Susanne Seymour had $22 and 48 hours. It was the morning of July 23, 2003, and, near Downtown, she was inhaling her first breaths of free air in three years. Life had been grand just five years ago: Good job as a nursing unit coordinator, a house, car and longtime boyfriend.
This was her first day as Susanne Seymour, ex-felon.
It'd become routine: Her boyfriend would order Percoset, Seymour would pick up his prescription—oblivious, she contends, to the forged physician signatures. A doctor tipped off the cops. One day, in 1998, she went in to Walgreens for the pills and came out with a case: possession of a controlled substance. She pleaded not guilty and remained free for two years. Prosecutors hauled her into court in 2000—one day before the charges would have been dropped. She was jailed for three months, during which time her boyfriend of 26 years, the man who convinced her to leave Florida for Las Vegas in 1974, the main reason she was in this mess and who she now suspects of selling the pills, pulled a Houdini.
So here she was, done repaying her debt to society, a free woman, a parolee, a 42-year-old ex-felon. Scared. Alone. No boyfriend, no family, no friends, no clue how to repair a once-respectable life that included an associates degree in general science (plans for a medical career) and no inkling of how cruel Nevada can be toward ex-felons.
She had the clothes she was wearing, the $21.94 given to the newly released and 48 hours to report to the parole office, lest that be the duration of her freedom. She had neither directions to the office (corrections officials forgot) nor the customary bus ticket (that, too). The clock was ticking, panic setting in. She had to get there, wherever there was.
"I would've crawled to the parole office if I had to," she says. "I was not going back."
Years before the election debacle of 2000 spotlighted the disenfranchisement of ex-felons, Nevada was a poster-state for the practice.
A 1997 American Bar Association report, "One in Seven Black Males Silenced at the Polls," listed ours as one of the 12 worst states for black male ex-felons.
Even with a 2003 law easing the process of restoring rights, things have only marginally improved.
Last year, Nevada finished among the worst 10 states in keeping ex-felons from the ballot box, nearly 5 percent of the population unable to vote due to a felony conviction (4.7 million Americans, more than 2 percent of the adult population, are similarly barred).
But voting is the least of an ex-felon's worries. They've got four months to find a job and a place to live or it's a parole violation—and back to prison.
So some return home, often to the environments that produced their criminal behavior. Others opt for homeless shelters, which some equate to prisons without bars (authoritarian rules), and halfway houses—mixed blessings at best (good for those strong enough to abide by the curfews and the you-must-work-to-earn-your-keep rules, bad for the well-intentioned-but-weak—they're still surrounded by a criminal element—and worse for the irreversibly institutionalized, the folks who simply can't handle the freedom).
You might not say it aloud, but most of you don't want an ex-felon as a neighbor. Witness the NIMBYism surrounding Casa Grande, a transitional house for ex-felons set open next year.
So, for thousands of ex-felons in Nevada, it's back to a life crime and, eventually, to lockup.
"On the first day I was released, I was scared to death," says Sean Smith, once the muscle behind West Las Vegas' biggest cocaine dealers and now director of a nonprofit that reintegrates fellow ex-cons. "I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know if society would accept me or how I would embrace society. I didn't how I was going to buy clothes or eat or if anyone would hire me."
And who wants to hire or work with an ex-felon?
The specter of employing a former criminal deters many employers. Lisa Morris sees this with the clients served through the city's Educational and Vocational Opportunities Leading to Valuable Experience (EVOLVE) reentry program. There's a stigma attached, no matter the crime. Employers certainly don't want the violent, but don't seem overly receptive to the nonviolent (60 percent of the state's 10,000 inmates are serving time for nonviolent offenses), worried they haven't abandoned criminal proclivities. Concedes Morris: "There's lots of skepticism."
Since Nevada neither expunges some convictions, as some states do, nor erases first offenses if a person avoids trouble for a set number of years, the question, that question—have you ever been convicted of a felony?—continually haunts ex-cons. To mark yes or to not mark yes? Which essentially boils down to: To work or not to work? Welcome to their conundrum: Lie and risk being outed after getting the job, or tell the truth and risk not getting the job at all. Seymour fessed up in her first interview.
