Working with Felons
Facilitating a Job Search
Workshop for Offenders in a 30
Day Reentry Program
Some Statistics
• One in twelve Oklahoma Adults have been in
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Prison or on Felony Probation
Oklahoma’s incarceration rate ranks 4th
nationally for males and 1st nationally for
females (DOC)
Between 600 and 700 offenders are released
from DOC custody monthly
To be self-sustaining without any public
assistance an ex-offender, with no dependents
will need to earn a salary of $15,877 in Okla. Cty
and a salary of $16,034 in Tulsa Cty
How did I get here?
• From ASCOG to OESC and you want me to
do what?
• Learning about the Department of
Corrections
• Unpacking images from the Media
• “Prisoners are just like us except more so”
• Trying to find my footing in an unfamiliar
place
Determining Needs
• Listening to customers to find out what they
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REALLY need
Challenge everyone’s assumptions-especially
your own
Ask open-ended questions—you’ll get a lot more
data
Remember that people don’t care what you
know until they know that you care (Dr. Stephen
Covey)
People Don’t Argue with their own
data
• Value the experience and information that
ex-offenders give to you by playing it back
to them
• Offenders are making the transition from
an institutional “dependency” gradually to
a form of independence.
Resources to the Rescue
• Local pardon and parole officers
• Workforce Oklahoma
• Books No One is Unemployable by Debra L.
Angel and Elisabeth E. Harney
• Good Punishment: Christian Moral Practice and
U.S. Imprisonment by James Samuel Logan
• Going Home: Oklahoma Reentry Resource Guide
2011 (DOC website)
• Employers
Accountability
• In my experience it’s not helpful to shield ex•
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offenders from being accountable
High expectations usually yield high
performance (the Pygmalion Effect)
Work in tandem with employers, pardon and
parole and the ex-offender to bring about the
best results for everyone
Avoid being an enabler it only prolongs the
suffering
Education and Training Equals
Employability
• Key Train Pre-Tests to determine skill
levels in Applied Math, Locating
Information, and Reading for Information
(help establish a base line for the exoffender)
• Help the ex-offender capitalize on skills
that they have already acquired—
everybody has plenty of transferrable skills
Success is Possible!
• Ex-offenders do get jobs—and being employed
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is probably the best guarantee that they will not
go back to prison
Many offenders I have interviewed have
employers who are waiting for them to get out
of prison to return to work
I’ve repeatedly been told, by offenders who’ve
found work with a felony, “If you want a job
you can get a job, half the battle is your
attitude.