The rocky road from caged to free

You’re like a ray of sunshine,” the interviewer told her. And she was. Just released after 17 years in prison, almost giddy with optimism and the promise of a new life, Catherine radiated energy and goodwill. She was focused, articulate, and charming. Her smile was infectious. She was confident but not arrogant, poised but not scripted, warm but entirely professional. Her buoyancy, which might have seemed almost adolescent, was tempered by her composure, a skill born of years navigating a life behind bars, of growing up and coming of age behind bars.

She was 30 years old, but for her this was the start of the life she was determined to live. Her résumé included a two-year college degree and a paralegal certification. Inside prison, she had designed and taught workshops for abused women. She wanted to be a teacher or perhaps a nurse. But first she had to establish herself, find a job that tapped into some of her skills and paid her accordingly so she could establish a work history and save for the future she dreamed of.

After the questioning and the conversation, after the smiles and the compliments, Catherine told the interviewer about her homicide conviction, a crime committed when she was just 13. The woman would find out anyway. Catherine thought that if she told the interviewer right then, in person, within the context of the interview that had just taken place, that person would see her in context. If instead her record was later uncovered during the background check almost all employers conducted these days, the interviewer would think she had tried to hide her past. Her crime, a violent crime, would stun them. They would, she figured, just toss her resume in the trash. So she told the interviewer that day. “We’ll call you,” the woman said.

Catherine, that “ray of sunshine,” waited for a call that never came.

How many interviews were just like that one? What job did Catherine finally get? How many years did it take for her to find the work that would change her life—and the lives of so many others?

I hope you’ll want to read her story, and the reentry stories of five others–their long journeys from caged to free–in my new book Free: Two Years, Six Lives and the Long Journey Home.