"The guy said it loudly, 'You are a felon?' I felt this small," she says, placing her thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart. "He kept asking, 'What did you do? What did you do?'"
Created in 2000 and federally funded, EVOLVE immerses 250 ex-felons at a time into intense training and education programs, teaching them everything from Microsoft Office to dressing for interviews to navigating the Internet, all in effort to make them ready for society and the workaday world. The city-run program is one of a handful servicing the thousands of ex-felons released each year (for years, Nevada Partners and Nevada Business Services have run comprehensive reentry initiatives).
They could alway lie when it comes to that question, right? Folks would be none the wiser. No harm, no foul.
Well, yes and no. There's no state statute, per se, that says an ex-felon can have their parole revoked for fibbing on application. That changes, says Roy Guirlani, manager for the state Department of Parole and Probation's Fugitive, Interstate Compact and Pre-Release Unit, if the person is seeking certification, say, for a medical license. They'd be obtaining said license under false pretenses.
"What we tell ex-felons is that this is a right-to-work state, and if you lie to your employer, they have a right to fire you," says Guirlani, echoing Morris' assertion that finding a job can be difficult for ex-felons in Nevada. "It's really tough to place violent offenders and sex offenders. If you want to fully rehabilitate them, you have to get to get them a job. But when many employers hear they are violent or sex offenders, they say no thank you."
Not that there are prolific job prospects for parolees anyway. They're banned from nearly two dozen fields, including veterinary medicine, mortgage brokering and landscape architecture; they have no chance of being a cop. There is some solace for ex-felons: the 2003 law that eased repatriation does removes various employment restrictions and allows them to serve on ... civil juries.
For John Allen, it was matter of time. Twelve years ago, he was a 20-year-old with a chip on his shoulder. Part-time drug dealer, full-time asshole. Devoted roughhouser. The kind of boys-will-be-boys hellion who might straighten out with a swift kick, if only someone had the balls and a spare foot. One night, he flashed a gun at some guys thumping his buddies outside a bar. He was charged with felony menacing and brandishing a weapon.
"They came and got me when I was in bed with my wife and newborn," says Allen, whose kind eyes, portly shape and courtly demeanor belie his former image. "At the time, my dad was a cop. He came to the door with six other cops and arrested me. He didn't say anything. He was doing his job, but I hated him for a long time."
Though the conviction stuck, a judge reduced his punishment to time served—12 days. Sure enough, he returned to form. The wife bounced, leaving him with their two children. Bartending was barely paying the bills and, as a father, he couldn't continue selling drugs. His parents were in Vegas.
For 18 months, he worked security in a downtown casino. That was before a spat with a boss. Now he's on the job hunt, looking for stability. "I've got two mouths to feed," he says.
And to be an ex-felon in an interview is like walking a tightrope with size-20 shoes.
How do you explain away a felony gun conviction? How do you convince people you're no longer a hothead? How do you alleviate people's fears that, as soon as something goes wrong, you'll explode?
If you're John Allen, you put on your best manners, even though it doesn't always work. And you apply for familiar jobs, bartending and janitorial work, even though you get turned down. Fair or not, the perception is, once a criminal, always a criminal. He's worried and frustrated.
"There are a lot of people out there looking for the same thing that I am," he says, "and they don't have a felony conviction."
It's a Friday, and the air is Louisiana-humid—balmy, heavy. Thunder crackles and rain drizzles, washing dust off a dozen cars in the parking lot of Teamsters Local 631.
At a voter-registration drive for ex-felons organized by the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, Democratic Assemblywoman Chris Guinchigliani is addressing a normal-looking crowd, 30 or so folks, blacks, whites and Hispanics, old and young, a guy in "Devoe" campaign T-shirt folding flyers to be passed out to the attendees.
