letter will reach you in the best of health mentally, physically, emotionally, and in the right state of life.
06:43And in the right state of mind.
06:44I'm proud of you, mom, for doing 20 years, coming home, and getting a job.
06:49After most people do that much time, they bug out.
06:52But you were strong.
06:53One of the things that I said to my son was that when my granddaughter was born, he was bringing her to a prison to see me.
07:02And that's his daughter.
07:04And I said once I came out, she would never have to go to prison to visit anybody else.
07:09But now she's going to prison to visit him.
07:12And I said to him that we have to break the cycle.
07:15We don't want to keep it every generation that somebody has to go to prison.
07:20And a child has to go visit their parent in prison.
07:24What?
07:25You ready to ride now, too?
07:26Yeah.
07:27Why?
07:28Because you told me riding?
07:30Huh?
07:31Certainly not having a father in my life impacted my life in a negative way.
07:37Having a father that was a drug dealer that was in jail when I was born and all the rest of that was probably an even greater influence.
07:44When I went to prison, my son was three years old.
07:47When I came home, my son was 18 and about to graduate from high school.
07:51I have a relatively good relationship with my son.
07:54He's an adult now.
07:55He's 23 years old.
07:57I don't want people to make the same decisions that I made, a lot of the young people that I associate with.
08:03So, you know, it gets kind of emotional at times, but it's real for me.
08:08I just think that society doesn't, they don't really know what incarceration is about.
08:20They only know what they know from TV.
08:23I was one of those people.
08:25I only knew what I knew from TV.
08:32I know that I've changed a lot of people's minds about the stigma of being incarcerated.
08:37Just by talking to them.
08:39Sometimes it's just listening.
08:42Give me a chance to show you that I am a changed person, that I have transformed my life.
08:50I've dealt with it by just realizing that this too shall pass.
08:56That if I want to go to another state, that if I want to go to another country, which I've never done before in my life,
09:03there's going to come a time, and my hope is that it's very soon, that I will be able to put that behind me.
09:10That I will be able to say that, wow, I'm free.
09:13I'm free.
09:14I'm free.
09:15I'm free.
09:20I'm free.
09:22I'm free.
09:23Well, I'm free.
09:25You're free for starting today.
09:26Let's produce a move.
09:28You're free.
09:30Now I've Refix newsletter, it seems that, again, you're free.
09:33If you love, come on one song.
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