Staff Photo by Dan Henry
Thaddius Twitty works as a "cutter-helper" at Southern Champion Tray, where he straightens boxes and maintains equipment.

Despite his standard-issue blue prison uniform, despite his convictions for robbery, burglary and carrying a dangerous weapon, Thaddeus Twitty insists he’s not just another criminal.

“I’m not this person,” said the 21-year-old, sitting in Southeastern Tennessee State Regional Correctional Facility in Pikeville exactly five months ago, just before his release.

But the odds were against the Chattanooga native. A recent Tennessee Bureau of Investigation study concluded that 67 percent of the state’s offenders reoffend within three years.

In March 2004, Mr. Twitty pleaded guilty to four counts of felony aggravated robbery, plus aggravated burglary, theft of property, carrying a dangerous weapon and possession of burglary tools.

When he got out of prison in August, having served four years and eight months, Mr. Twitty had no job and an uphill climb to find one. He had no home of his own, so he was forced to move back to the same crime-ridden neighborhood where his problems began as he finished out his sentence on parole.

And, in perhaps the biggest roadblock, no one to tell him what to do.

“We make an average of 125 decisions every day, from what time to get up, when you’ll brush your teeth, etc.,” said Jim Morrow, the warden at Southeastern Regional Correctional Facility.

“In prison, most of those decisions are made for (the inmates). They probably make less than 25 decisions in a day: whether to go to the library, or the gym, or do arts and crafts,” he said.

With no structure, released inmates often fall back into the same bad habits that got them in prison in the first place.

But Mr. Twitty is determined to buck the odds.

“I’ve learned the value of life, the value of freedom,” he said. “We’re like animals in cages here. That’s not something I want in life.”

AUGUST

Richard Bennett couldn’t seem to wipe the smile off his face. The troubled teen he emotionally had adopted as his “son” was about to come home.

“I’m overjoyed,” he said, his eyes fixed on the barbed-wire gate from which Mr. Twitty would emerge in minutes. “I could bust out crying right now.”

When the two met at the YMCA more than eight years ago, Mr. Bennett knew he could take Mr. Twitty — already affiliated with a local chapter of the Crips gang — under his wing. Though the boy had dropped out of school in the sixth grade to sell drugs and lived in a part of Piney Woods in which criminal activity seemed to rule, Mr. Bennett wanted to take on the challenge.

“I’m tired of seeing young men throw their life away,” he said, admitting that he had a checkered past himself, having served time on drug charges. “I saw his potential.”

So even after Mr. Twitty’s 2003 arrest, Mr. Bennett didn’t give up on the young man. Instead, he guided the then-17-year-old through the court system to the best of his ability and started planning for the future.

“When you’re re-entering into society, there has to be a plan,” Mr. Bennett said. For Mr. Twitty, that included a GED program in prison and visions of a job, car and apartment.

Mr. Twitty knows he’s lucky.

“I’ve got a lot of support,” he said.

So when he finally walked out of the prison gate for the last time, wheeling a cart loaded with a few pieces of clothing and other small items, he didn’t look back. He beamed straight at Mr. Bennett.

Though Mr. Twitty’s mother and four brothers did not show up for his release, Mr. Bennett, the man he considers a substitute father, was there to embrace him in the parking lot.

“I love you, son,” Mr. Bennett said.

“I love you too, Dad,” the former Crip replied.

SEPTEMBER

Having been able to buy some new clothes and get settled at his mother’s house, Mr. Twitty was ready to start a new job: motivational speaker for Mr. Bennett’s nonprofit, A Better Tomorrow.

The quiet, reserved young man opened up to children at the Washington School on Sept. 8, warning them against the life choices he’d made. He had been 161⁄2 when he got into trouble.

“It’s easy to get into it, but it’s hard to get out,” he told the students. “It hurts you when you get out of there and you try to get a job with all those felonies on you. ... It’s kind of hard for people to trust you when you get out of prison. They automatically put you as a bad guy.”

Knowing that speaking for a nonprofit a few hours a week wasn’t going to be enough to get him out of Piney Woods, Mr. Twitty immediately started looking for a steady, full-time job when he got out of prison. It wasn’t easy.

