What’s a good job for formerly incarcerated people?

When people in the corrections field are asked that question, you often hear this mantra: Get a job, any job. The idea is that work will reduce your risk of going back behind bars. As a result, people coming out of prison feel pushed to take crappy jobs that have difficult schedules, low pay, no benefits, or poor working conditions.

That’s bad advice. In my research with other scholars, we’ve found that formerly incarcerated people just churn through jobs like that. Indeed, taking a bad job doesn’t protect you from recidivism or the other struggles too often faced by the formerly incarcerated. In one study, looking at formerly incarcerated young men in Michigan, over one-quarter of people coming out of prison experienced persistent desperation and struggle, including periods of homelessness; another one-third had intermittent periods of desperation, and struggle for survival.

Instead, we need to think of work for the formerly incarcerated the same way that we think of jobs for anyone without a lot of recent work experience or education. That means formerly incarcerated people need the same things from jobs that everyone does: a living wage, a job ladder to allow for the acquisition of skills and promotion, and stability, especially in scheduling.

When you understand this, you can see why we’ve made only slow progress in employment for formerly incarcerated people.

There have been some gains. Largely due to a tight labor market, we’re getting more incarcerated people in the door. Employers need more workers, so some businesses have been more open to hiring people with criminal records. Also, governments and nonprofits are offering more reintegration programs that include job training.

Changes in laws may have helped, too—like “ban the box” laws that prevent employers from asking job applicants on their applications whether they’ve ever been convicted of a felony. These laws were a response to a surge in harsh sentencing laws and mass incarceration during the 1980s and 1990s.

But “banning the box” isn’t enough. First, employers can still conduct background checks—they just need to wait to do so until later in the hiring process, usually once a provisional hiring decision has been made. Second, when formerly incarcerated people do get jobs, they can have trouble holding onto them. This is partly because formerly incarcerated people often end up in the least desirable jobs, which experience considerable turnover among all employees, not just those with criminal records. The formerly incarcerated often face other barriers to stable employment, too, like housing insecurity, health problems, and parole supervision by a punitive justice system.

And even when formerly incarcerated employees manage to settle in and succeed in their jobs, moving up is tricky. Going up a job ladder is difficult for people with criminal records. Indeed, even moving laterally or diagonally can be challenging within a company, with different bosses having different attitudes. It’s even harder when getting ahead means changing firms. The standards and scrutiny of a candidate with a record are different for entry-level jobs than for supervisory positions. Sometimes, skills training or licensing programs, which people must complete to advance, maintain prohibitions on those with criminal records.

Changes in corporate structure also make upward mobility difficult. It used to be more common for people to rise from the entry-level to upper management of a company. Today’s most profitable and dynamic companies often rely on high-skill or high-education workers. Formerly incarcerated people who work at such companies might well start out working for contractors, as janitors or cafeteria workers. What is their path to becoming employees and rising?

Companies need to do more to support formerly incarcerated workers and create internal job ladders. There are also many ways public policy can assist formerly incarcerated people in their job paths and career trajectories. California’s openness in this area makes it an important laboratory.

I’ve seen possibilities in the research I’ve done with other scholars, based on huge data sets on thousands of young men in the state of Michigan during the 2000s. We tracked these young men for many years after they left prison.

Our findings suggest that California, and other states open to reform, can help in many ways: through greater housing supports (to prevent residential stability), through mental health and substance abuse supports, and through changes to harmful parole systems that often prioritize surveillance and punishment over reintegration. Indeed, my research suggests that people who do best after leaving prison combine multiple sources of support—including employment, public benefits, and support from their social networks and families.

States can make parole less intrusive and more flexible, to meet the needs of workers. Too often, parole involves surveillance and mandatory check-ins that can disrupt job schedules. It also can impose short-term custodial sanctions—like being sent back to jail temporarily—that cost the formerly incarcerated their jobs, housing, and income.

