At an N.J. prison, a job fair offers inmates a chance

Robert Fudali stood in the center of a gymnasium at Northern State Prison in Newark on Thursday and gazed into his future.

All around him were the sounds of hope — of prison inmates, like himself, chatting with job counselors as they tried to plan new lives beyond the bars and barbed wire. Fudali, 45, who grew up in Seaside Heights, smiled and stared at the sheaf of papers in his left hand that listed jobs he might land when he is paroled in March.

Then his smile faded.

“I’ve been in jail for 21 years,” said Fudali, who was convicted of aggravated manslaughter after he beat a man to death with a crowbar at a homeless shelter in Trenton on a Friday night in March 1997. “My greatest fear is coming back here. I’ve been incarcerated so long that I don’t want to be a burden on somebody else.”

It is the one of the most perplexing challenges that has bedeviled generations of prison reform advocates and public officials: How to find decent jobs for inmates like Robert Fudali — many of whom have been been convicted of violent crimes — as they prepare to re-enter a world they left years or even decades before.

On Thursday, Northern State Prison, which sits on 43 acres of flat lands just north of Newark Liberty International Airport and is home to nearly 2,400 inmates, sponsored a job fair for 150 to 180 inmates who are scheduled to be released in the coming months.  

Job fairs have long been a staple of college life. In recent years, as the nation's economy has struggled, job fairs for older workers have become familiar sights in hotels, shopping malls and conference centers. 

But job fairs at prisons are a rarity. The state Department of Corrections says it tried to stage a job fair at a prison a decade ago, but few businesses seemed interested and the idea quickly lost favor among state officials.

Now that’s changed, in part because a report by a state legislative committee concluded that the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on in-prison job training for inmates in such trades as carpentry, restaurant management and electrical installation does not necessarily translate into decent jobs on the outside.

“Where we fell short is bridging that gap after prison,” said State Corrections Commissioner Gary Lanigan, who attended Thursday's job fair. “This is one of those efforts. The world outside has to understand that these men are coming back. They’ve made mistakes and many of them are ready to re-enter. It’s a learning curve on the part of society as much as the inmate.”

'We all fall down'

About two dozen organizations showed up for Thursday’s event in the Northern State Prison gymnasium Half were businesses that could offer jobs in construction, hotel maintenance, restaurants, auto sales and other fields. Other groups, including area colleges and such state agencies as the Motor Vehicle Commission, sent representatives to offer advice on how inmates can apply for tuition grants or obtain a driver's license.

Former Gov. Jim McGreevey, who runs the New Jersey Re-Entry Corporation, a nonprofit advocacy group that helps inmates adjust to non-prison life, also came and spent most of the fair's three hours talking with prisoners and offering encouragement.

At least one inmate, Leland Washington, already knew McGreevey.  

Washington, 57, who served 20 years for armed robbery, was paroled and sought help from McGreevey’s group. But several years ago, Washington’s parole was revoked and he was ordered back to prison after he failed a drug test. He said he expects to be released again on parole in August. 

“I just want to get home,” said Washington, whose wife and grown daughters live in Newark.

His prime worry now, he said, is not so much finding a job but landing one that pays a decent salary. “You can get a job,” Washington said. “But can you get a job that is going to help you support your family?”

McGreevey agreed, noting that many former inmates struggle just to pay rent on a meager apartment. 

“We all fall down and we have to get up,” said McGreevey, who could have been speaking about his own fall from political power in 2004 when he resigned as governor,  identifying himself as a "gay American," amid reports that he offered his lover a state homeland security post. 

After leaving Trenton and a promising political career, McGreevey decided to dedicate his life to counseling inmates. His prison re-entry program, which has offices in Jersey City, Paterson, Newark and Toms River, expects to open more branches for former inmates in the coming months in Hackensack, Elizabeth, New Brunswick and Neptune.

“They have to reshape the narrative of their lives,” McGreevey said of the inmates in a brief pep-talk to the job counselors who came to the prison. “If everyone has told you that you’re broken, that you’re a lousy father, that you’re unemployable and not worth anything, you have to begin to change. In modern society, unfortunately, we have a scarlet 'F' for felony. We need to understand the possibility of redemption and transformation. The narratives of their lives shouldn’t be defined by their crimes.”

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Several job counselors said they had come to the fair because they felt a calling to offer jobs to even the most violent inmates.

“We do have a lot of individuals with a history,” said Kathy Newhauser, a human resources manager for the Sodexo Corp., which has nearly 450,000 employees worldwide in jobs ranging from landscaping and hospitals to catering and nursing homes. “It’s all about giving that second chance.”

A drop in recidivism 

Jason Smiley, 33, of East Orange, who expects to be released in April after serving 11 years for manslaughter, told Newhauser he was interested in a landscaping job. Newhauser smiled and gave Smiley a pamphlet that explained how he could apply for a job.

Smiley turned to a fellow inmate, Ronald Fanning, 26, of Trenton, who said he could be released as early as Dec. 30 after serving 10 years for attempted murder.

“You have the best intentions,” Smiley said. “But if you get a 'no' for a job, then there is the temptation to go back to what got you into trouble in the first place.”

Fanning nodded.

“Going back to the world, just getting acclimated, that’s going to be a struggle,” he said.   “You have to get a job that will allow you to take care of yourself.”

“Everything here is free,” Smiley added. “I get free water, free cable, free food. I get paid $30 a month just for being here. When I get out, nothing is free.”

Across the gym, Elizabeth Perez, a manager at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Princeton, encouraged inmates to apply for a variety of jobs, from basic maintenance worker and clerk to bartender and cook.

“I look for somebody who has a smile,” Perez said. “You can train anyone how to use a computer. But you can’t train somebody to have a good personality.”

Whether a job fair like the one held at Northern State Prison will help inmates make the transition to life outside of prison remains to be seen. But perhaps thanks to help from a variety of programs and groups — including McGreevey’s — New Jersey has significantly lowered its prisoner recidivism rates, from almost 48 percent in 1999 to 29 percent this year, according to state statistics. By contrast, the national recidivism rate has hovered around 57 percent for most of the last decade.

Anthony Granata knows he faces difficult odds when he leaves Northern State. He’s now 57 — a grandfather, who once ran a restaurant and construction firm in Westfield before becoming addicted to opioids and being sent to prison six years ago on a drug conviction. He is hoping to be paroled in April.

After chatting with job counselors, Granata started to walk back to his jail cell, then stopped and looked at his fellow inmates lining up to collect pamphlets.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Granata said of leaving prison. “Life is interesting, isn’t it? You never know what’s going to happen.”

Email: kellym@northjersey.com