On these blocks in East Harlem it is easy to imagine the entire outside world as a penitentiary.
If a man disappears, you can bet he's out at Sing Sing, or Greenhaven, or some other correctional facility with a pleasant-sounding name.
And, as if out of a timeless void, they return.
This spring, you may have recognized a face on Third Avenue that you hadn't seen since 1993. Maybe that night the name came to you, Michael Rowe, that kid who had a penchant for flashy clothes and who worked at his uncle's Laundromat on East 124th Street. So he's back now, you say. Trees have grown tall since then. There's a giant IHOP on the corner now. That wasn't here back then.
Each year some 2,200 people return from incarceration to this small pocket of upper Manhattan—north from 119th to 126th Street, and east from Lexington over to Second Avenue—an area that takes you 10 minutes to walk across. Their mass return has earned the neighborhood the name The Reentry Corridor. They come back with a felony record and little chance of finding sustainable work, and back to households that were unstable years ago and have not been helped by time. Many carry high hopes of making a new life, hopes 10 or 20 or 30 years in the making. Within a year, more than half of them will be locked up again.
Fortunately, Michael Rowe wasted no time when he was released April 2. He came a day later to Exodus Transitional Community, an organization that helps the formerly incarcerated begin to find a place in a society that has gone on without them, and that can often seem intent on leaving them behind. Founded 14 years ago by a former drug dealer, Exodus has succeeded in reducing the recidivism rate (a figure referring to the defeated backflow of released felons to prison). In fact, Exodus participants return to prison at a rate less than half that of the national recidivism rate. Every day Rowe, a 41-year-old father of three who spent almost half of his life behind bars, puts on a suit and comes to these offices, where window-unit air conditioners struggle against the city heat. "These are people who have made the transition successfully," he says. "I hope to emulate them."
For the formerly incarcerated, former ways of living require no training. Pitfalls and temptations are everywhere, and the sweet images of a better life one dreamed of in a cell often sting the eyes when remembered here among the noise and indifference of Third Avenue. Through workforce training programs, parenting classes, and workshops on anger and addiction, Exodus equips participants to deal with many of the same realities that led them to make mistakes. And perhaps most importantly, the staff, almost all of whom were at one time incarcerated, are examples that it's possible to learn a new way to live. The instruction is intimate, and participants say it is a breath of fresh air after visits to larger, city-run service centers where someone can often feel like little more than a number.
We're trying to tell the world, 'We committed a crime at a young age, but let's not be defined by the worst moment in our lives.'
At Exodus, the reception for new arrivals is unique. Julio Medina, Exodus's founder and executive director, often greets the individuals himself, and he does so with vivid memories of September 4, 1996, the day he was released after serving 12 years. "The first thing I say is always, 'Welcome home. What's your name? Did you eat? Where are you sleeping?'"
Medina looks at a man like Rowe and sees a father full of good intention, and a man who did not waste away in prison but who got an education and set goals for himself. Rowe has still not found work, but neither has he succumbed to despair. He is willing to talk about his life, how one day he was jumped for a blazer he was wearing and got shot in the leg. He was 18 and never thought of telling the police. Instead, he bought a pistol. Three months later, while he was picking up his girlfriend from her high school, he felt threatened by a group of guys, and started shooting. He hit one in the leg, and the young man bled to death.
Rowe's story, one of a young man who becomes harsh to survive harsh surroundings, is all too common. According to the Sentencing Project, African-Americans are more than nine times as likely as whites to be incarcerated, and Hispanics are more than four times as likely as whites. Working in East Harlem, which is predominately Black and Latino, Exodus has forged connections with every prison in the state, hoping that the men and women who return here will encounter an opportunity to thrive. The challenge, Medina says, is how to change the way the public sees a formerly incarcerated individual. "We're trying to tell the world, 'We committed a crime at a young age, but let's not be defined by the worst moment in our lives.'"
On the Inside
In the Old Testament, the Book of Exodus includes the chapter of history in which the Israelites, recently set free from Egypt, wandered in the desert. The thrill of freedom soon evaporated and it was 40 years before that society found its footing. Medina chose the name of the organization with this in mind. "Most guys on the inside say, 'I can't wait to get out,' thinking that this is the Promised Land. They don't recognize that this is the wilderness."
Medina, a son of Puerto Rican immigrants who grew up to run a Bronx drug ring, began to get his life on track in prison. He earned a seminary degree behind bars and learned to associate with the guys who attended church services. Together they supported each other against the pressures of the prison yard, which is often a ground for substance abuse, rivalries, and violence.
