Families benefit from ex-offender jobs

They’re in the business of recycling.

But its more about the renewal of lives rather than resources.

Workforce Inc. is a computer recycling program in Indianapolis that hires ex-offenders for 6-month jobs that help them move from prisons to the first paycheck.

Persons who served five or more consecutive years in a state correctional facilities are eligible.

In an Oct. 21 column in The Indianapolis Star, Gregg Keesling, president of Workforce Inc., says work provides a distraction from destruction; and old habits are difficult to quit when desperation hits.

From child support to probation monitoring fees, bills await most who come out of prison. While bills await, jobs do not; roughly 70 percent of employers won’t hire felons, Keesling said. Of course, you don’t have to pass a background check to deal drugs or break into a house.

Keesling’s observations support the need for a bill introduced in the house in the last session that would allow some of those first funds from jobs to be set aside as child support for those families that are also receiving welfare funds. In other words, some of the money would “pass through” to benefit families receiving assistance through TANF block grants.

But House Bill 896 has yet to make it out of the committee circle. For now, more programs are needed to give people who have offended a chance to support a family, instead of that family subsisting on public aid.