I use the term “felon” in this title to get your attention. Note that it’s a word that labels people based on a single act, a mistake made. I won’t use it again, because the three people I am writing about are also friends - people with great talent, people who have been through hard times and shown resilience. Like nearly 70% of Maryland prison inmates, all three are African-American men.
I met Arnold Brown when I was a small child and his grandfather grew tobacco on the farm where I lived. He was six years older than me and had a lot of siblings and cousins that I played with. He was the strongest, the fastest, the best looking, the most adventurous, and probably the smartest of our group. And he loved to have fun. Too much fun. When we became young adults, I went to college, his siblings and cousins were getting jobs and making a living, and Arnold was getting arrested.
I met John Doe (I won’t use his real name because he’s still struggling and doesn’t need the attention) through a program that connects inmates with retired Thoroughbred racehorses and teaches them skills that they can use in the horse industry. He was in his mid-twenties and had been incarcerated since high school. He was smart, charming, and kind. Most importantly, the horses liked him, and he liked the horses. I offered him both a job and a place to live. He babysat my kids, came to dinner with my mother, and he did good work.
I met Joshua Hatch through Carl Snowden, the convener of the Anne Arundel County Caucus of African American Leaders. Joshua had grown up in Chicago, made some mistakes, and been sentenced to 19 years. During that time he got a degree and made a business plan. I met him for coffee at 49 West and was impressed.
Anne Arundel County has a recidivism rate of 34.2%, higher than that of Baltimore City. In other words, at a time when our businesses are desperately looking for staff, people re-entering our communities from incarceration are too often not becoming productive, law-abiding neighbors. They are going back to jail.
That eventually happened to John Doe. He’d never had a job, a bank account, or a drivers’ license when he came to us. He also hadn’t had freedom as a grown man. Partying, alcohol, freedom to try new things - the things that most young men experience to some degree - were suddenly available, and he couldn’t resist. One thing led to another, and he ended up getting in trouble again.
Arnold, however, got a break. When the state refused to provide adequate medical care for a life-threatening illness while he was incarcerated, he found a good lawyer, sued, and won. He not only got the care he needed, but was awarded enough money to buy himself a modest house when he got out. That, and the support of his extended family, made all the difference. He died of cancer just a few weeks ago, and his funeral was standing room only. Arnold never got rich, but he touched a lot of lives in wonderful ways. He was the fun uncle, the loving father, and the faithful friend to a lot of people, including me.
Joshua’s story is still unfolding, but it’s no longer about just him. I returned to the office after our 49 West meeting and told my then-CAO Matt Power that we need to find a way to hire this guy. I had watched him at meetings, spoken by phone, read his emails, and now had what I considered an extraordinary one-on-one conversation. I understood why Chris Klein, our Superintendent of Detention, was so eager to work with him on re-entry programming. You see, Joshua is an extraordinarily intelligent man with exceptional self-discipline and a burning desire to create opportunity for the men and women who have paid their debt. He already had created an organization to assist recently released offenders, and he’d watched both success and failure.
Anne Arundel Community Action Agency, our county’s anti-poverty organization, hired Joshua not long ago to run a thing called Turnaround Thursday, a movement recently launched by Anne Arundel Connecting Together (ACT) and funded by the county at my insistence.
Turnaround Thursday is our county’s version of Baltimore City’s Turnaround Tuesday, a movement that has placed over 1500 formerly incarcerated men and women in jobs. I visited them in Baltimore and came away with my own understanding of why it works. It delivers the same things that we offer to others seeking to turn their lives around, the same things that behavioral health experts offer when they treat substance use disorders and many other debilitating conditions. It offers a welcoming embrace and it offers accountability.
The embrace comes from the community - BUILD in Baltimore and ACT in Anne Arundel. These are community-led organizations built through neighborhood institutions, primarily houses of worship. Weekly events take place in a community setting, and they are led by peers, by people who’ve been through it and come out ok. They cover conflict resolution, workplace dynamics, decision-making strategies, and telling your story. Telling it first to people who will understand it.
Accountability comes from peers. You learn a coping strategy, you go out in the world to practice it, and you come back to the group to report success or failure. Failure is ok as long as you keep striving for success.
Turnaround Thursday was launched at an event with well over 100 people at Asbury Church in Annapolis last Thursday. It will happen there every Thursday, but that’s not enough. Joshua has a much bigger plan.
Turnaround Thursday will also take place starting soon at our Ordnance Road Correctional Center. We’ll start the process on the inside, with an embrace and accountability there.
Housing, job placement, transportation services, mental health services, and other supports exist in our county, but they aren’t easy to navigate. Joshua, Chris Klein, and our county service providers have a vision for connecting people to all of that and more as they move from incarceration to community. Think Reentry Hub. That plan will evolve with the input of our county agencies, our County Council, our welcoming residents, and the successes and failures of what we do, but stay tuned. Anne Arundel County WILL deliver for people like Arnold, John, and Joshua, and doing so will benefit our people, our businesses, and the fabric of compassion and respect that hold us together as a community.
Until next week…
Steuart Pittman
Anne Arundel County Executive