Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify the term “justice-involved,” which refers broadly to anyone who has gone through the criminal justice system.
It’s eight minutes past 8 a.m. in Conference Room B of Cumberland County’s Department of Social Services building.
Charles Evans, former Cumberland County commissioner and Fayetteville City Council member, hoped to begin his Project Fresh Start New Beginnings Conference promptly at 8 a.m. — the start time advertised on the flier. However, residents are still streaming into the room.
“You have a line at registry,” Brenda Jackson, director of Cumberland County’s Department of Social Services, calls to Evans. Her staff members are busy pulling more chairs out of a storage closet to seat the overflow standing near the door.
A few minutes later and after over 40 community members filled the conference room, Evans launches into why everyone is gathered on the misty Monday morning: How can people involved in the justice system advance their lives despite their criminal convictions?
“You’re here today because you believe. You believe that your life, it can get better,” Evans tells the crowd. “My message to you is: Keep believing,” he adds. “Don’t give up.”
No excuses
The Project Fresh Start New Beginnings Conference, held Monday, aimed to provide justice-involved residents access to education, job and housing opportunities despite their criminal records.
The term “justice-involved” is a broad term used to describe individuals who have gone through the criminal justice system, ranging from being charged and arrested to convicted to seeing prison time.
Being justice-involved drastically limits choices for employment, Ida Baker, managing attorney of Legal Aid for North Carolina’s Fayetteville office, told CityView. Only 53% of human resource workers surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management, a national human resources professional and research organization, said they would be willing to hire someone with a criminal record. A 2021 study conducted by the University of California, Riverside found that 75% of hiring decision-makers wouldn’t seriously consider hiring someone with a drug or violent conviction.
Even if hired by an accepting employer, the jobs are often not gainful employment, Baker explained. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, those with criminal convictions earn almost 22% less than those without a background. Those who see prison time for those convictions earn even less, receiving just over 50% of the wages earned by those without convictions.
Lower wages for justice-involved residents make it especially difficult to afford housing, Baker told CityView. Both public housing authorities and private landlords can also deny someone housing if they don’t pass a background check, leaving many without housing options. Reentrants, those formerly incarcerated and released, are 10 times more likely to be unhoused than the general public, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative.
“They are the most vulnerable persons in our community,” Baker told CityView.
Speaking to conference attendees, Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West described the difficulties in accessing those opportunities as the “collateral consequences of a conviction.” It’s why the conference gathered local and state organizations, including Fayetteville Technical Community College’s H.O.P.E. Re-connect Program and NC Works, that are focused on helping justice-involved residents overcome those consequences.
NC Works is the state employment center. All residents can create an online profile to help find employment. For justice-involved residents, checking the often-dreaded box asking about prior criminal history helps NC Works’ career counselors identify what additional services are needed. NC Works is also partnered with the Fayetteville Cumberland County Reentry Council, which provides case management to justice-involved residents.
FTCC’s H.O.P.E. Re-connect Program provides classes and hands-on training for those without a college degree in high-demand fields like health care and construction. The program has worked with over 1,200 individuals, helping them get back into the workforce no matter their involvement with the criminal justice system.
The Cumberland County Social Services Department was also more than just the venue; the department’s human resources employees also provided information on which of the 800 positions at the department are available to justice-involved residents. While the department runs background checks for its positions, Jackson encouraged conference attendees to write a letter about their records, as it will help HR managers determine whether they are right for the position.
“There are no excuses with the opportunities you have here,” Marvin Price Jr., FTCC’s director of strategic community initiatives and Life Is Worth Living – Project Fresh Start president, said to the crowd at the conference.
Saequan Dethune, a conference attendee, took Price Jr.’s words to heart. Dethune said he has burglary charges that have gotten in the way of many past employment and education opportunities. However, the conference was like “a light of hope” seeing the many people and organizations there to open more doors for him.
“You can only get somewhere if you try,” Dethune said. “If you want it, you’re going to apply or at least try because then you’ll get somewhere close to where you’re trying to go.”
‘It’s like a ball and chain being removed from you’
While not an expungement clinic — that’s on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. at Fayetteville State University — the conference did feature a discussion of expungement from West and Baker.
An expunction is the process of removing a criminal conviction or charge from your record. By the end of 2023, the most recent year with data from the state’s Department of Adult Correction, 4,731 adults convicted in Cumberland County were in the state prison system.
Not every one of those adults will be eligible for expungement. Individual state statute determines whether and when an expunction is possible. West told conference attendees it’s a complicated process often determined by the conviction a person wants to expunge.
Evans gave an example from his personal life. Evans was convicted of three felonies early in his life: one for breaking and entering, another for embezzlement and the final for possession of cocaine. While working as a legal clerk in the late 2010s and early 2020s, his boss Patricia Moss, a partner at Rand & Gregory and current Lillington Town Commissioner, surprised Evans with a record expungement. Over two decades after Evans was convicted, Moss filed the petition for expungement on his behalf, signing the petition as his lawyer.
“It’s like a ball and chain being removed from you,” Evans told CityView.
People can also expunge dismissals, which also show up on background checks in North Carolina. A dismissal is when a court ends a case without finding the defendant liable, meaning there is no guilty or not guilty verdict. Baker told CityView that employers and landlords often consider dismissals in their decisions for jobs and housing, citing an example of a man who was assisted by Legal Aid NC and who had been denied a job because his record showed he was found not guilty of murder.
While impactful, expunction is not instantaneous. Baker said it takes an average of six months for the process to be completed. The more complicated and lengthy a record, the longer it takes.
It’s why Evans highlighted employment and education opportunities at the Project Fresh Start New Beginnings Conference. While many justice-involved individuals may have an end goal of expunction, Evans wanted to provide those residents with all the resources necessary to thrive in the meantime.
“I know the aggravation, the hurt that people feel when they go apply for an apartment and they ask about their criminal record, about their jobs, and they can’t get it,” Evans told CityView.
Evans has been putting on clinics to help justice-involved individuals since 2005. Monday’s conference was the latest in the series of events his non-profit Life Is Worth Living – Project Fresh Start has been holding. The event also comes after North Carolina moved in December 2024 to join Reentry 2030, a national initiative to improve the outcomes of people coming out of prison.
“If you have the power to change somebody’s life for the better, then that’s what the God of my understanding would want you to do,” Evans told CityView.
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the CityView News Fund.
Thank you Morgan, for an informative report. I learned a lot. But when we deal with something as close to the heart of a community as this is, it would be helpful if readers were confronted with words that meant what they said. The use of euphemisms don’t help us ordinary readers. “Justice – involved residents”? There are people who have been arrested, those convicted, those found innocent, those who have served time, etc, etc. Each is a different thing, and lumping them all together in this polite, but meaningless term of justice-involved, helps no one.
Thanks so much for the constructive critique. I used the term “justice-involved” since that’s what activists at the event used to broadly refer to anyone that has been touched by the criminal justice system, whether they were convicted or their case was dismissed. We added this context for the first reference of justice-involved individuals in addition to the note at the top of piece to hopefully provide more specificity, per your suggestion. I know it’s still lumping everyone together but it’s hard to pull out specific people when the event was geared towards a broad group of people. I’ll definitely be more specific when I can going forward.