Inmates who entered the prison system before iPhones, 9-11 and even the dawn of AM talk radio as a political force have a strange world to get used to when their sentences are finished. Sabine Heinlein, author of Among Murderers: Life after Prison, talks to Think host Krys Boyd at noon about the challenges of adjusting to a new society.
Heinlein spent more than two years at the Castle, a popular halfway house in West Harlem, with convicted murderer Angel Ramos and two of his friends as they tried to navigate the daunting first stage of rehabilitation as free men together.
How can we begin to understand what everyday existence is like after spending decades incarcerated? There's a manual provided by the Federal Bureau of Prisons that helps newly released prisoners address basic needs, like searching for jobs and finding assistance programs. It's called the Offender Transition Program Resource Manual.There are careful instructions for how to search different databases for open positions, considering how limited some job searchers' Internet skills might be.
Thing is, those skills are required for so many of the jobs advertised.
Listen to Think from noon to 2 p.m., Monday through Thursday, on KERA 90.1. You can stream the show at kera.org.
