From OPB.org:
Five months ago, 30-year-old Desmond Hoy was incarcerated at Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras, where he served more than three years for charges related to a car theft. Hoy spent most of his sentence working on himself. He earned his General Equivalency Diploma, became a tutor at the facility’s education center, and learned a new trade: welding.
“I decided years ago that every decision I make is gonna be based on whether it strengthens my relationship with my loved ones,” Hoy said in April, when he was just weeks away from being released. “I got kids now. I’ve had time to get my priorities re-evaluated and I know that [welding] is something that I wanna get into as a career.”
Hoy credits WorkSource Oregon Reentry, a new employment program piloted at Deer Ridge, for building up his confidence and helping him achieve his goals both inside and outside of prison. He says the program helped him embark on a new future.
The idea to house a WorkSource center within a state prison came about in 2019 from East Cascades Works, a local workforce development board that serves 10 counties east of the Cascades. The board saw an untapped workforce opportunity right in front of their eyes: hundreds of people incarcerated at Deer Ridge and at Lake County’s Warner Creek Correctional Facility who would eventually be released.
“It’s cultivating a talent pipeline that we need,” said Heather Ficht, executive director of East Cascades Works. “We have historically low unemployment, so head, heart, bottom line: it made sense.”
WorkSource Reentry is also offering employment services at three more DOC correctional facilities, with plans to bring the program to the state’s seven other prisons by January 2025. A mix of state and federal grants have buoyed the expansion of the program over the past three years. But Ficht said the program cannot rely on grants to keep it running forever. She’s looking to the state legislature to step up.
“There has to be a sustainability plan in which the state of Oregon takes some responsibility for looking at the way they resource these kinds of services and programs,” said Ficht. “I truly believe that we will reduce recidivism and we’re gonna be able to show the cost savings of that by the time we run out of these funds [in December 2026].”
Since his release in June, Hoy is excited for his future and he’s certain the path he’s going down will break the cycles of poverty from his past. And he has advice for other people on the verge of reentering society after incarceration:
“Work on your future — because what’s important is not where we’ve been, but where we’re going.”