Ex-cons: A chance to begin again

 This story is the result of a partnership between Comunidad Segura and the Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública

Aécio Neves, governor of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, approved this week Law 18.401/09 that provides economic subsidies for businesses that employ ex-convicts. The law is the final step of a reentry program called Projeto Regresso (Project Return) that aims to create jobs for people who have been in prison and who find it difficult to find a job, the project also organizes job training courses in various corrections units in the state.

The Project had already been running prior to the enactment of the law, with about 30 former convicts working in companies such as Usiminas and Masb Desenvolvimento Imobiliário. The initiative began through a partnership established between the State and Social Defense Office of Minas Gerais, or Seds, and the Instituto Minas pela Paz (IMPP) an NGO created by 10 large businesses in the state, dedicated to studying and proposing violence prevention actions to the authorities.

Photo: Ex-cons on the job in construction

Such actions will be carried out through a program that belongs to the Seds, the Social Reintegration of Ex-Convicts Program, or Presp, that was in turn created to put the Penal Execution Law into practice. Among other provisions, it guarantees aid in reentry, citing specifically “the guidance and support for the reintegration to life and liberty” and “collaboration with the former convict in finding a job”.

Companies must be in good standing with the state and federal fiscal authorities and be associated to the Institute Minas Pela Paz.  The number of hired former convicts must not exceed 5% of the number of employees, and companies of small and medium size are eligible. Former convicts need to be associated with the Presp in areas where there are centers of prevention.
The Law stipulates subsidies amounting to amount of two minimum wage salaries for a period of 24 months will be given to companies that hire former convicts. Participating companies are under the obligation to guarantee ex-convicts their rights in compliance with Brazil’s work laws, and a salary that is in keeping with the positions they hold. According to Seds data, this means a total of 3 million Brazilian Reals (1.756.950,00 US dollars) will be invested in 2 years, with the goal of hiring 300 ex-convicts.

According to the Institute’s executive secretary, Maurílio Leite Pedrosa, the amounts invested by the state in the form of subsidies mean economic gains for society. According to IMP data, there are 47.178 people in detention in Minas Gerais, and the state spends 1.920 Reals (1,124.45) per prisoner.

A win win situation

The rate of recidivism in the regular corrections system revolves around 80%, along with a 15% rate for those detained in the Associação de proteção e assistência aos condenados, Apac, or the Association for the Protection and Assistance for Convicted Offenders. According to Leite Pedrosa, “if the state spends two months of a minimum wage on a company, it is helping to end prejudices, offering guidance to former convicts, and still saves itself 50% in expenses, that the offender would cost if he or she were back in the corrections system.”

Presp methodology supervisor, Saulo Rodrigues de Moraes is of the same opinion. “The project is affirmative action,” Moraes said. According to Moraes, just as businesses are given wages and labor, ex-convicts on the other hand get an opportunity to work. “How can you promote citizenship if you don’t have jobs?” points out Moraes.

Although former convicts had a number of services available to them, finding a job was a bottleneck in the system. According to Social Reintegration for Former Convicts of the Presp, Leonardo Martins, they had legal aid, psychosocial care, job training and discussion groups, but when it came down to getting a job, it was hard for guidance counselors to help convicts find a job.
According to Martins, former convicts make a living through odd Jobs, but nothing that is long lasting. “Informal labor is insecure, we wanted to offer them something a little less precarious,” said Martins.

According to the former convict WFL, who spent 2 years and 4months in prison for drug trafficking, if it hadn’t been for the Reintegration Program, he would be unemployed to this day. “There is a lot of prejudice around. I have a wife and two children and I would always get held back from getting a job when I needed to provide my criminal history,” said WFL. “That is why people go back to crime, for lack of an alternative.”

Background checks and vanishing jobs

WFL was hired by Masb as a carpenter. “In this company there is no prejudice, since most people have been through what I have been. In other companies, if something disappears, they immediately point fingers. Here the bosses help a great deal, but I also show a lot of interest,” he says. WFL still needs financial help from his relatives to get gy, but he believes he will be able to make it on his own soon. “With work experience I will be able to get other jobs in the future.”

S.P.S., an ex-com who works as assistant mason in the same company had similar experiences. “They would always ask for my criminal history and I would see the potential job vanish,”said S. “They will never say it openly, but we know it. We have already paid our debt to society, we have suffered through what we had to, and it still goes on,”said S. The ex-con was a shop owner before his period in the corrections system, and he is still adapting to the new job. “It is heavy work but it is something positive,” he said.

Job training

The Regresso Project also plans to graduate approximately 1000 prison inmates through job training courses offered by the SESI and SENAI respectively. There are courses already being offered in masonry, bakery, computer science and apparels by the Apac in Minas Gerais, as well as continuing education for youths and adults.

According to Maurílio Pedrosa, the Project was born out of a diagnostic made by the Apac system in 2008, that came to the conclusion that 80% of prison inmates are functionally illiterate. 25% had never had a job, and many were unqualified for their jobs. IMPP projects coordinator Enéas Alessandro da Silva Melo highlights that the first concern of the Institute was in improving inmate job skills. This eventually led the institute to embrace ex-cons job prospects.

Photo caption: View of a Masb construction site, the company employs ex-cons from Minas Gerais

Ex-com L.J.B who is currently on parole was one of the beneficiaries of these courses. He is currently employed at Masb as an electrician, after having completed three courses in job training at Senai. “I used to be service provider, I lost my truck, my piece of land, I was left with nothing but air,”said L. “Now I am turning my life around, I see that I can do other things, work has been a real discovery for me,” he said. “We are prepared to discover our own place,” he said.

Translated by Lis Horta Moriconi