Program for female parolees expanding to Camden County

Yolanda Roman was a dropout before she even made it to high school. By the time she picked up where she'd left off, it was more than 10 years later and she was in an Essex County, N.J., prison serving time for manslaughter.

Now 33, Roman is starting to catch up. She has her GED and is studying architectural technology through a program at Essex County Community College. When she is released in April, after 12 years in prison, she'll move into a halfway house and start looking for a job.

Since Roman was sent to prison, she has gained a support network to help her along the way: the staff and members of the Female Offender Resource Group of Essex (FORGE), a program created in 2004 through the state parole board that helps women reenter society after being incarcerated.

"Getting an education is something I never knew I could do," Roman said. "They're helping me walk not just out of prison, but all the way to the end."

The only such program in the state, FORGE has gone from serving fewer than 100 Essex County women to more than 500. Through partnerships with the college and other social-service programs, it has become a one-stop destination that helps parolees with everything, including obtaining domestic-violence counseling, getting photo identification cards, and proofreading essays for class.

"It isn't so much a program as it is putting pieces together," said Angela Marshall, the parole officer who was the driving force behind creating FORGE.

Last week, members of the state parole board announced plans to expand the program to Camden and Mercer Counties, where a total of 230 parolees are expected to be served in the first year.

"This is going to bring women under one umbrella of services," said Parole Board chairwoman Yolette Ross. "You talk to some of these women, they say they would not be where they are today if it were not for FORGE."

It is too soon to tell how well the program is working in Newark, but one early measurement seemed promising. As of November 2006, only 17 - about 9 percent - of the 160 female ex-offenders who participated in FORGE over the previous two years had returned to prison. The rate of rearrest among all adult offenders in New Jersey is 55 percent, according to the Department of Corrections.

Women make up more than 5 percent of New Jersey's prison population, according to the state. That's one of the highest rates of incarcerated women in the country.

FORGE was born after Marshall was assigned an all-female caseload of parolees in Essex County. Marshall saw that women and men face drastically different economic, social, and psychological challenges.

"We had more programs for men, more shelters for men, and women's needs were not being met," Marshall said.

Marshall got the Essex County College's WISE Women's Center, which offers job training and other classes, to admit parolees. A partnership was formed with the college's Next Step program, which helps offenders get degrees.

FORGE was launched after Marshall secured funding from the nonprofit Nicholson Foundation, which provides the $150,000 it takes to run the program each year. The Nicholson Foundation also will cover the estimated $100,000 cost of expanding the program to Camden and Mercer Counties.

With headquarters in Newark's Essex County College campus, FORGE is next door to other social-service and education programs, including WISE and Next Step.

The program is run by three full-time employees: a services coordinator, who organizes the schedules of the program's participants; and two resource specialists who help with tasks such as filing for school loans or getting documents such as birth certificates.

FORGE served 572 women last year, including some who were not on supervised release but needed help getting services or jobs.

In interviews earlier this month, women in FORGE said that it had given them personal and professional skills and that it motivated them to make lasting changes in their lives. Many said FORGE provided a sense of encouragement lacking in other reentry and prison programs.

Sharon Douglas, 42, spent 13 years in and out of prison on drug-related offenses. She was enrolled in treatment programs, but she never connected with them and told her supervisors what she thought they wanted to hear.

As soon as she had a chance, she would relapse. Once, she was arrested a week before she was to be released from a halfway house.

"Without getting to the core of those issues, you can't move forward," said Douglas, who finished a sentence of more than two years for robbery last month. "The people here care about you. They have done things for me that my own family haven't done, and that changes things."

The people at FORGE understood what it meant to try to start fresh with a criminal record, Douglas said.

"I always felt like I was out of place because I had a state number behind my name," Douglas said, who now attends college and lives in a halfway house.

Learning to manage daily stresses is key to preventing relapses, said Katherine Knox, FORGE's services coordinator. Many female offenders have children whom they have neglected or abused because of problems with drugs or their own unstable family histories. Those children often end up wards of the state, or in foster homes.

Women fresh out of prison are often expected to try to reclaim parental rights, Ross said, an assumption not usually applied to men.

Women can take classes through FORGE on anger management, communication strategies, even navigating the court system for child support or visitation rights.

For Kesha Bell, 40, FORGE is a lifeline to her six children. Bell gave up her parental rights years ago because of a lifelong drug problem.

"The day I turned 18, I started going to jail," Bell said, who served 10 years in prison for different sentences. "I never raised any of my kids, just like my mother never raised me."

FORGE is helping Bell get visitation rights, as well as go to school. For the first time, Bell is building a relationship with her mother.

"It's hard to get out of jail and do something with your life, because you feel worthless," she said. "Here, they don't care where you've been. When you come to them, it's like coming to your mom, or your aunt - something you never had, or something you miss."

The state parole board expects to start the program's expansion immediately, by enrolling female parolees in the Camden and Mercer County Job Training Centers for Urban Women. The program will take 140 women from Camden, 90 from Mercer.

No amount of support can remove the challenges of staying on good behavior, said Yvonne Dickerson, 44, a former addict and FORGE member who was released from prison in November after serving time on drug charges. Dickerson lives in a halfway house and often sees people leaving to get high. She's still tempted.

"But if I know I'm coming here in the morning, I don't want to mess it up," she said.

FORGE makes those struggles manageable, Douglas said, which gives her hope.

"Before, when I used to close my eyes and picture my future, all I could see was black," Douglas said. "Now I see pictures of what I want."