Program needs support from local employers

By Abby Stewart

Frankie Roberts says he has a good thing going. And he needs the business community’s help to keep it going.

Roberts leads Leadership Into New Communities Inc. (LINC, an agency that provides shelter and services to men and women returning from prison incarceration.

LINC has plans to move to a new 40-bed facility at 222 Division Drive in the next year from their current two-story nine-bed facility at 907 Castle Street that will give them space to work with more clients. But Roberts needs more regional employers who will work with him to get his clients into the workforce.

Roberts has been able to place many of his clients into construction jobs for years, but as the economy has slowed, so have the construction openings and more jobs are needed.

“The (prison) pipeline has been clogged,” he said. “It is slated that 750 thousand men and women will return to our communities across the U.S. over the next ten years.”

As of June 30, New Hanover County has released 1,510 ex-offenders back into society this year and will continue releasing about 25 men and women per week, he said.

According to Roberts, employers will benefit from financial incentives while helping to decrease the recidivism rate. Employment is one of the main deterrents to an individual re-offending.

LINC provides job readiness skills, life skills and connects ex-offenders with jobs, but LINC is currently only able to work with 15 percent of those released locally.
“This is where local businesses can step in,” Roberts said. By offering more jobs to ex-offenders, “it can be a win-win situation for everyone involved,” he said.

Where it all began
Over the last five years, LINC has served more than 600 men and women and only 50 of those individuals have returned to prison. That’s a return rate of only 8 percent, compared to the overall county rate of 61 percent and the national return rate of 66 percent.

The program was conceived in June 2000 as a result of Roberts’ personal experience with a brother who became addicted to heroin in Vietnam and lost his battle because of incarceration and addiction.

“After my own metamorphosis in thinking, God showed me that it could have been me...My brother died in ’76, and as a result, this agency was born out of that experience with my brother.”

Roberts worked full-time with no pay for two years, until LINC received grants from the Government Crime Commission and the City of Wilmington.

A personal account
Levern Williams, 58, who has been in the LINC program since he was released from prison six months ago, says the LINC program has changed his life. “Being here gives me the opportunity to change my way of thinking,” Williams said. “When you’re released you don’t have anything. Without LINC they may as well have kept the light on and waited on me to come back.”

Today, Williams works through the county’s Senior Aid Program for United Way and Stepping Stones, a program designed to help recovering alcoholics.

When Williams leaves the program, where people usually spend anywhere from six months to a year, he hopes to start a small lawn-care business of his own.

“The business community can be very skeptical when hiring a person with a criminal background,” Roberts said, but there are tax credits and other incentives for doing so.
Not everyone is going to be perfect, and Roberts knows that, but he guarantees a good relationship with employers to ensure everyone is getting the best out of the arrangement.

He has even pulled someone out of a job during lunch on the first day, when he got a call from an employer that his client wasn’t a good fit.

Roberts says by hiring ex-offenders through LINC will save taxpayers millions of dollars in New Hanover County.

“(Hiring individuals through LINC) saves such a tremendous amount of (money) for the public and minimizes victimization associated with re-arrest and incarceration,” Roberts said.

“The average cost for offenders to be in prison is $27,000 (a year) and it costs us $2,500 (a year) to provide intensive case management that will keep the person out of prison.”

Based on the repeat offender rate versus the county rate, LINC saved more than $14 million during the past five years, Roberts said.

It is crucial to re-align stable leadership within the community to support LINC’s cause because employment is a deterrent to crime, Roberts said.