Prisoner Transition Fund Helps Women Succeed After Release

Friday, Sep. 02, 2016

Thanks to a generous donation to the Diocese of Salt Lake City, I was recently able to help an extraordinary woman I have known for almost two years keep a roof over her head. 

I met Michelle (name changed to protect her privacy) in October of 2014. Our first meeting was in a cold, cement room in the state prison. She was barely able to look at me and uninterested in sharing her life story with a total stranger. She was, however, very interested in leaving her cement confines and committed to never returning to that place.

Which is one reason the diocese helps pay her rent when we can through our Prisoner Transition fund. Michelle is, among many, many other things, a woman with a felony conviction.  When I first met her, she was a few months from being released from prison. Before we talked, she had spent several months faced with the prospect of walking out of the prison gate with nowhere to go, no source of income, a host of long-term medical issues, no familiarity with any part of Utah except the rural county she lived in, and no family or friends to support her.

Today, Michelle is employed, though she still isn’t making enough to live on. She doesn’t have a car, but thanks to the Salt Lake HIVE pass, she has mastered public transportation in Salt Lake County and gets to most of the places she needs effectively, though it often takes far longer than driving. She has health insurance, which has helped her control the rheumatoid arthritis that cost her two waitressing jobs, and found a friend willing to share a room, at the under-market rate of $400/month. According to data from the Community Action Program of Utah, Michelle would need to make $14.67/hour full time to pay the basic market rent in Salt Lake County of $588/month. She makes about $11, and her hours fluctuate from seven to 25 per week.

Despite her daily struggles to meet basic needs, Michelle is a success story. She has remained clean, sober and out of prison, a true feat considering that more than half of female prisoners in Utah are sent back to prison. Most recidivate within the first 12 months of release by committing parole violations, such as not maintaining employment or missing meetings with the parole officer.  

But Michelle is still struggling. As much as she hates asking for assistance, she has come to me three times since her release in 2015 because she simply couldn’t afford her full rent payment on a part-time wage, especially when she never knows how many hours she will actually get to work. As part of the Department of Corrections prison mentoring program, the diocese has been able to help her in those few instances, but the budget for doing so isn’t enough to cover even two months of fair market value rent. 

This affects more than just Michelle, because beginning in September we will be mentoring another woman who will look to us to help her transition to life out of prison with few resources, a felony record, and health issues.

It isn’t easy to find people or funds to help the recently incarcerated, but it is an integral part of our Catholic call. As Matthew 25:36 reminds us, whenever we visit someone in prison, we do it for God. In the words of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the prison mentoring program is one way “we live out the Gospel message of forgiveness, reconciliation, and responsibility for all members of the body of Christ.”

Or, as Pope Francis said, “It seems to me that the big challenge that we must all face is that the measures taken against evil do not stop with suppression, discouragement and isolation for those who caused it, but help them to reconsider, to walk in the paths of good, to be genuine people far from their miseries, becoming merciful themselves.”   As mentors, even in the simple act of paying rent, we serve as living examples for former inmates seeking to walk in the paths of good.

For more information about the prison mentoring program or to donate to the diocese’s prisoner transition fund, please contact me at jean.hill@dioslc.org.