Finding employment is one of the biggest challenges facing newly released prisoners, said Tim Dempsey, chief executive officer of Chattanooga Endeavors, a local nonprofit agency focused on job placement for convicts.

“When you get out, you have no ID, no clothing, no cell phone,” Mr. Dempsey said. “Even getting in touch with people to drop off a resume is a problem.”

But even if offenders are able to get over those hurdles through family or other community resources, they still are at a significant disadvantage compared with the general population, he said.

“Only 10 percent of employers in our area knowingly hire former offenders,” he said.

No job means no income, and no income is an easy motivation for relapse, Mr. Dempsey said.

OCTOBER

Mr. Twitty got a probationary second-shift factory job at Southern Champion Tray but had little luck finding his own apartment.

“They do felony checks, and then they turn me down,” he said.

In one instance, he said, a landlord in Red Bank took advantage of the situation by charging him a $180 application fee even after he mentioned his record. But he still couldn’t get an apartment there.

Though he has a bed at his mother’s house in Piney Woods, he said he had to get out of there as soon as possible because he still sees drugs and criminal activity on a daily basis in the neighborhood.

“I don’t even want to stay around that,” he said. “There’s too much stuff going on.”

Good housing placement is key to success for parolees, said Gary Tullock, field services director for the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole. For those who aren’t paroled straight to halfway houses — which includes most parolees in the Chattanooga area — keeping away from old friends and old habits is a necessity, Mr. Tullock said.

Unfortunately, financial constraints limit where most offenders can live, so they tend to migrate to certain neighborhoods, he said.

“These people come out of prison, they have virtually no recent credit history, and they have a conviction on their record,” Mr. Tullock said. “They don’t have contacts in other parts of the city, and they don’t have a social network that might be able to help them overcome that lack of credit history.”

Many times, such as in Mr. Twitty’s case, they end up living in places that are not the best for them, he said.

“But it’s the best that we can do,” he said. “So what we have to do is help them the best we can.

“Do they fail because of where they live? Unfortunately, sometimes they do. They are exposed to things we don’t see every day, and a lot of them don’t have a track record of being able to know how to say ‘no.’”

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER

Mr. Twitty eventually found an apartment, and Mr. Bennett was able to get him a car for going to and from work. He already was planning the first meal he’d cook for himself: “Some greens, some homemade macaroni and cheese, some cornbread. And I’ll probably bake me a little ham.”

Prospects were looking up, as Mr. Twitty conquered several of the six “criminogenic factors” Mr. Tullock said affect former offenders’ success outside prison: drug and alcohol use, mental health, employment, antisocial associates, antisocial attitudes and antisocial behaviors.

“All of these things tend to be linked,” Mr. Tullock said. “The employment drives where they can live. Where they live drives their criminal associations. If they’re broke all the time, their antisocial attitudes are going to change. So if they’re viably employed, it’s like knocking over the first domino. All the other ones are going to fall.”

Mr. Twitty had done so well at work that he’s already made it past his probationary period, said T.W. Francescon Jr., human resources manager at Southern Champion Tray.

Mr. Francescon recalled being impressed enough with him to see more than his criminal record. He hired him for a “cutter helper” position, which involves setting up machines and stacking cut boxes for shipment.

“We believe in second chances here, but it is a case-by-case thing,” he said. “When I interviewed him, he was engaging and confident, but yet he had a humility about his past. I could tell he would do what he needed to do to get beyond that.”

Second shift supervisor Gary Patterson said Mr. Twitty has proven to be one of his most dependable employees.

“He’s on time, Johnny-on-the-spot, eager to learn,” Mr. Patterson said.

JANUARY

It’s been a long five months, but Mr. Twitty thinks he’s made it.

“I’m a man just out here, doing what he’s got to do to survive,” he said with a shrug.

He focuses on the little things: “Being able to wake up on my own in a lovely, soft bed. Being able to cook my own food. Making sure it’s hot, or warm, or however I like it.”

Mr. Twitty believes consequences are key in shaping youth. He said he only now realizes that he should have stayed in school and paid more attention to the kids he hung around.

The day-to-day freedoms he is enjoying are what motivate him to stay on the straight and narrow. He recently celebrated his 22nd birthday without getting into trouble.

“I know if I get caught back up in the streets, I’ll end right back up in jail,” he said.