Every year in Ohio, more than 20,000 people are released from prison —1,500 in Montgomery County alone.
When they return to the community, they often have trouble finding jobs, housing, education and mental health services.
The Center for Community Voices started a series called ReEntry Stories to give them the chance to tell their stories by presenting conversations between people who were once in prison.
The series is produced by Mary Evans who joins us in this WYSO Weekend excerpt to talk about the fifth season.
Jerry Kenney: This is WYSO Weekend on 91.3 WYSO. I'm Jerry Kenney and very pleased to be joined in studio by Mary Evans, a producer with the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices. Mary, how are you?
Mary Evans: I'm great. How are you?
Kenney: Great. It's been a long time since we've had a chance to chat, and today we're going to talk about ReEntry Stories, which is starting a brand-new season.
Evans: Yeah, we're in Season 5. It's been an amazing journey being here. I never thought that coming here as a Miller Fellow I'd be where I am today. So I'm so thankful for the opportunities that WYSO gives me. And, it's really exciting. The season's a little something different than what I've done before.
Kenney: It's incredible. Yeah. Can you just, for our listeners, remind us of how you became involved with the station?
Evans: Yes. Essentially while I was incarcerated - I'm a system impacted individual - I was incarcerated at Dayton Correctional Institution, and at the time, Antioch College was coming in doing an Inside-Out Program headed by Professor Emily Steinmetz. At the time, she's from faculty, and I just started writing to a bunch of colleges. I ended up getting a full ride to Antioch - paroled to them, and they had this little job fair thing. They had like Miller Fellowship positions. WYSO held a couple of those positions. I applied. I sat down with Neenah Ellis and the music director Juliet Fromholt, and they were like, "Don't sit down with anyone else. We want you!" And I started here January 2018 and I've been here ever since.
"All these stories have impacted me somehow and have opened up my eyes and gave me a different perspective of how I could potentially be of service to those who are returning."
Kenney: That's great. And I hear that you pitched the idea of ReEntry Stories as a series.
Evans: Yes, I did. So. Neenah was gung-ho like, 'Why did I want to do radio? What did I see as my future?' And I told her I just wanted to give space to folks who were like myself. And she was like, 'What does that look like?' And I said, I just want people to be able to tell their stories because I felt like, I mean, I still feel like I'm a successful story of a formerly incarcerated, and there's so many other people out there that have done bigger things that I have, and I just never heard anyone else doing that or giving space to that and I just wanted to do that.
Kenney: Let's talk about some of the stories and the people that you've met over the last five seasons and the impact that it's had on you since the inception of this series.
Evans: Yeah. So the first season was amazing. I participated in the advanced job training program at Sinclair. I interviewed some individuals who had completed college education courses with them and came home to be really successful. One of my favorites is Jan Newport, who's also working at the Montgomery County Office of Reentry. She came home. She now has her master's in social work. She's doing really great work over there and helping returned citizens and system impacted individuals navigate spaces for when they come home, helping them with all kinds of resources. Terry Green from Columbus. He has an amazing nonprofit called Think Make Live Youth that's big on advocacy for juvenile system impacted individuals. And what I really liked about his story is he got all of his charges, every bit of them exonerated or expunged. And we're often told, folks like myself, that you can only get one charge [removed] and he got all of them.
So that gave me inspiration, hope to move forward with my background and be able to, like open up a whole different level of doors and opportunities for me. And then I would say the last season that I produced the Fringe Coffeehouse in Hamilton and the things that they're doing up there, providing employment from the inside out and wraparound services from the inside out. It's kind of like been an inspiration for some of the work I did in my previous job and what I'm doing now. All these stories have impacted me somehow and have opened up my eyes and gave me a different perspective of how I could potentially be of service to those who are returning.
Kenney: Have you had feedback from not only people involved in the production of these five seasons, but people outside who have heard these stories and got to walk in other’s shoes?
Evans: Yeah, sure. So I've got a lot of feedback. Some of it's not as great as you would want it to be. There's a lot of folks who didn't understand why WYSO was giving space to individuals like myself and thinking that we are still stuck in this criminal behavior or this criminal mindset. But for the most part, overall, I'd say that's probably 5% of the feedback. 95% has been like, It's great. I've learned so much. I mean, working with Neenah Ellis on this project, she'd say to me often, 'I've learned so much. I didn't even know that this happened. I didn't know that this was something that could potentially happen. I didn't know that these things even existed in that kind of community.' I've had community members who were very supportive and given me ideas.
That's kind of like where I got the idea to do something with the Ohio Innocence Project. I was at a fund drive. It was one of our volunteers, and we were talking about people who are wrongfully convicted and they're like 'you should really do a show on that' and I took it from there was like 'Well, if that's what the volunteers who spend time here to help us out here at the station want to hear, and maybe there's people that want to hear that stuff, too.'
And with this season, I learned so much because I wasn't wrongfully convicted. I actually did what I was charged with but at the same time, to just sit around and think about 962 years of wrongfully convicted years that people have served in the state of Ohio, that speaks volumes for how unjust the system could be and I just want to kind of shed light on that. Usually it's about successes and how ever these people still have their own success, it's about the trials and tribulations that they went through to get that.
Kenney: That, regardless of the circumstances around someone's incarceration. I imagine it's difficult to tell stories when you're not used to being a storyteller. Perhaps. So how do you approach someone?
Evans: I would say looking back and on all the seasons, it's that relatable experience. And so I just tell them I just want to have a conversation. And with conversations, when you're telling me about what led up to the events and where you got to now, that's ultimately storytelling, you know? So that's kind of like how I step into it. I just have genuine, compassionate, empathetic conversations with these individuals, and it's really good for me to get a different perception of what other people endured. So I'm able to share my relatable experience. They share theirs. I learn a lot from them, and I'm just thankful that people trust me with their stories to be able to share them with everyone else who's listening.
Kenney: Let's talk about the new season. We're going to listen to one here in just a bit. But what's going to take place throughout? I think you have five episodes for the season total.
Evans: Six. First is Tara Rosnell. She is the board chair. She was actually a corporate attorney for Procter Gamble, left the corporate lawyer space and became a volunteer at Ohio Innocence Project. Their main mission is just to free anyone in Ohio who's innocent of a crime that they've been allegedly charged guilty of.
We'll hear from Rachel McMillen, who is a professor, and she works with the Ohio Innocence Project and brings in some of the exonerees to speak to her students.
And we'll meet some exonerees, some wonderful people, Richard Horton and Robert McLendon and Nancy Miller, and just all these amazing people who have this sort of resilience that I kind of find admirable and to see how positive they are after the fact. I don't know that I would not have resentments, especially after doing 25 to 30 years in prison for something that I ultimately did not do. Just to see their resilience and just how they carry on through life. And I mean, it's just it's inspiration. It's amazing. Makes me think about the little things that I hold on to has nothing to do with the magnitude of what they go through.
