Former Inmate Buys An Abandoned Prison So People Getting Out Of Jail Have Somewhere To Live
Pressmaster | ShutterstockKerwin Pittman knows how hard it is to secure housing after being released from jail, so he bought an abandoned prison and is renovating it so former inmates can live there when they get out.
Society has a tendency to overlook people when they’re getting out of jail. There’s definitely a stigma that surrounds former inmates, even after they are released.
Being incarcerated is a major interruption to the flow of a person’s life, and they typically need some kind of support as they reenter society. This is especially true of housing. Not all former inmates have family and friends they can lean on, and they’re not exactly in a place where they’re ready to start paying rent right away. Pittman saw this need and is doing what he can to fill it.
A former inmate purchased an old prison and turned it into housing for people being released from jail.
Pittman, the founder and executive director of Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services, Inc. (RREPS), knows how it feels for your entire life to be put on hold while you’re incarcerated. Greg Childress told Pittman’s story for the Citizen Times and shared that he went to prison for eleven and a half years when he was just 18-years-old. Now, he’s bought a prison himself.
Wayne Correctional Center in Goldsboro, North Carolina, a former 400-bed prison, was left abandoned in 2013 in an effort for the state to save money on prison spending. Pittman is the new owner of the facility, and he plans to put it to good use. “I had family support, so I had housing, but a lot of my friends didn’t have any place to go,” Pittman said of the time when he left prison.
Pittman has plans to make the prison a kind of “stabilization phase” for the formerly incarcerated. For six months at a time, up to 300 former inmates could stay in the building, which he is going to renovate so it doesn’t resemble a prison anymore. For those six months, people who had been in jail before would have a safe and stable place to live, while also receiving access to training for jobs.
Pittman hopes the endeavor will benefit former inmates and the community.
He knows firsthand how difficult it can be to secure housing after leaving jail, something Wayne County Commissioner Antonio Williams also testified to. “You can look around and see a lot of people who have been rehabilitated, but they come home, and it’s challenging for them to even have housing, it’s challenging for them to find a job,” he said.
Pittman also hopes his efforts will help Goldsboro residents find their footing again. “Goldsboro is suffering right now with the plague of not only violence, but also poverty,” he said. “It only made sense when this institution came up for sale to purchase it because of all of the other things that are going on in Eastern North Carolina, but also in that area.”
Housing is a huge problem for people when they get out of jail.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 600,000 people are released from state and federal prisons annually, while 9 million go through local jails. That’s a lot of people who need help with basic necessities, like housing.
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However, the Vera Institute, an organization dedicated to reforming the U.S. justice system, reported that people who are released from jail “are often barred from either moving back in with their family members or obtaining their own housing on release due to their arrest and conviction histories — leading many to live on the street or in shelters and become caught in the system again.”
Pittman’s idea could be transformative for the people of North Carolina, but it’s like putting a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. This is a nationwide issue that millions of people face every year. Something needs to change so it’s not so hard for people to do something as simple as secure housing.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