California and other states also could do more to integrate formerly incarcerated people into higher education. Formerly incarcerated people understand the importance of education for success in the labor market. In our Michigan study, we found that more than one-quarter of the young men enrolled in college sometime after leaving prison.

Higher education doesn’t just help with employment. It provides intellectual development, opportunities to establish pro-social peer groups, new social identities, and a sense of belonging and purpose. Research shows it also reduces the likelihood of recidivism.

Changes being made within prisons provide new reasons to be optimistic. Incarcerated students are now eligible for Pell grants from the federal government, making it possible for community colleges and other post-secondary institutions to create new college and training programs in prison. And organizations like the Petey Greene Program, where I serve on the board, are pioneering new educational programs to help those serving time in prisons and jails prepare for college-level study.

When they come home from prison, formerly incarcerated students need more support services, such as academic and financial counseling to succeed, just like other low-income and first-generation students. Colleges should also open eligibility for campus housing or work-study programs, which sometimes bar students with records. Community colleges could help by incorporating more job skills into classes and integrating paid internships since formerly incarcerated students often have to support themselves and their families while they go to school. Also, parole should treat college attendance like employment, making parole less onerous and shorter for people who complete degrees or certificates.

Making such commitments will enrich colleges and universities. At UC Berkeley, where I teach, the Berkeley Underground Scholars, an organization of students incarcerated or impacted by the justice system, have excelled in academics and leadership. More universities have begun similar programs for formerly incarcerated students.

The goal of all such policies is to help formerly incarcerated people find the right job, and not have to settle for just any job.

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“Mail Call” by Alvin Lavon Smith Jr.

The post What Prisons Don’t Want Us to Read appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Prior to the visit, my family and colleagues were supportive. When I confessed to a close friend that I was nervous, he said, “Time to get out of your comfort zone.” That was an understatement. My law partner gave me the pep talk about everyone being entitled to representation, but I wasn’t even a criminal defense attorney. Hardly any of us in the “GITMO Bar” were.

According to what had been scared up through a Freedom of Information Act request, Obaidullah was accused of being part of an Al Qaeda-affiliated cell that was preparing roadside bombs against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. Official reports said he confessed while in custody in Afghanistan. Later, at Guantánamo, he’d recanted, saying he’d been tortured and the confession coerced. Was my client guilty of terrorism? Who knew! There had never been any test of guilt or innocence, just six years of reported interrogations and torture.

My first day on the base, after being thoroughly patted down and every piece of paper removed of its staples, I met Obaidullah in a small concrete bunker. He wore a simple tan smock and trousers, and his ankles were shackled to the floor. He was about five foot seven, 150 pounds. But mostly, he seemed young. Captured at age 19, he had grown into a man in this prison. He told me he was not guilty of the claims made against him. He was polite but skeptical that I or anyone else could help him. His voice, speaking his native Pashto, was soft, but with an occasional strain that would end in a note of incredulity. “Tell your government that all I want is to go back to my family,” he said through an interpreter. “Why do they keep us here, without giving us a chance to prove we are not guilty?”

Here was a face to put to the name; here was a man struggling to understand who I was, and whether he could trust me. In those early days, most of the Americans he had met had been military or intelligence personnel. His first attorney had failed to gain his confidence. So many lawyers were fired by their clients at GITMO that it was a running joke among the attorneys. Just stay hired, I told myself. That’s the first step.

Official Guantanamo photo of Obaidullah.

For me, this journey to GITMO had started with a simple request. My law firm was asked by the Center for Constitutional Rights to represent a single detainee in Guantánamo Bay in his habeas proceedings. The Center had filed the first lawsuit on behalf of the roughly 780 men detained there as enemy combatants, and was co-counsel in the 2008 Supreme Court decision securing their right to judicial review. But a large number of these men, who had been detained for up to six years, still did not have attorneys who were willing, pro bono, to contest their imprisonment. The Center was reaching out to law firms nationwide, building a “GITMO bar” to take these cases. Would our small firm be willing to handle just one?

