Former inmate helps others re-enter society
CINCINNATI — Dominic Duren remembers Oct. 28, 2008, as the scariest day of his life, more frightening than the day he received a 12-year prison sentence as a convicted felon.
That October morning he walked out of Allen Correctional Institution in Lima and into an uncertain future. His girlfriend drove him back home.
"All I knew until then was hustling in the streets," said Duren, now 42. "I was setting out to rebuild my life, and I didn't know how."
His experience in overcoming the barriers a returning citizen faces is one of the reasons Duren was hired to coordinate a national pilot re-entry program housed in Cincinnati's St. Vincent de Paul Society. Among the goals of the program – which will hold a public information meeting Monday night – is to inform and engage Catholics about mass incarceration and re-entry issues.
Duren will tell his story: He started selling crack cocaine at age 12 in his native Los Angeles. He managed to do well in school, so well, in fact, he skipped two grades and graduated from high school at 16. A friend in Columbus told him central Ohio had become a lucrative market, so Duren eventually moved east.
Business was good, until the night rival dealers robbed Duren's partner. They plotted revenge, finally retaliating. Duren did not fire his gun, but his friend did, killing one of the opposing dealers.
Duren pled guilty in court to involuntary manslaughter and aggravated robbery, both felonies.
"I took a deal," he said. "The public defender couldn't remember my name."
In prison, he learned data entry and earned an associate's degree in business administration.
"I did everything I could to make myself employable when I got out," Duren said. "I stayed busy, but in prison you have to deal with yourself. I did a lot of self-reflection."
CATHOLIC RE-ENTRY TARGETS POVERTY
There are a lot of Dominic Durens in Ohio.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction released more than 21,000 prisoners in calendar year 2012, not counting inmates still under local transitional control.
Hamilton County created a re-entry office to help former prisoners find housing and work, get a driver's license and clear up problems such as overdue child support payments. Cincinnati Works started its Phoenix Program with many of the same goals and to prepare former convicts for the workplace. The HELP Program at St. Francis de Sales Church, Walnut Hills, where Duren first received help in 2009, is faith-based and run by a religious Marianist Brother, Mike Murphy.
St. Vincent de Paul's program – Duren is its coordinator – is different. It grew out of a partnership between the Cincinnati Archdiocese and the Amos Project, a coalition of 30 congregations committed to social justice. They were successful in leading the effort around Ohio to win fair-hiring policies, which removed the box on job applications that asked if the applicant had a felony record.
Paid for by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the St. Vincent de Paul Reentry Program takes aim at poverty. Up to 20 percent of the nation's poverty is caused by its mass incarceration system and the laws and stigma that follows ex-offenders when they try to get jobs, places to live and loans and even when they try to vote, according to a 2014 National Academy of Sciences report requested by the U.S. Department of Justice and other organizations.
Besides trying to engage Catholics in prison ministry and the re-entry movement, the St. Vincent de Paul program seeks to support and coordinate with other re-entry programs that provide direct services.
Cincinnati is just one of four Catholic dioceses nationwide chosen to start the pilot program, along with Milwaukee, Boston and Orlando. The former director of Cincinnati's AMOS Project, Paul Graham, heads the national St. Vincent de Paul-based re-entry efforts.
"We are trying to end poverty through systematic change," Graham said. "Home visits (a staple of St. Vincent de Paul's efforts in the past) aren't enough. We need to be involved more deeply. We're bringing Catholics into a new understanding of criminal justice alternatives for drug addition."
DUREN RETURNS TO STREETS
In 2009. Duren had contact with Cincinnati's St. Vincent de Paul office in the West End – as a client.
"I stood in line out on the street for a winter coat," he said. "I couldn't even afford my own jacket."
His girlfriend, whom he would later marry, was living on student loans and finishing a nursing degree at Northern Kentucky University. With two felonies, Duren could not find work. Construction jobs never materialized. He said he gave into despair in 2009 and returned to the streets of Cincinnati to sell drugs, all in the name of trying to support his family.
The couple's son was born prematurely and spent 10 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. (The boy is now 5 and healthy; Duren and his wife also have a 2-year-old daughter.)
"I had needs – right now," Duren said of his life in 2009.
He had met Brother Mike at the HELP Program. He fell away from the process twice. The third time he stuck.
"I never had experienced so much compassion; I didn't feel worthy," Duren said. "They did so much for me and my family. They gave me a chance when nobody else would."
Before long, Murphy hired Duren and promoted him to run the program.
"He was my director here for three years," Murphy said. "He has excellent administrative skills, better than mine. His greatest gift is his passion. He is going to dedicate his life to what he is doing at St. Vincent de Paul."
Duren's strengths are evident in his first year there.
"He's humble, honest and caring," said Don Meyer, a deacon and coordinating chaplain for Catholic ministries at the Hamilton County Justice Center. "He recognizes the mistakes in his past and so clearly identifies with people's struggles. He is the perfect person for this job."
Said Tony Stieritz, director of Catholic Social Action in the Cincinnati Archdiocese, "In one word, because of who he is and the network of solidarity that surrounds him, what Dominic uniquely brings (to) this whole effort is hope."