Her talk hits on a dozen or so aspects of Nevada's rigid repatriation process and her tooth-and-nail battle in the last legislative session to change it. Prior to to July 1, 2003, ex-felons had to petition the governor or the courts for the return of their voting rights. Guinchigliani's bill, passed last year, immediately restores voting rights to ex-felons honorably discharged from probation or parole, pardoned by the governor or released before July 1, 2003 (those released after must showing discharge, pardon or release papers). Getting the landmark legislation passed took much reconfiguring—jettisoning clause (those convicted of category B felonies with bodily harm must go petition the judiciary) after clause (restoring the right to bear arms), making the result a law that's altogether needed but still flawed.
(Assembly support was universal, but several state senators, philosophically opposed to repatriation, obstructed and, ultimately killed the original bill. Giunchigliani reworked the legislation into acceptability with the help of one of the dissenters, Republican Dennis Nolan).
Judging from the audience questions, most were ex-felons. All said more needs to be done.
Why, a black woman asked, can't ex-felons own guns? Guinchigliani called it a "poison pill" likely to doom any repatriation bill.
From a black man: Does the law affect those convicted of federal offenses? She thinks so.
And a Latina: Didn't her law eliminate the need for ex-felons to register?
Yes.
Then why is Clark County still enforcing the practice?
A black man says Metro recently arrested him for not registering.
Guinchigliani: "The county is illegally violating the law."
Why, a white man wondered, after nine years of being able to vote, is he now being denied?
Guinchigliani: Each month, Metro sends the felony records to the election department and much of the information is wrong. All he has to do is show his discharge paper. Thirty-four states don't require the added step of showing discharge documents.
The queries kept coming: Can records be sealed? (Yes.) If they're sealed, do I have to mark "yes" on the felony question? (No.) Can we stop carrying our ex-felon registration cards? (Only those who committed crimes before July 1, 2003.)
"You guys are working me," Guinchigliani tells them. "I see I have more work to do."
Freedom, Shawn Smith says, kills as many spirits as incarceration. "Three hots and cot and someone telling you what to do is easier ... It doesn't require you to think." Prison becomes a way of life.
Smith is in EVOLVE's headquarters, a small, strip-mallish complex of one-story buildings on Stella Lake Drive, just east of Martin Luther King Boulevard. Open the door and there are three people seated at the help desk, including a badged and uniformed woman, gun holstered on her right hip. Smith's in his office. He is big man, and the muscles of his gym-rat days have mostly retreated, replaced by girth now. He hum-speaks and has a habit of closing his eyes when he laughs. He's a joy to watch when animated: the arched eyebrows, hand gestures, the "let me show you thises," as he rifles through papers for evidence to prove a point.
If you lived in West Las Vegas in the '80s, you probably knew Smith, or knew of him. Back then, he was "S-Man." The "S" could've stood for semiautomatic. A 320-pound enforcer for the Westside's biggest drug kingpins. Able to beat you up or gun you down—"I mastered every kind of firearm there was."
Sentenced to 17-and-a-half years on conspiracy and weapons charges, Smith paroled out in eight (several charges were dropped) and points to a pristine prison record as evidence he wasn't a typical inmate and wouldn't be a typical Nevada ex-con: never thrown in the hole, written up or mixed up in the gang clashes, race riots, stabbings, inmate uprisings; aced his progress reports; became a Toastmaster; mentored the hard-core.
Through his nonprofit group, Guiding Individuals From Trouble Inc. (G.I.F.T.), he handles reentry programming for EVOLVE, Nevada Partners and the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board.
Smith attacks the three-headed monster that is jobs/homes/life skills via a bevy of services like resume-writing, job-readiness, mentoring and self-help workshops.
"These things are interconnected. How are they going to afford a place to live with no job? How are they going to hold a job without the appropriated life and job skills?
"If someone has been away five, 10, 15 years, there's a lot of pressure on them to make it on the outside," Smith continuies. "Some have to pay fines or restitution or child support or have substance-abuse and anger-management issues. After 30 or 40 days, the honeymoon is over and their support system is getting impatient. 'It's time for you to get a job,' they'll say. The person tries, but doors get slammed in his face. He had no real skills when he went in and none when he came out."
