Terry Tribe Johnson wants to persuade employers to take a chance and hire people with criminal records.Since October, she has been coordinator of the Summit County Re-entry Network, an organization whose goal is to help adult ex-felons re-enter society and the work force.“If we start barring anybody with misdemeanors and felonies from employment, we are not going to have any kind of an economy at all,” said Johnson, who was an employment specialist for Oriana House before joining the organization.With passage of House Bill 86 this year, which will go into law Sept. 30, the number of inmates in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction will decrease by about 7,000 by 2015. The first phase of early releases will begin next year.Johnson said about 34 percent of former Ohio inmates find themselves back behind bars three years after their release.“There is a lot of misinterpretation and fear” among employers, she said.She encourages employers to seriously look at giving people who have been in prison a second chance.“Please don’t deny a whole population of people who have felonies because of fear or misunderstanding,” she said.The re-entry program will sponsor an Employer Forum from 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Summit County Job Center on East Tallmadge Avenue in Akron. Johnson remains to be an Oriana House employee, but her position is funded through October with a $35,000 grant from the United Way of Summit County, a $15,000 grant from the Akron Community Foundation and $15,000 in expenses from Summit County for benefits and travel. The position will be funded for a second year through grants from the United Way of Summit County and other organizations, she said.Bernard Rochford, executive vice president of administrative services and business relations at Oriana House, a nonprofit organization that provides chemical dependency treatment and community corrections services, said re-entry is a community problem.With the creation of the re-entry network, Rochford said, the problem “is being embraced by the community.”Rochford said people who go to prison “are coming right back in a relatively short time and if we don’t welcome them back and say what can we do to help you transition back in, it is going to be a problem for everybody.”Rochford said until it is “your neighbor or your cousin, or your kid, it is everybody else’s problem, not yours.”But, he said, “most people know of somebody who has gone astray and they are not the exception. They are the rule.”The problem becomes difficult for people who are without employment or a home and cannot find a job because of a criminal record.Johnson said many of the calls she receives are from people who are just out of prison.Johnson said often a caller will tell her that he or she is “sleeping on [an] aunt’s couch, I need a place to live but I need a job so I can afford a place to live. They go from aunt to ex-girlfriend to Mom’s and they bounce around between locations, which makes it difficult to get a job because you have to have a permanent address to get a job.”When someone is ready for a second chance, Johnson asked, “how long are we going to punish them? If they are really ready to rebuild their lives, let’s give them all the support we can.”She said it is essential to remember the Golden Rule when dealing with ex-offenders.“Treat others as you want to be treated,” she said.In the current economy with so many people out of work, she acknowledged, it can be a difficult sell to ask employers to hire ex-offenders.But she said most people are “one really poor decision away from being charged with a crime.”During her time in the re-entry post, Johnson said, “I have met many ex-offenders, white-collar, blue-collar, suits, jeans, who have made one stupid mistake in their life and they have paid their dues. They have done their time and they want to be a contributing member of society. They want a job to support their family. They want to pay their child support.”How, she asked, “can we prohibit that by saying once you’ve made a bad mistake and been charged and incarcerated, you are in the margins forever?”Johnson, who has a master’s degree in theology and a clinical pastoral education residency at the Cleveland Clinic, was the first full-time female chaplain at Kingston General Hospital in Kingston, Ontario, before working at Oriana House.Her office is in the Ohio Building in downtown Akron.To reach her, call 330-643-2558, email rentry@summit
oh.net or ttribejohnson@
summitoh.net, or go to http://www.uwsummit.org/
CommunityInvestment/
reentryprogram.htm. Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.