WorkWell graduates, staff and volunteers – September 2024
Larry Jackson’s story
When Larry Jackson (not his real name) was incarcerated for the second time, he was in his 30s. This sentence felt even rougher than his four years in youth facilities.
“It’s so much of a negative going on in there, so loud and crowded,” he said. “It’s a whole other way of living that I didn’t want to come back to.” But he found a way to escape—immersing himself in reading “hundreds and hundreds of books” donated to the prison library. “It’s like, what other better way to get it out of your mind?”
Mr. Jackson is one of eight former inmates who graduated on Sept. 27, 2024, from WorkWell’s four-week training for people in transition from prison to employment. His determination to better himself in prison was a factor in his acceptance into the program.
Mr. Jackson said he “was always a good reader” but “never could finish a book unless it was a small book.” During his second imprisonment, however, reading “a page or two here and there” gradually built up to reading a whole chapter, then two chapters.
“Before I knew it, I read throughout the day. It turned into me reading a whole book in a day, sometimes in less than an hour….” Reading helped him transform “a hustler mindset from my neighborhood” into an ability “to look at life different from my normal perspective.”
The new attitude contributed to Mr. Johnson’s release after 18 months of a five-year sentence. And the constant encouragement and positive feedback built into WorkWell’s lessons in self-presentation, character building and job readiness were “like therapy…. They just sprinkled more stardust on me than what I already came home with,” he said. He found courage “to be a better man, not just for myself but for the environment, so I’m not a cancer to the community.”
Before he was arrested, Mr. Jackson “wasn’t listening to positivity…. But that’s the energy I’m gravitating towards, and that energy is gravitating towards me. Because now I’m speaking it to other people. I’ve learned to engage more in positive conversations.”
WorkWell helped Mr. Jackson land a job with Terminix and get interviews for a second job driving commercial trucks.
As part of the graduation process, students create collages expressing their hopes for the future. Mr. Jackson said his “vision board,” in part, reflects a new determination to make better use of his time. “Idle time is the devil’s playground. I always knew this saying,” he said. Now, however, it has new meaning. Since his release, he has been relishing time at home with his son, nine, and daughter, seven. It has meant a lot “seeing them again instead of listening to them on the phone saying they missed me.”
Mr. Jackson credits WorkWell not only for giving him the opportunities to succeed, but for improving his attitude and self-image. “You got a lot of important people that come to WorkWell, from big business and companies and banks and stuff like that,” he said. “There’s teachers, and they help you. They give you everything you need.
“And once you complete it, you’re going to feel better about yourself.”
For more information about donating books to prison libraries, go to freedomreads.org.