Obaidullah (as with many Afghans, he has only one name) had been arrested at his home during a raid in the middle of the night. No charges were leveled against him until 2008 (after six years of detention). They included conspiracy and material support for terrorism. Later, in 2011, a military lawyer assigned to his defense team found evidence to support Obaidullah’s claims of innocence, including substantiating his family’s claims that the seemingly incriminating mines had actually been left there during the Soviet occupation, while he and his family were in Pakistan. Although his military lawyers sought a speedy trial, the U.S. government simply dropped the charges. The government didn’t need them. They could rely on indefinite detention instead, as they did with most of the other Guantánamo detainees. Detention without charge. Obaidullah remained in custody at Guantánamo for another five years until his release in 2016, and 31 men remain in the same situation today with no charges pending.

But that all came later.

How do you establish rapport with someone without any shared cultural reference points? Obaidullah had been living on a small farm and working in a general store in rural Afghanistan outside of Khost, a two and a half hour drive from Kabul. His entire life had been subject to the ebb and flow of the constant state of war in Afghanistan, from the Soviet invasion to the Taliban takeover. His family bore no love for the Taliban. He had an 11th grade education and had learned a little English in school.

Before being captured, he thought that Britain was more powerful than the United States, so little did he know of the world outside his village. Once captured, he had no access to any outside information about his fate; he relied on what other detainees, guards, or interrogators told him. He also had no way to find out anything about me. It wasn’t until after our habeas hearing, in which he had been allowed to listen remotely to my public opening statement (the rest was classified and not even he was allowed to hear it), and saw how hard we had worked for him, that I think he let himself believe in me.

For my part, meeting Obaidullah face-to-face removed any doubt about what I was doing. At the time of his capture he was recently married—his daughter had been born just days before U.S. forces took him from his home. To this day I know his daughter’s age. My own son had been born the same month.

Obaidullah told me he was tortured at Bagram Air Base, and that the abuse continued in interrogations at Guantánamo. Not until later, after we’d known each other for several years, did he tell me what happened. He signed a statement that we filed in court describing what the judge called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” International law calls it torture. Obaidullah described being beaten on the head with a gun and threatened with death by a guard who was sharpening a long knife. He was forced to carry sandbags all night and not allowed to sleep. He was kept in a small barbed wire cage. His hands were tied above his head for hours. He was subjected to extreme heat and cold over many months’ time.

Fazel Karim holds a picture of his brother, who was recently released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Obaidullah asked me why I was trying to help him. I told him that I believed that everyone should have the right to present their evidence in court, and that I understood he had little hope my government would do the right thing, and that I was committed to doing everything I could to allow him to have a hearing. It sounded pretty theoretical and pie-in-the-sky, even to me. We talked about President Barack Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo Bay, which had been delivered just months before my first visit. We talked about the political battles that made it hard for Obama to fulfill that promise.

Over the next seven years, I went to Guantánamo Bay a dozen times to meet with Obaidullah. For his habeas hearing we coordinated multiple attorneys and expert witnesses, and pulled together a brief that was over a hundred pages long with more than a hundred exhibits. But we still lost. After the Supreme Court in Boumediene granted detainees the right to petition for release through the writ of habeas corpus the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals never again approved of any detainee’s release, and the system ground to a halt.

My colleagues and I went often to Guantánamo to meet with Obaidullah. We were the only ones allowed to, after all. We talked movies, children, pets, family, books. He liked My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the Fast and Furious franchise. He was a fan of How I Met Your Mother. Over the years, we had shared with him tales of our honeymoons, camping trips, and trekking tours around the world, and in one of our last conversations before his release, he told me that he liked in particular our habit of taking vacations with our families. Family travel, he told me, was not something he had heard of, and he looked forward to trying it with his.

We lawyers were sometimes allowed to bring in food, and we tried to anticipate what he might like—mocha ice cream was a favorite (though it nearly melted by the time we got back from the Navy Exchange where we bought it during lunch). Nutella spread onto a biscuit with a military-issue spork was also a hit. Sometimes we talked about having a proper meal together outside the prison, after he was freed.

