Don't 'Punish Them More.' Effort Grows to Ease Job Barriers After Prison Release

Date:  06-14-2023 Nearly 2,000 formerly incarcerated people return to Cleveland each year with few job prospects. Some lawmakers want to change that.

From The Marshall Report: Promise Stewart and Santonio Ford met 18 years ago, on a prison bus headed to a halfway house in Cleveland. They noticed each other’s edge-ups and began a conversation that changed their lives. Stewart, now 58, had just served two years at the Mansfield Correctional Institution on drug charges. Before he was incarcerated, he operated a barbershop in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood. Ford, now 48, was finishing a three-year sentence at the Richland Correctional Institution, less than a mile away, on a felonious assault charge. He wanted to become a barber as well, and was several credits shy of completing a state certification program at the prison before his release. Continue reading >>>