So much of what he teaches is independence, as prison can siphon a person's do-it-yourself ethos. Succeeding on the "outs," as the outside world is called, requires thinking unconventionally, a daunting task for those whose thinking has been done for them. While living in a box, Smith dreamed of living a life "outside the box," without a script but with a plan.
As it happened, he brainstormed G.I.F.T. while working as a garbage man, and completed 90 hours of real estate school—"in case I ever got fired." Next came pro-bono work for Nevada Partners, helping 300 ex-offenders with re-entry—"to show I was committed to helping." No better way to do so than by working for free.
"I had 300 people's undivided attention," he says. "If this is what I wanted to do, this was the right thing to do."
The saying goes, "pimpin' ain't easy." Well, it was second nature for Craig Kess, whose hometown of San Francisco (and nearby Oakland) produced some of the nation's most legendary skin-hustlers.
With a mouth slicker than a Texas oil salesman, Kess talked girls into the "game" and out of their money. "My weapon was my mouth."
His other talent was cooking. In Vegas, he found a place for both skills. Cook by day, pimp—with four girls on his roster—by night. It was easy.
"I've always been able to talk to women, to get them to do what I want ... make that money," says Kess.
Three years ago, in a strip club, he beat a man with a bottle. Home for the next three years: High Desert and Indian Springs correctional facilities.
"I'd been in jail before, been shot at and shot back, but I'd never been locked down. I couldn't imagine being locked up. Being told to when to wake up, to move your balls, to cough, spread your ass cheeks, being locked in a room with another man. You can't fathom living like that," says Kess, who initially gravitated to the pimps and hustlers before isolating himself and working on self-improvement. "I waited until age 43 to go prison. I couldn't even cry. I didn't know if I was afraid or not."
December 2003: He's dropped off with a box of his belongings, $22 and 48 hours. He called his mom on the cell phone she'd sent. Told her he was petrified. Would later tell her that Vegas' homeless shelters are just like prisons—restrictive, full of broken dreams. That employers were leery of ex-cons. That it was a struggle to keep the defeatist attitudes he'd encountered in prison—he couldn't fulfill his dreams, he couldn't be a cook—from winning.
"People used to come by my cell all the time and ask why I didn't come out. I said, 'Because I'm not like you, and I don't like you,'" he says. "I was headstrong. I wasn't going back."
The pimp game lost its allure. God, he says, had taken over, leading him in another direction, away from the strip clubs and hotel bars—after awhile, he was scared to visit those places—and into the arms of a spiritually grounded woman, a great church and a comprehensive ex-felon re-entry program, EVOLVE. There, people put his resolve—and mouth—to the test. In order to get a bus pass to apply for jobs, he had to provide copies of his birth certificate and Social Security card. Which meant needling his mom about finding each document. To get that chef's outfit, he had to type up a resume—no easy task for a hunt-and-peck typist—and get his high school and college transcripts. EVOLVE purchased hundreds of dollars of cooking equipment, including a set of expensive knives. Now he had no excuses.
Explains EVOLVE administrator Lisa Morris, an analyst in the city's Neighborhood Services Department: "You've got to give people the opportunity to do the right thing. If you don't help the individual, they are going to go right back to what they know. What can you do with a $21 check?"
Sometimes, to help someone, you have to push them out of their own way.
"If you don't want to help yourself," says Kess, who now cooks at UNLV and an Italian restaurant, "can't nobody help you."
Brian Kennison had a good support system. Three weeks out of prison and, thanks to family connection, he had a job with a plumbing company.
Having a place to rest his head hasn't been an issue either—first it was with his stepdad, now with his girlfriend. Kennison was recently certified to service and repair air-conditioning and heating systems.
Not a bad life for someone who started at a deficit.
Kennison started drinking at an early age, early teens, as best he can recall. Says he has trouble remembering important events in detail. Like the night in June 2000 that turned him into a felon: Went to a bar, got into a fight, pulled a gun, held patrons hostage, tussling ensued, got arrested. A doozy of a first offense, for sure, but he still he figured, at most, he'd get probation. Nope: three years, two months in prison.
