By Elizabeth Coss

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Every year, about 800 individuals are released from prisons and seek residency in the Mahoning Valley. Many of these individuals face limited employment, housing and educational opportunities post-incarceration.

Dionne Dowdy-Lacey, co-founder of United Returning Citizens, said everyone deserves second chances.

“United Returning Citizens is a one-stop shop of re-entry that supports not only the client but their family,” Dowdy-Lacey said. “The No. 1 barrier we see is housing and workforce.”

One of the URC’s successful partnerships is with the Mahoning Valley Manufacturing Coalition, which links individuals who complete training directly to employers. Additionally, URC offers its own education program called URC Grows.

“We had seen a lot of people that were incarcerated [because of] cannabis, and we saw how much [revenue] the cannabis world makes,” Dowdy-Lacey said.

Through URC Grows, returning citizens learn business management, horticulture and plant care, and how cannabis use can aid medically for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“[The program] is anything from management, to security, to technology, to horticultural, to food. It’s a lot of things that people don’t know of that comes with the horticulture of growing and learning about cannabis,” Dowdy-Lacey said.

Some success stories Dowdy-Lacey mentioned have come from the URC Grows program, where one graduate was hired by a marijuana distribution center. Another, Carshara Bradley, now juices fruits, vegetables and more to create healthy drink options.

Bradley is the former housing specialist and community engager for URC but also juices for friends, family and even the food drives URC hosts. Now she runs it like a business.

“I told myself when I get to 40, I want to eat healthy and try to at least get on the journey of getting my health intact. So I started juicing for Miss Dionne, and just seeing different things with my skin and my hair and how it makes my body and energy feel,” Bradley said. “I started with her, and now anyone who wants me to juice, I take orders. I sell jars of healthy drinks or whatever drink you would like.”

Bradley said being a returning citizen empowers her to help others in the community, especially since she experienced difficulties firsthand in finding housing and has noticed many experiencing homelessness.

“I always wanted to be a homeowner. I never knew the avenues and which road to take,” Bradley said. “The main thing for housing is trying to find placements for people that are coming home from prison. The homelessness is really starting to bother me. [We’re] starting to see a lot of people outside just on the streets, [and we’re] trying to find different avenues and different resources.”

Expungement Clinics

Bradley said finding a home and a job is harder for individuals with records, so the URC pushes its expungement clinics publicly so that some individuals can have convictions cleaned or removed from state and federal records.

“[URC will] do three to four clinics a month, expungement clinics, so that also helps because once you get your record clean, then you can go for the career you like, or that you’ve always wanted to do,” Dowdy-Lacey said.

Each clinic hosts about 20 to 25 people and walks them through the complete expungement process. According to Dowdy-Lacey, there are roughly 1,100 collateral sanctions excluding formerly incarcerated individuals from many jobs.

“You can’t become a barber, a nurse or the nurse’s aid. It’s so many things that we’re excluded from,” Dowdy-Lacey said. “If you did ever want to be a nurse, but you were 19 and got into a fight – but now you know better, [and if] you have skill sets and tools to handle your emotions, I think you should be given a second chance.”

Nina Shutack, URC’s reentry social worker and development coordinator, said the URC served about 3,000 Valley residents across its programs last year. Of the nearly 800 people coming to the Valley from prison yearly, nearly 67% are Black.

“The majority of who we serve are African Americans. They feel like they can trust us here because we’re African American led,” Shutack said. “They know we’re not going to judge them. Many people here … are involved in the criminal justice system, and a lot of people here have experienced it firsthand.”

Shutack said the expungement clinics URC hosts are successful, with 75% of people approved at each clinic to have their records cleared.

“Even our HR person, he went to our expungement program, got his conviction expunged, was able to go to college, was able to get a management position at one of his companies. So it just shows how impactful that is to someone,” Shutack said.

Every expungement clinic hosted by the URC is free and has an attorney available to determine if a record can be cleaned. Participants should bring a copy of their records.

Participants may be eligible for expungement for certain misdemeanors if all fines are paid off and if there are no current charges active against them.

For more information about the URC, upcoming clinics and additional programming, email info@unitedreturningcitizens.org.

Elizabeth Coss is the president of the Society for Collegiate Journalists at Youngstown State University and communications coordinator at Oak Hill Collaborative. This article was written as part of her journalism capstone project at YSU.

Pictured at top: Dionne Dowdy-Lacey, co-founder of United Returning Citizens.