What amazed me the most was Obaidullah’s compassion—at this point, under these circumstances—and his ability to express empathy and appreciation, even humor. He began our visits with inquiries into the wellbeing of our families, and recalled what we’d told him about their interests in soccer and science. When one of our lawyers dropped her cell phone into the bay he found that a rich vein for relentless teasing, as he did if we were late to a meeting. During our regular phone conversations, which I took from home as they were scheduled very early West Coast time, he loved it when my dog barked: It was a small but vivid reminder of the real world.

Since 2002, nine detainees have died at Guantánamo. Of those, at least one died of an apparent suicide and another from injuries sustained while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. With the situation looking hopeless, the prisoners felt that refusing to eat was the one means they had to register their protest. In 2013, with transfers out of Guantánamo Bay at a complete standstill, the majority of the men in the camp began a hunger strike. In part as a result of those desperate hunger strikes—my client withered to about 120 pounds—Obama instituted Periodic Review Board hearings that would assess whether each detainee currently constituted a threat, regardless of what he may or may not have done in the past.

In December of 2015, Obaidullah was informed that he was scheduled for a hearing before the Periodic Review Board, and in April 2016, I went down for 10 days to prepare for and participate in the hearing as his private counsel. In May, we were notified that he had indeed been cleared for transfer, and this past August, he was finally released from Guantánamo Bay to the United Arab Emirates. He has been placed in a government rehabilitation program there. I won’t be able to hear from him for many months. It will not be easy for him to readjust to the world after suffering what he has been through, or to live as an Afghan immigrant in the UAE. His future is unclear—after a few years he should be able to return to Afghanistan. That too will be no picnic for a former detainee. But one thing is clear. The minute I am given the go-ahead, I plan to take my son and husband, go meet his family, and share that meal outside the prison walls.

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Things often sound true when they rhyme. Growing up in Canada, I would have agreed with Carnevale. I would have even agreed with politicians like the governor of North Carolina, Patrick McCrory, who sees university primarily as job training. I had a Romanian immigrant’s relentless pragmatism, having been raised to think that medicine and law were the only acceptable career options in life. Although I was a bookish teenager, I never thought I could study literature or history or philosophy. At some level I felt these topics were pleasant but useless fluff, nice as hobbies but not worth thousands of dollars in tuition and four years of my life.

At the University of Toronto I fell in love, against my better judgment, with English literature, and switched majors. I felt like a rebel reading Paradise Lost and learning Old English grammar instead of doing something that would earn me a job after graduation. But although I made the switch to the liberal arts, I couldn’t help but feel that the humanities were still somewhat superfluous. This opinion began to change the summer when I was 20 years old. In search of my roots, I went to Bucharest and worked at the Canadian embassy there. That job was the beginning of a practical education in the importance of the humanities.

I learned, for example, how much depends on a word. One of my tasks was to translate interviews with Romanians who wanted to marry Canadians. The immigration agent needed to know if the couple was in love or if the relationship was faked. It was essential that I be scrupulous, adding nothing and taking nothing away. Liars, I learned, often make up romantic stories about their betrothed but cannot bring themselves to say “love.” One woman was allowed to emigrate because, pressed to explain why she wanted to marry her middle-aged, average-looking fiancé, she said merely that he was a good man and she loved him.

During another interview with a prospective fiancée, the Canadian agent pushed a pile of letters and cards towards me and said, “Look over these and see if they seem romantic to you.” My critiques of Romantic poetry in university had made no difference to those long-gone poets, but now the woman whose future I would help to decide watched me as I read over her correspondence with her boyfriend. “It isn’t particularly romantic,” I declared, with all my 20 years of life experience behind me, “but they seem to know each other well.” Her visa was approved.

