Post Prison

Any person who will release from prison can learn from the questionable survival strategy of the ostrich. It is said that when confronted with danger, an ostrich buries its head in the sand, mistakenly believing that if it blinds itself to danger, the danger will pass it by.

My clients do not live with their heads buried in the sand. Instead, they know all the dangers that await their release. Failure to understand complexities of the halfway house, home confinement and supervised release make’s one vulnerable to further troubles with the law.

Additionally, unemployment rates, especially for felons, remain high. One must embrace that obtaining information is more easily accessible than ever. Cross-referencing a name with the words crime or prison into any search engine provides prospective employers, partners, lenders, landlords, or anyone else with the government’s narrative of your criminal history. We cannot ignore these facts.

To succeed upon release, we must anticipate these realities.

I met several men at Taft Camp who were serving time because their probation officer cited them with violating terms of their release. These men described horror stories of living in society with limitations that would require them to submit to continuous scrutiny and oversight.

Regardless of what I had heard about the halfway house, supervised release and the brutal job market that awaited me, I walked out with confidence and optimism. The preparations I made assured me I could navigate the challenges to come. And since my release in August 2009, I have. With similar preparations, so can you.