CARBONDALE - Ty Marshall had his deposit and was ready to go get his keys when the landlord told him he didn't want to rent to him after all.

He had a job interview that went well, ending with "you'll hear from us soon." He never did.

He has done his prison time, but his felony conviction continues to haunt him.

The Johnston City resident said it would help if potential landlords and employers would be up front and tell him right away if they don't intend to rent to him or hire him. It would help him even more, he said, if more people would give him a second chance.

Marshall is one of about 33,000 adult parolees trying to re-enter society in Illinois today, according to an Illinois Department of Corrections Re-entry Hearing Advisory released Tuesday. In Southern Illinois, the highest-impact region is in Jefferson County, where there are currently 105 adults on parole.

The Statewide Community Safety and Re-entry Commission and Working Group, made up of community stakeholders, elected officials, law enforcement officers, human service providers and representatives of IDOC and the Illinois Department of Human Services, are in the process of designing a comprehensive re-entry system that will help parolees avoid relapsing into criminal behavior, the release stated.

"The state's rising recidivism rate is a long-term public safety and public policy challenge," said IDOC Director Roger Walker, noting that finding a solution to help inmates reintegrate is crucial.

Beth Spezia, WSIU Outreach and Ready to Learn coordinator, said a

recent grant from the First United Methodist Church in Carbondale for Mission Programs has helped her launch an awareness campaign designed to raise public understanding of the problems facing inmates and to help area organizations providing services to former inmates or their families to network more effectively.

"What we're trying to do is get the right agencies with each other," she said, noting that housing and employment are two of the biggest issues facing newly released inmates, but that health and education can be factors for success as well.

Overall, she said, faith is key.

"There has to be a sort of redemption," she said.

Marshall, as a case in point, said if he succeeds in reintegrating into society, his resurrected faith in Jesus Christ will be the reason why.

There was a time, and not long ago, when Marshall owned a remodeling business. Now he makes entry-level wages building pole barns on a schedule that can have him working sunrise to sunset. It's a hard job, he said, but he's grateful to have it.

"I'm starting over, and I understand that," he said.

For Marshall, it started when he met methamphetamine. Within three months, Marshall said, he lost everything and ruined his life.

"I'm glad for what I went through because I needed to get fixed," he said. He credits his faith for getting him through his prison ordeal, and for providing the bulwark he will need to climb back into society and stay there.

"I met this girl and she asked me if I wanted to do a line," he said, speaking about the few months before his prison sentence began. "I thought it was just speed. It was meth."

Within less than three months, Marshall, then 38, was stealing anhydrous ammonia, making meth, and living in motels to avoid the police. He was arrested on Jan. 31, 2002, as he attempted to steal anhydrous ammonia in Washington County.

After a 10-mile chase and a night spent up a tree hiding from drug dogs, Marshall resigned himself to the inevitable - he was going to prison. He was initially threatened with his choice of 16 years in prison or facing federal charges. In the end, he was sentenced to three years plus parole.

Marshall served his time at various prisons in Illinois. At all of them, he said, he found that what he did to change his behavior while in prison was up to him.

"The system just treats you like a cow," he said. "Rehabilitation is a choice you make. It's a choice you make every day when you wake up and put your feet on the floor."

Marshall said those who took the initiative had educational opportunities and the possibility of in-prison employment - programs to help you if you want help, he said. However, it was just as possible, he said, to sit all day long "bumming cigarettes and coffee and watching television."

For Marshall, the biggest change he made in prison was reaffirming his Christianity.

"God was basically saying, 'That's enough, Ty.' He took away everything I had. But I was more free in prison than I had ever been on the outside."

Marshall said he knew God had forgiven him - he could feel it, he said. But he also knew society would not be as quick.

"They have it so set in society's head that once someone breaks the law, they'll do it again," he said. "I know a lot of inmates do screw up - it's in their heads, too. And 90 percent of society wants nothing to do with you. Five percent will look you in the face and say, 'Yes, we'll give you a chance,' but they don't mean it. Five percent will actually help."