The more important lesson, though, I learned secondhand. One day, as I was running background checks and doing paperwork, my co-worker told me the story of her in-laws’ marriage. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the communist government of Romania carried out a massive program of re-education and extermination of the country’s cultural elites. Artists, intellectuals, lawyers, politicians, and priests were put in political prisons and work camps. In a notorious experiment at the Pitești prison, prisoners—many of them university students in the humanities—were “re-educated” using physical as well as psychological torture. Guards beat and subjected them to extreme cold and hunger. They were made to eat their own excrement, and, worst of all, to torture each other. My colleague’s father-in-law, then a student of literature, was one such prisoner.

In order to maintain his sanity, the young man turned to his education. He knew French, his cellmate knew English, so they spent their captivity teaching one another their foreign languages. After his release, the student was forced to work in a factory, where he met a woman who had also studied literature and been imprisoned as a result. Neither could marry people with clean records for fear of ruining their “files” with the government, so they married each other. Their apartment in Bucharest became a kind of salon, with artists and writers always coming and going. This man, who had learned English in a jail cell, ultimately became a literary translator of English poetry.

When I heard this story, I understood that the stereotype of the fluffy, useless liberal arts was a lie. If the study of literature or history were really that pointless, a government trying to control the minds of its subjects would not go to the trouble of putting humanities students and professors in jail. For educated prisoners, the love of language, art, and scholarship was no mere hobby. It was a lifeline, sometimes the only thread tying them to their identities, their dignity, their shredded sense of humanity. Nothing could be more practical.

Years later, when a new wave of cutbacks in higher education led to reports of another humanities “crisis,” I decided to find out how much of the oral history I heard at the embassy had been written down. I read a dozen Romanian prison memoirs, all of them published after the 1989 revolution. Each one testified to the power of the liberal arts—especially literature and foreign languages—to help individuals maintain sanity and a sense of self in conditions designed to destroy them.

The memoirs taught me how common it was for prisoners to teach each other languages. Constantin Giurescu, a historian, learned Hungarian from one prisoner and taught it to another; meanwhile, he practiced his English, German, and French. The mathematician and Holocaust survivor Egon Balas held language sessions during captivity to practice English, Russian, French, and German. In prison, Arnold Schwefelberg recalled the Hebrew he had previously learned to the point where he could think in it fluently. Dan Brătianu and his fellow prisoners were tormented by lice, for which they received DDT in glass bottles, so they covered the bottles in spit, rubbed them with soap, and sprinkled the DDT on top. They could scratch up to four hundred words on this makeshift writing surface, which they used to teach each other foreign vocabulary. Later, some of the prisoners who had learned English from Brătianu became professional translators.

Many prisoners survived by recalling poetry they had learned in school or by writing their own. The artist Lena Constante learned French prosody by remembering lines of poetry, scanning and analyzing them, and then composing her own verse in French. Schwefelberg “wrote” 50 to 60 poems and a play, some of which he committed to paper after release. Inmates used Morse or other tapping codes to compose poems, often finishing each other’s lines. They also communicated essential information by quoting poetry, guessing that the guards would miss the point. Prisoners formed study groups, recalling the plots of novels and teaching each other history from memory. Forced into a program of “re-education,” they created their own university instead.

Being an immigrant once made it difficult for me to imagine studying the humanities. Going home to Romania—both physically and through books—helped me understand the value of the liberal arts, one that goes far beyond job prospects and starting salaries after graduation. We have been taught to think of the liberal arts as unnecessary and wasteful, or in Ronald Reagan’s words, “intellectual luxuries that perhaps we could do without.” Memoirs of the Romanian gulag showed me what a dangerous lie this is. Educated political prisoners drew on rich inner resources to preserve their sanity and their spirits. They used their knowledge to help their fellow inmates survive as well. Their experiences reveal what the attack on the humanities really is. It is an attack on the ability to think, criticize, and endure in crisis, and its virulence betrays how vital the liberal arts are. The political rhetoric against the humanities exposes what is most important in our education, even as it attempts to destroy it.

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