One day a teacher at the seminary told him he seemed like a community organizer. The same traits that had allowed him to excel at drug dealing—being personable, bilingual, ambitious—could be useful on the same streets, but with positive results. The genesis of Exodus Transitional Community was a series of sobering observations that Medina made, having witnessed friends intent on returning to society to make a new life, only for their dreams to derail. "We were seeing men who were strong on the inside, who were leaders on the inside, coming back in a year," he remembers. He started walking around the prison, writing his plans for Exodus on napkins.
Many of the services offered in these offices on Third Avenue are quite similar to the ones at government-funded centers that try, often in vain, to reduce the rate of recidivism. But for Medina, the reason Exodus has found its success has everything to do with faith. He is clear that there is less funding for faith-based initiatives, but, for him, there is no other approach except the Christian belief that asserts "it's through our own wounds we're able to heal others."
"For us, the faith is this holistic approach to reentry," he says. "It's the lens that talks about second and third chances. It's the lens that says we're all children of God. That there are no throwaway people."
Medina, 52, has now been out of prison longer than he was in. He wakes up every day at 4 a.m. while his wife and children sleep to begin emails and drafts of funding proposals, and at times he is still amazed at his own personal changes. Success in this field, even the survival of the organization, is not always easy, and he thinks, "The old Julio Medina would have found a shortcut a long time ago."
Even after all of Exodus's success stories with many of the 6,000 participants who have come through these doors, even though the organization's work was held up in 2004 by the President of the United States as a model for effective, faith-based initiatives, the words of a certain commissioner of the parole board still ring in Medina's ears. He had told the commissioner of his plans to help his community, to which the commissioner replied, "Don't give me none of that psychobabble bullshit about empowering your community. You're a vulture, and that's all you'll ever be."
Most guys on the inside say, 'I can't wait to get out,' thinking that this is the Promised Land. They don't recognize that this is the wilderness.
Changing the Face
Over the years, Exodus has formed hiring partnerships with companies like California Pizza Kitchen and Target. But the obstacles to stability for a former prisoner often deal with much more than employment. Jeff Dodson, an Exodus coach and facilitator, served 17 and a half years for attempted murder. In prison he began to confront his anger, how for 20 years his temper had been a twisted outlet for the grief he felt after his mother died suddenly when he was nine.
Long before he was released, Dodson was intent on working with former prisoners. Through a temp agency he got a job at Walmart, stocking on the night shift. His managers wanted to hire him permanently, but when ?they found out he had a criminal record, company policy forbid it. At 37, he had had his first job, only for it to be snatched away. Now he was forced into taking more temp work, often only one- or two-day contracts that barely covered the cost of transportation.
He was living with a cousin. But his parole officer informed him that state policy prohibits a former felon from living with someone who is on government assistance. He went to a homeless shelter but was told to leave after 30 days. "I said to my parole officer, 'Now what?' and my officer said, 'I don't know.'" Fed up, he posted a page-long rant on Facebook about the lack of support available for people like him. It seemed the system was setting him up to fail.
But that rant was compelling enough to catch the ear of Medina, who called him that afternoon and soon offered him a job. Now Dodson helps new participants translate their visions into reachable goals through something called the Exodus Contract. This personal, goal-based agreement includes plans for employment, education, family, spirituality, health, and community involvement. Dodson tells participants, "There is no timeline on change. Just because you made a poor decision in the past doesn't mean you have to make a poor decision today."
There is no timeline on change. Just because you made a poor decision in the past doesn't mean you have to make a poor decision today.
The instruction here is practical and calculated, but it is the relationships, as much as anything, that help a newly released individual battle despair. Folks like Medina have been through reentry and know there are many relational challenges that go along with societal pressures.
In prison, Michael Rowe married his high school girlfriend and fathered three children. He had a reoccurring dream of his children jumping on him in the morning to wake him up. Now, two months since he got out, he has to rub his eyes in disbelief when he wakes to sees his daughter sitting on his pillow.
Such joys cause him to cry, but there are difficulties to home life that he's learning quickly. The other day he and his wife got into an argument. It had never happened before during that 20-year stretch when they'd get a few conjugal weekend visits per year. Distraught, he came to Exodus, and Medina could read the worry on his face. When Rowe told him what had happened, Medina just smiled and nodded.
Not much time has passed since the argument, but Rowe can laugh about it now. He remembers, "The first thing Julio said is, 'This is reentry. It's not all peachy. Welcome to reentry.'"
