Timothy Woodward has spent seven years in prison for assault, a devastating crime to which he pleaded guilty and for which he makes no excuses.
His release date is Sept. 6. Since June 12, he has been part of the State Department of Corrections’ work-release program – living at Tacoma’s Progress House on Sixth Avenue, looking for the job he’ll need if he is to succeed at freedom.
Trouble is, the dismal job market has drained the work out of work release.
Woodward, 37, has experience as a flagger, in construction, food service and landscaping. He makes five job contacts a day, searches with WorkSource computers, rides the bus to commercial areas all over the county, scans businesses for “now hiring” signs.
He’s had no job offers.
The problem here isn’t so much Timothy Woodward’s unemployment. It’s the threat to society posed by offenders who can’t legally support themselves once their sentences end.
Community corrections officer Marlena Wright doesn’t want you to feel sorry for them. The economy is rough on lots of people, including those who haven’t committed assault, armed robbery or murder.
“It’s not sympathy,” Wright said. “It’s public safety.”
There were bits of hope for Woodward last week as he pounded the pavement along Sixth Avenue. Jeanne Naccarato invited him to check back at Tower Lanes after school starts and business picks up. He has made a good impression on her, and that’s important, she said.
“He comes in and he’s always polite,” Naccarato said. “You get some people who sign in and out. They aren’t really interested in finding a job. He is.”
Christy Frazier at Denny’s accepted his application.
“I’ll pass that on to my hiring manager for you,” she told him. “Take care.”
Woodward stopped in at Harbor Freight Tools to get the store number to add to the online application he’d started. The store might be hiring, he learned.
But, on this day, like all the others, there was no job.
Like every other offender coming out of a state prison, Woodward knew it would be rough finding work.
“We talked about it all the time,” he said of fellow prisoners at Monroe Correctional Complex. “The jobless rate is rising, and we’re going out into that.”
This dearth is something new, say prison officials.
In the 18 years Wright has worked at Progress House, she has never seen offenders face a worse job market. Before the economy tanked, inmates had 10 days to find a job or face being sent back to prison.
“I could count on one hand the number of people we sent back,” she said.
Wright worries the job drought will boost the recidivism rate. Already, 38 percent of offenders land back in prison within five years of the day they get out. When offenders go through work release, the rate drops by 2 percent to 3 percent.
That’s not huge, but with prison costing taxpayers $100 a day per inmate, it’s an investment worth making. It also averts the public pain and court costs that come with every new felony.
Of the 17,000 men and women in Washington prisons, 700 are finishing their terms in one of the state’s 15 work-release centers, where they cost taxpayers $70 a day.
In addition to Progress House, Pierce County has the adjacent Rap House and Lincoln Park work release at South 37th Street and Yakima Avenue. They serve offenders with mental disabilities or illness.
For the most part, work-release participants have earned those spots through good behavior. Officials consider them most likely to succeed in staying out of prison if they can get jobs and stable housing. That, too, likely affects the lower recidivism rate.
Work release eases offenders back into a world that has changed in large and small ways since they were sentenced, Woodward said.
Highways have been rebuilt. Phones are entirely different. Even the job-application kiosk at Safeway is computerized. There’s a second bridge across the Tacoma Narrows, and it costs money to use it.
“It reminds me I’m not of this world,” Woodward said.
Most people in work release return to the county of their first – or in Woodward’s case, only – criminal conviction. Technically, they still are in prison.
Progress House has 75 beds, 69 for men and six for women. Offenders can stay as long as six months.
They must make a minimum of five job applications or contacts a day, and submit the business names in advance. They must log the time they spend in each interview and have the contract at that business sign it.
They must travel by bus or on foot, never in a friend’s car. They must phone in from a land line at specific times. They may not buy any food or drink, and when they return to Progress House, they must blow into a Breathalyzer. Community corrections officers do field checks on them.
If they screw up, it’s treated as an escape attempt.
Once they’re on the job, they have to be on time, pass drug tests, perform up to job standards and check in through a land-line telephone. If they don’t, they’re sent back to prison.
“When I first got here, I thought the rules were too strict, but now I see they’re for the good of the public,” Woodward said.
When jobs were plentiful, that level of accountability made them attractive hires, especially in dog grooming, food service and warehouse, construction, roofing, automotive and road work, Wright said. Three Progress House residents worked the paint crew for the new Narrows Bridge.
Work release is a huge improvement on the way most prisoners get out, said Department of Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis.
“They get out of Monroe with $40 and a bus pass,” he said. “Ninety-seven percent of all inmates are eventually released.”
Of those 164,000 offenders, some are lucky and have family or friends who will take them back. Some land in transitional housing run by nonprofits. Some become homeless or live in substandard housing. Some fall in with their old criminal crowd.
Woodward said he’s fortunate to be in work release. He’s glad he had the chance to take computer and anger-management courses in prison. He knows how lucky he is that his mother will let him live with her in Tacoma. He said he thinks he can build a lawful, productive future.
When he was in prison, he knew there was a recession, but he had not imagined its impact.
“I knew it was going to be hard,” he said, “but not this hard.”
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street
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