Tuesday, October 09, 2007
By NAWAL QAROONI
The Star-Ledger
Stacy Kindt was serving time in prison when she discovered she had a better than even chance of committing another crime after she got out.
That statistic -- two out of three inmates are likely to return to crime -- didn't offer odds Kindt was willing to accept for herself or her fellow inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Hunterdon County.
Kindt, a former elementary school teacher who was serving a seven-year prison term on a kidnapping conviction from a child custody dispute, felt she had to do something or the friends she had made in prison would end up behind bars again and again.
"To everyone on the outside, these are just numbers," said Kindt, 33, who was paroled in September 2004 after serving 16 months at Edna Mahan. "To us, it's really personal. There's only one prison for women in this state, and it feels like it has a revolving door of failure."
Kindt launched a nonprofit group called Redeem-Her to help former inmates from Edna Mahan get back on their feet and find work. With a modest $4,200 budget and countless volunteer hours, the fledgling group has helped hundreds of former prisoners by providing help as varied as temporary housing and clean underwear.
"You have no idea what it's like not having underwear that fits, or no underwear at all," said Marcell DelCorpo, 41, of Brick Township, who has been in and out of prison on drug-related charges. "You feel horrible."
Goal: To show there is an alternative to crime
Redeem-Her delivers truckloads of clothes and hygiene products to women in halfway houses, sends people to court to provide moral support for prisoners with no family and purchases school supplies for the children of prisoners.
The organization also leases a house in Burlington County -- dubbed the Redeem-Her House -- where three or four former inmates may live on a rotating basis. Redeem-Her provides a stocked refrigerator, a one-month train pass, clothes and a job connection -- things most people take for granted.
Kindt said the goal of the program is to provide role models for women in prison to show there is an alternative to returning to crime. It also provides former prisoners with a fresh start free of the stigma often attached to having been incarcerated.
"There's a lot of misconceptions about who prisoners are," Kindt said. "We stigmatize ourselves, too, because we feel we're less than others because we screwed up our lives. But in the big picture, we try not to perpetuate the misunderstanding."
Redeem-Her's volunteers and members are primarily former inmates who offer their time to anyone who will listen about how difficult it is for ex-convicts to get jobs.
"You always feel like it's hanging overhead," DelCorpo said. "You can't even get a job at Wawa for 8 bucks an hour."
Amy Eldrige, a 26-year-old Howell Township resident who spent six years in prison for vehicular homicide, said Redeem-Her helped her stay focused on small steps when she was released.
"You start at minimum wage and take what you can get," Eldrige said. "You get your foot in the door, then work very hard."
Group's small budget forces creativity
Reaching out to those who support the nonprofit organization, Redeem-Her is unique in its ability to connect to the 1,200 women behind bars.
"They're reaching a number of people who can't otherwise be reached," said Cuqui Rivera, outreach manager for the New Brunswick-based Hispanic Directors Association. "They need to be duplicated and expanded because these are the people who help those who have nothing left, who often have no ties to anyone. And they understand better than anyone."
The group's small budget forces it to be creative. After a breast cancer event held in Philadelphia each year in which hundreds of bras are strung along Route 1, members of Redeem-Her collected the undergarments for donation to former inmates in shelters and halfway houses. Last year's haul netted 643 bras.
Bonnie Kerness, of the Newark-based American Friends Service Committee's Prison Watch Project, marveled at Redeem-Her's dedication.
"They have succeeded by pure determination to provide a community moving in the right direction," Kerness said.
The results of Redeem-Her's efforts have also spread quickly by word of mouth at Edna Mahan prison.
Natefa Andrews, 23, recently released after being incarcerated because of drugs, said she heard about the group while in prison and enlisted Redeem-Her's help to reconnect with her two young sons last week.
Redeem-Her paid the airfare for Andrews' children to return from Tennessee to New Jersey. The organization is providing housing and child-care costs for Andrews' family.
Without Redeem-Her's support, Andrews said, she would have been lost.
"They just keep telling you positive things," said Andrews, who works at a McDonald's in Ocean County. "I never had anyone to turn to, but you can tell them anything. I know they understand because they were in the position I left. They make me believe I can do better."
