Allan Appel Photo
Festooned with balloons and tables with baskets of oranges, apples, and candy, the normally gray and forbidding substation on Winchester Avenue felt more like a festive state fair than a “resource” fair for aiding ex-felons and their families.
The latter was what it was Thursday. Tirzah Kemp of the New Haven Re-Entry Initiative and her colleagues gathered some 36 organizations to help ex-offenders like Roger Barber with health, housing, and jobs.
This fourth “resource fair” took place in Newhallville, where many ex-offenders hail from and resettle, and in some cases continue to commit violent crimes.
The fair featured an additional emphasis on services for families of offenders, like summer camp, programs to help deal with acting out adolescents, and child support guidance.
More than 200 people filled the little precinct within the first hour Thursday.
People like Roger Barber, who got out of jail four months ago after serving nine for his first offense, an assault. He’s also finished two years of college in Virginia.
When he signed up to take the free “skills to success” course offered by Easter Seals Goodwill, Barber did something unique.
Unlike 25 people who had signed up before him, he wrote that his goal is not a “job” but rather a “career.”
So Kemp told him to wait a moment; she’d give him her card, and guide him to her friend Miguel, who does career counseling at Gateway Community College.
The state parole manager for New Haven, former New Haven police Detective Ed Kendall, said about 85 parolees and probationers attended Thursday’s event. Their officers had arranged their regular reporting-in sessions to occur at the fair.
Mayor, Top Newhallville Cop T. Reddish & Beatrice Codianni.
They heard Mayor John DeStefano declare in brief comments that “If they [ex-offenders] don’t have access to family services to make good choices,” then consequences of recidivism are dire. “It’s the smart and right thing to be doing.”
Chief Frank Limon added, “Our goal is to fight crime, but it is also to fight root causes of crime.”
The festive event was being patronized not just by ex-felons, the target audience, but by people like Rashawn Waiters, who has no criminal record but badly needs to find more, and better, work.
The 24-year old has a job at Chili’s restaurant currently. But the $300 he earns every two weeks is nowhere near what he needs to support a wife and two kids. So he’s living with his mother-in-law. There are tensions.
Bearing his G.E.D. from the state of Vermont under his arm, Waiters waited to sign up for the Easter Seal Goodwill community re-entry service courses.
Waiters was accompanied by an older friend and cheerleader on the job search, David Wright, deacon of the City of Refuge Church in West Haven, where Waiters is a member.
“What does a 24-year-old young man in society do to get a job to pay for a room! It [Waiters’ current situation] leaves him a choice to supplement his income — with selling drugs?” he asked rhetorically.
Re-Entry Initiative Director Amy Meek said she non-ex-offenders like Waiters were welcome. “Our focus is obviously ex-offenders, but we turn no one away. It’s a no-wrong-door philosophy. This is for the community,” she said.
Meek added that when the city began the fairs, intended to bring services out to people in neighborhoods, 12 community organizations participated. By Thursday the number had triped. Science Park Development Corporation was there not only as a donor of cash but also as a potential employer of Newhallville residents.
“These fairs mean everything to me,” said Kemp. Next up, one on the Green, in July, perhaps around Independence Day.