Todd Schulenberg dreams of running his own painting business, but after he was released from prison for the fourth time in April he was struggling with money.

Similar struggles, he said, led to his robbing a bank in 2004.

“I wake up every morning thinking about doing crimes,” Schulenberg, 40, said this spring. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it.”

Today he is enrolled at the University of Phoenix in Madison and working to obtain a business start-up loan from the Madison Development Corporation — both through connections he made in a program aimed at helping recently released prisoners re-enter society.

The Journey Home project, funded by the United Way of Dane County and run by Madison-area Urban Ministry, seeks to help former prisoners find work, secure housing, go back to school and get drug, alcohol or mental health treatment.
“We don’t want these individuals to be waiting (for services), because we know that public safety could be jeopardized if they have to wait,” said Angela Jones, director of community impact for the United Way.

Started in late 2005, the program is too new to gauge its long-term effect on recidivism. Initial results are promising, however. As of the end of June, 135 of the 713 prisoners (18.9 percent) released into Dane County in 2008 had returned to prison, compared to nine of 106 (8.5 percent) Journey Home participants.

Program participants may be more likely to succeed because participation is voluntary. But based on those numbers, the United Way has already added about $40,000 to the program this year — nearly doubling its funding — to try to reach everyone coming out of prison into Dane County.

Personal connection

The Journey Home offers the type of personal case management that state probation officers were able to provide in the 1970s and 1980s, before a dramatic increase in the number of parolees in the last 15 years, said Terry Marshall, president of the Wisconsin Council of Community Corrections.

“You really need to know a lot about what people need, and you need to have the time to establish a relationship in which they’ll tell you,” Marshall said.

A major factor in what makes the Journey Home effective, according to past participants, is the personal connection program director Jerome Dillard makes with ex-offenders. Dillard himself served time for forgery more than a decade ago.

James Davis, 39, who now works for UW Hospital, spent 14 years in prison for multiple counts of armed robbery. In 2005, three months after his release, while participating in Journey Home and strapped for cash, he got to a point where, he said, he wanted to get a gun and commit an armed robbery.

Instead, he went to see Dillard, who reminded him of what life is like in prison: mail calls where your name isn’t called; days so hot the walls sweat.

“He made me remember all this stuff, and for a moment I felt like a fool that I would go out and do it again,” Davis said.

Each day a challenge

In July, Schulenberg, the aspiring business owner, began taking classes after talking with a University of Phoenix recruiter at a monthly Journey Home “resource fair” in May. He also met with a Madison Development Corp. representative about creating a business plan and getting a startup loan.

The transition hasn’t been all smooth. Recently, Schulenberg was fined $300 after police found marijuana in his car during a traffic stop — he said it belonged to someone who borrowed the car.

He was spared a return trip to prison because his probation officer believed he could be safely supervised in the community, a Department of Corrections spokesman said.

Donald Moore, 49, who was released around the same time as Schulenberg after serving his fourth prison term since 1993, said each day is a challenge — whether finding a job or an apartment.

But the Journey Home program, especially a weekly support group for ex-offenders called “Voices Beyond Bars,” gives him hope, “knowing there’s someone out there who understands our pain and what we go through.” Moore still talks with Dillard regularly and recently found a job in Lake Mills.

“If you need some advice or to be pointed in the right direction,” Moore said, “They’ll show you how to get there.”