Marshall was released from prison and put on parole on Jan. 20. He said it is a challenge to get over "being institutionalized" - having every decision, from when you will walk to when you will sit, eat, talk or sleep, made for you. He said driving a car for the first time after almost three years of relative isolation was "scary."

The biggest problems, though, reared up before he even left prison. He was told he had to have a place to go before he could be released. If he couldn't find a place, he would have to serve the entire time, including what was set aside for parole. On that schedule, he'd be in prison until 2007.

"You learn that you better straighten up, because they won't do it for you," he said.

He wrote to six homeless shelters in the area as he prepared for his release day. A Carbondale shelter wrote him back to say absolutely no. Most of the others didn't even answer.

A shelter in Herrin did. At first they told him no because his was a drug offense. Eventually, they agreed to save a bed for him. Marshall said he couldn't even give them an exact arrival date because a release date can fluctuate.

If not for the intervention of Al Johnson, his teacher in school at the prison, and John Holmes, of Prisoner and Family Ministries of Lutheran Social Services, he said he may not have had even that one bed.

"It's hard for a person with a felony conviction to find a place to stay that is affordable and safe," Holmes said. "There is a tremendous stigma."

Holmes referred to several programs that help ex-inmates. However, he said rehabilitation is not first on the agenda in the state's prisons.

"Correctional facilities aren't about correcting and most aren't about rehabilitating," he said. "They are about incarceration."

Holmes said restorative justice - the kind that involves society not only in the punishment but also in the return to society - is necessary for public safety.

"One of the benefits of helping people coming out of prison is that we are less likely to be the victims of crime," he said. "A person with a good support group - those that can help offer encouragement, affordable housing and gainful employment - will be more successful. Church groups can be a big help. Right now, a person takes the punishment and after release, they continue to be punished."

Marshall said when he was released, he was taken to a bus stop and dropped off with the "box of junk" he had accumulated. The $10 bus fare he said he was supposed to receive never appeared.

The shelter gave him 30 days to find employment and a place to live, he said. He got a 10-speed bicycle and rode to all the fast food restaurants he could. He job hunted through the newspaper, the unemployment office and with the encouragement of his parole officer. He put in about 50 applications, he said. His shelter stay was extended because he did maintenance and repair work there.

Finally, he got a job at McDonalds. Shortly before he was due to start, he got an offer from A-1 Buildings in Marion. He chose A-1.

"I haven't made $7 an hour since I was 16 years old," he said, musing on how a series of bad choices led him from successful self-employment to entry-level wages and a motel room for a home at 41 years old.

He is frustrated, but more diffident than bitter. He said his new-found faith in Jesus will help him deal with whatever comes his way, and he is grateful for the progress he has made in the three months since his release. He said his life is changed. He has seen too many inmates, he said, who changed while inside prison and reverted to old lifestyles when they were back in the world.

"If I can't make it on my own, I'm going to run and get help," he said. "I don't want all that junk (that goes with the drug-user lifestyle)."

Marshall said he understands that employers and landlords have legitimate concerns about welcoming aboard former inmates.

"I hate to say this, but even in my own head, when I was employing people myself, I'd be skeptical about someone who was an ex-con," he said. "I knew when I was getting out that I was doomed. It's so easy to lose your freedom and so hard to get it back."

The IDOC is holding a public hearing on the subject of prisoner re-entry at 6:30 p.m. on April 25 at Rend Lake Community College in Ina.

A screening of "Life on the Outside" a documentary focused on the problems ex-inmates face, will be held at 7:30 p.m. on April 25 at the Unitarian Fellowship in Carbondale.

For more information about the public awareness campaign and ways to get involved in crime prevention or prisoner re-entry, call Beth Spezia at (618) 453-5595.

andrea.hahn@thesouthern.com

618-529-5454 x15076