BRISTOL, R.I. (WPRI) — A woman who served 20 months at the ACI for felony counts of possession and delivery of drugs is now employed with a savings account and college credits.
She said it’s all thanks to a state-run program aimed at connecting incarcerated women with manufacturing jobs.
“It helps a lot to have a job, the program, my family and friends,” said the woman, who wished to remain anonymous.
The program offers manufacturing training to women preparing to leave the ACI, through a collaboration with the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training (DLT) and the Department of Corrections.
Lindsey Brickle, one of the organizers of the program, said the women are able to train before they leave the ACI using a workshop that was built inside the women’s prison.
“This is not simple material,” she said. “Like advanced solid modeling, solid works machining — these are advanced topics that require a pretty fundamental understanding of math. And we help them bridge any gaps that they might have.”
Brickle said about 30 women have gone through the program over the last two years, and so far it’s shown results.
“The completion rate is 100%,” Brickle said. “So for people who are looking for work or are work-eligible, we have a 70% placement rate … and there are folks that have decided that they don’t want to go into manufacturing.”
The woman Target 12 spoke with now works as a machine operator at Saint Gobain Performance Plastics in Bristol, where she’s making $18 an hour.
“The parts that we produce are used in aerospace, automotive, semiconductor industrial applications and aviation,” said human resources manager Sebastian Moore.
It only took the woman a month to find a job there. But when she was applying for other positions, she was regularly turned away because she had served time. In other cases, she was told she would be paid less.
“Some people think people don’t deserve second chances, and that’s what makes it hard,” she said after a long pause.
According to a 2021 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, a third of people who left the federal prison system in 2010 never found a job in the four years following their release.
But the Brookings Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, says people are less likely to commit crimes and return to prison if they have a stable full-time job.
Brickle said her team is looking to expand the program soon into the men’s population at the minimum security facility.
And as the program expands to more inmates, she hopes more employers will take part in it as well. She said this program also benefits employers by filling vacancies in an in-demand field.
According to the Manufacturing Institute, 2.1 million jobs across the country are expected to be left unfilled by 2030.
“It’s an untapped workforce pipeline that a lot of people don’t realize can be such a good resource,” Brickle said.
Moore said he was concerned about hiring a person immediately out of prison, but was impressed by the state program’s support network.
“The benefits outweighed the risk,” he said.
The DLT said employers get other benefits from taking part in the program, including the Work Opportunity Tax Credit and wage reimbursement programs like the On-The-Job Training or Work Immersion programs.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 85% of HR managers surveyed believe second-chance hires do just as well as, if not better than, other employees.
Moore said the woman he hired last year has been fantastic.
“The person we hired from this program has such a great attitude and is a hard changer,” he said. “Super reliable, dependable and we’re proud to be able to help to bridge and provide that opportunity.”
As for the woman Target 12 spoke with, she’s looking forward to graduating from CCRI this spring.
“I’m going to help my mom come to the U.S.,” she said. “I’m just focusing on growing personally and the job.”
Kate Wilkinson (kwilkinson@wpri.com) is a Target 12 investigative reporter for 12 News. Connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.
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