Blog 3: Interview with Joseph Paul

For the last visit of the Francisco House, I walked in while one of the guys was speaking about the police's involvement with these men. It was general consensus that the cops' main concern in this entire process is simply job security. Kenya revealed that a cop came up to him to offer a gun for use and another man brought up the drive-by incident that occurred last year, where one of the gang members involved was actually placed by the police. That gave me a lot to think about.

In the interview with Joseph Paul, I asked what he thought were the main employment obstacles that these men face and he categorized them from three perspectives: employers (in this case, it would be people like him who seek to help these men find employment), society, and the ex-offenders. From the ex-offenders' vantage point, they must be able to identify their own strengths and values, and not give in to society's automatic judgment and labeling of them as offenders. From the society's perspective, their prejudice against these group of people ostracizes them, therefore forming this class of perceived to be lowly and unwanted people. It's the gap between the have's and the have-not's, where the have's possess an overwhelming influence on the have-not's lives and futures, dictating where they deserve to go, and that's not a bright place. Lastly from the employer's standpoint or the New Start Employment Program that Joseph Paul is involved in, the struggle in helping these ex-lifers' with employment is being able to identify the barriers. Joseph claimed that once these three paths converge, it will be the day that the men such as the ones who live at Francisco House will experience a smoother and more successful reentry. However, noone really knows when that will happen, if it ever will.

It is programs such as New Start, people like Joseph Paul and USC classes such as WRIT340 that can act as somewhat of a buffer between the incarcerated and society. This really frustrates me because there is no end solution to this problem that we have. The root of the problem is not employment difficulties or misconception of the incarcerated or ignorance by society. This is an issue of human nature. I truly believe that as the imperfect people that we are, the fact that we don't have the capacity to know someone else, their intentions and thoughts, but we still judge as if we are perfect, there is only so much that we can do. Our efforts and resiliency to conquer this problem are limited in influence and scope. All we can do is to improve the situation by reaching out to educate the public on the complexity of reentry for ex-prisoners, and in the process keep our head up and encourage these wonderful and genuine men to not give up because even though they committed crimes in the past and lives were lost that cannot be restored, there are supporters for these so-called criminals as long as they are treading the path towards redemption and being truly transformed to become contributors to society.