EcOp provides job training for ex-offenders

Economic Opportunities (EcOp) is a program of Memphis Leadership Foundation, which is an intermediary faith-based organization that focuses on developing urban leaders in the areas of youth and workforce development, affordable housing and immigrants. Economic Opportunities was created in 1991 with the mission of helping individuals with criminal histories re-enter society.
 
Memphis Leadership Foundation had a program that worked to get jobs for the unemployed and underemployed. It wasn’t having much success with individuals who had a criminal record, so in 1991 the decision was made to come up with what was called an intensive care unit. The organization’s mission was to give special attention to individuals with criminal backgrounds.
 
It started with men only and focused on getting them any kind of work to earn a paycheck that also would help build skills and a resume so they could transition into what Executive Director Ernie Hilliard calls the mainstream workforce. The work was manual labor, work such as building pallets or landscaping.
 
Barnhart Crane & Rigging has been a partner from the beginning. Today, the work has evolved so that EcOp employs its participants who then work at Barnhart in the On the Job Training program.
 
It all starts with partnerships with organizations and people who are involved with helping individuals with criminal backgrounds re-enter society, anyone from probation agencies to corrections officers and job resources.
 
“Our whole thing is to lower as many of the barriers,” Hilliard said. “If there’s nothing holding a participant back but the background, we work on trying to eliminate those potential barriers, whether it’s a driver’s license or fines and fees.”
 
The men and women who work at Barnhart are selected from the class based on their needs, goals and experiences. The work opportunity lasts from six months to a year.
 
EcOp participants work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. for Barnhart while remaining employees of EcOp. The organization isn’t a temp agency, but the comparison isn’t off base. And it’s something Bob Brame, Program Coordinator of Training, said would be easy to duplicate with other employers interested in the partnership.
 
“With employers in general, if somebody comes out of incarceration and goes through EcOp or a program similar to ours and they’re ready to prove themselves, we could set up that situation where we put them on a 90-day probation and give them the opportunity to prove themselves,” Brame said. “That’s what these folks need. … We have an untapped resource. If they know the payoff will be there, they will run through a brick wall. They’ve already done that in a previous life and they don’t want to go back.”
 
Hilliard noted that the program doesn’t just put ex-offenders in a work environment and hope for the best. EcOp works with the realization that its participants often are entering territory that’s foreign. Many have never held a regular job or been managed in a traditional way.
 
They do have institutionalized norms learned in prison.
 
“So how do you take someone that has been in a controlled environment and put them in a not-controlled environment that’s run by different norms,” Hilliard said. “And then expect them to be managed and supervised in a different way. From our experience the difficulty has been when over time when it’s tried in a traditional way people have crashed and burned.”
 
What does work is to have a project supervisor on the On the Job Training team who runs a crew of his or her peers. The leader already has come through the program and can relate to the unique circumstances of the crew.
 
“There was one of the workers who was hiding a piece of equipment,” Hilliard said in relaying a story about the different behaviors. “When it was discovered the supervisor went to the worker and asked him where the equipment was. He said he was hiding it. The reason why is he was trying to protect it from being damaged. That was his approach. He said these people don’t know how to use the equipment properly. He hid it so it wouldn’t get damaged. A normal supervisor would’ve approached that situation from the standpoint of accusing the individual of behavior unbecoming of an employee thinking he was stealing it without understanding his issue.”
 
At the core of the work is understanding behaviors while helping people move on from a previous life.
 
“When they come to us their bad behavior is in the rear-view mirror and they’re ready to move on,” Brame said. “A lot of people have something in their background that can haunt them. We don’t think that’s fair. Slowly but surely more employers embrace the reality that people who have paid the price, their debt to society, are in good standing with the criminal justice system. And they make better employees in many cases than somebody who has had just a speeding ticket.”
 
The EcOp program lasts six weeks. Participants attend class Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to noon.
 
To participate in EcOp’s program individuals must be at least 18, if on parole must be in good standing, and must have a high school diploma or GED. Participants are drug tested on the front end and can be tested again at an employer’s request.
 
EcOp plays a role in reducing the recidivism rate; of the 150 participants over the past year or so only three went back into the system.
 
EcOp doesn’t have an abundance of volunteer opportunities, but Hilliard said one of the most important ways the community can get involved is in the simple task of behavior change.
 
“It’s a social cause for a population of people that other people tend to turn their backs on,” he said. “They’re coming from the attitude of they did it to themselves. There was a time that people said lock them up and throw away the keys. We’re dealing with a backlash of how people feel about individuals with criminal backgrounds. We’re starting to see a glimmer of hope and positive things in Congress, but very slowly.”
 
Participants don’t pay for the services and instruction they receive at EcOp. The organization does receive funding from a number of foundations in the community, but as a nonprofit organization EcOp always is looking for new avenues to operate.
 
Hilliard said the organization would like to add employers and have a staffing service eventually.
 
“We develop good people who become good employees so we want to be able to send them out,” he said. “We also have important church partners, but beyond that we’re still looking to build a reservoir of partners willing to join hands with us financially and spiritually with this population and help us with this movement. It’s growing into a movement and away from just a program. It’s a social cause to help offset some of the issues and challenges in the criminal justice system.”
 
Hilliard pointed to mandatory sentencing guidelines that has added to the country’s prison population, not to mention the war on drugs and stiffer drug penalties.
 
And even as crime rates have decreased in some ways, Hilliard argues that the incarceration rate hasn’t declined along with it.
 
“The U.S. has nearly 5 percent of the world’s population but we have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners,” he said. “Much of it has to do with nonviolent crimes. The majority of crimes and people incarcerated are nonviolent drug-related crimes. And judges are faced with mandatory sentencing guidelines. Someone makes a mistake, commits a crime. They owe a debt to society and serve the time, whether it’s five years or 20. Then they’re released and society says you paid your debt and it’s behind you. ‘Go become productive citizens,’ yet they have so many barriers preventing them from doing so. … We’re about giving people a second chance and prepping them so when an employer is ready and has a heart to listen, they’re ready.”