"I really didn't know what to expect. You quickly learn to follow the rules and avoid trouble," Kennison says.
Freedom has required a similarly tough adjustment.
It's taken time to acclimate to thinking independently, to get used to crowds, to stop looking over his shoulder, to smile freely. The city grew leaps and bounds while he was gone. It's taken time to find out where friends have moved to and how to get there. Yes, growth has brought more jobs, but that doesn't mean more opportunities for ex-felons. A person needs to feel useful, valued, treated with respect. Kennison is lucky to have stepped out of prison and into loving arms. Many of the men he lived with in prison don't have that luxury. Their freedom is a short-lived, harrowing vacation.
"Inside, everyone talks about what they want to do when they get out. I wanted to be able to see different things and to have different foods. I love steak, and I knew it'd be a long time before I had good steak again," he says. "Many of them don't have dreams. They died in prison."
Jackie Crawford is embarrassed. The state's director of prisons is admitting, in front of 30 people at a press conference, that the state, "doesn't really prepare" ex-felons for release.
"We give them $21 and send them on their way," she tells folks gathered in late July at the West Las Vegas Arts Center for the unveiling of the quizzically named Casa Grande (Spanish for "the big house"), a $21-million transitional house where ex-felons will be required to undergo drug treatment, find work and pay rent ($16 a month). It'll hold 400 nonviolent male inmates and open in July 2005. "The parole board gives inmates four months to find a job and living quarters. As a result, a lot of people have their parole revoked."
The general feeling is that Casa Grande will help, particularly with reducing recidivism, and any help given to ex-felons is welcome. (Ridge House in Reno treats drug-addicted ex-felons and, in the early '90s, had a 22 percent recidivism percent among its 76 clients, three times lower than the state's overall 64 percent rate. Depending on the jurisdiction, national recidivism rates range from 43 percent to 75 percent).
Smith is here for the ceremony. Something he said at an earlier visit comes to mind. Without changing the laws, everything—transitional homes, re-entry programs, working with employers to hire ex-offenders—is essentially a stopgap, like putting "Band-Aid on a gunshot wound." The law, he says, "is where the fight is." Mandatory minimum sentencing must go. Three-strikes laws, too, as well as incarcerating scores of nonviolent offenders. Reduce the prison population and you reduce the need for stopgaps.
Repatriation must be made easier. Employment barriers removed. Give ex-felons jobs and you give them a reason to live life in bounds, you help prevent them from returning to crime. We diss them at our own peril. Says Smith: "People with hiring and firing power, who may be sympathetic to ex-felons, often don't see applications."
Giunchigliani's bill opened job options for ex-felons, lifting restrictions that prevented them from working in industries with no connection to their crime. "You obviously don't want a child-abuser getting a child-care license—but that doesn't mean this person can't work in bank." Still, many state licensing boards prohibit ex-felons from consideration, something done years ago, she says, "to protect the professions."
"You need to look at the crime, how long people have been clean, what is a felony—it varies by state ... this should be looked at a federal level so these laws are consistent across the nation," Guinchigliani says. "We need to make it simple to manuever through the process (of re-entry)."
These changes, if they ever occur, will take time, and time is exactly what Susanne Seymour doesn't have. "My options are limited. I'm not going to have a career career."
She's worked in hospitals, done day labor, driven big rigs. These days, she delivers flowers. "I don't dare quit ... I gotta eat."
Of course, she found the parole office in time, it was around the block. On the way there, she bought a salad, her first official act of freedom. "I hadn't had one in so long, I forgot what they looked like."
Sometimes, she wishes she hadn't found the office. Not that she wants to go back—"although I did learn in prison that I was a stuck-up bitch and somewhat racist ... I befriended so many black girls"—but the halfway house she went to was just like prison, only with male ex-felons and an atmosphere thick with trouble.
"There's a lot of flirting going on," she says. "It's like they're setting us up to fail."