For ex-cons, a new program: 'We're going to be about jobs'

With a little help from private philanthropy, Mayor Nutter yesterday announced plans to create new job and training opportunities for up to 400 Philadelphia ex-convicts every year.

"I've yet to meet a person who in some way, shape or form, at some stage of their life or career, didn't need a second chance," Nutter said yesterday.

Goodwill Industries is renovating a building at 7th and Spring Garden streets to house a workshop in which private employers will hire ex-offenders to do unskilled work, such as assembling, packaging and preparing items for bulk mailing.

The jobs will be temporary, and Goodwill executive Mark Boyd said that the idea is to give those leaving prison some basic work experience as a step toward finding permanent employment.

"We're going to be about jobs, acclimating people to the world of work, working with a supervisor, working as part of a team, coming to work on time, all those skills that a person has to have to be successful in the labor market," Boyd said.

The program is funded with a $1.4 million grant from the James L. Knight Foundation. Former inmates will be admitted to the program through the Mayor's Office of Re-entry, which will evaluate their skills and help them with other needs.

The re-entry office has adopted a model that focuses on intensive services for about 500 offenders who make a yearlong commitment to a program it calls the Managed Reintegration Network.

Re-entry office chief of staff Carolyn Harper said yesterday that although her office will seek to help all ex-offenders, only those enrolled in the Managed Reintegration Network will be eligible for the transitional work available at the Goodwill site.

Nutter, who campaigned on the importance of increasing opportunities for former inmates, said that he hopes that the Goodwill program will encourage more employers to provide opportunities for those who need a fresh start.

"This is key to a longer term solution to our crime problem here in Philadelphia," Nutter said.

Philadelphia's ex-offender programs have been impacted by city budget cuts, and the city's deputy mayor for public safety, Everett Gillison, said that he hopes to develop more private money from sources like the Knight Foundation.

Ex-offenders interested in help can visit the Mayor's Office of Re-entry at 1741 S. 54th St., or Mondays-Wednesdays at its West Philadelphia office, 4027 Market St. *