Not all men who leave prison return to a life of crime but there are some who are likely to return to that cycle if they don’t experience an intense intervention followed by the necessary support. And that’s where our next guest’s organization comes in. Mike Switzer interviews Amy Barch, founder and executive director of Turn90 in North Charleston, SC.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. Not all men who leave prison return to a life of crime, but there are some who are likely to return to that cycle if they don't experience an intense intervention followed by the necessary support. And that's where our next guests organization comes in. Amy Barch is founder and executive director of Turn90, and she joins us by phone now from her office In North Charleston, S.C. Amy, welcome to the program.
Barch: Thanks, Mike.
Switzer: So, first of all, tell us about your organization and how and why it all got started.
Barch: Nationally, about 62% of everyone who leaves prison is rearrested within three years. So that is the problem that, we're trying to solve at turn 90. We do that through providing tense therapeutic services to people coming out of prison. And then we combine that with a wraparound support model and job training, all in a single location. So we run a, center. And in that center we provide job training and support and therapy. It all got started when I did a jail internship back in 2004. I did it as part of a program at school, and I never thought this was going to be my career. But when I went into the jail and I started working with the people that were incarcerated, I completely was blown away by the experience. It was just amazing the amount of talent that's in our prison system. And after I experienced that and I realized that it's the fact that we haven't figured out how to mine that talent and invest in those people. And that's really, I think, what I decided to spend my life doing.
Switzer: How did you move forward then, from this experience and this idea to actually having a nonprofit that is working in this sector?
Barch: When I left college, I knew I wanted to work in the field of prison reentry. And even at the time, I didn't really realize how young of a field it is. So the term prison reentry as a field really didn't start until early 2000s. So it actually, corresponded with my interest. I didn't realize that at the time, so. But I knew I wanted to work in that field. And when I graduated college, I didn't want to start a nonprofit. That was not my life goal. I just knew that I wanted to do something working with people coming out of prison. And so I worked in another nonprofit, a couple actually. And I also did some advocacy work. And what I realized is that it was hard for me to find an organization that I felt like was doing very deep, evidence based and intensive work that I thought was needed in order to truly help people change their life. And so I think I ultimately ended up starting a nonprofit because I was doing really engaging volunteer work in the Charleston County Jail. Again, not as an effort to start a nonprofit, but just because I couldn't find anything else to really tap into. And then that volunteer work kind of caught the attention of some people in the prosecutor's office and some judges. And eventually I was encouraged to kind of take it on as a bigger project, and then that led to a nonprofit.
Switzer: And how do you identify the prisoners that are most likely to return?
Barch: We use what's called a risk assessment. I, basically do a structured interview with people when they come to us. It's pretty accurate to identify the risk factors that somebody has that research correlates to recidivism. And so those things typically cluster in areas like friends or peers, attitudes towards employment, levels of education. And the more barriers, challenges, risks that somebody faces, the more likely it is that they are going to be rearrested and re incarcerated.
Switzer: Well, can you give us a real world example? And of course, you don't have to give the name.
Barch: Sure, yeah. Happy to. So I think one of the misconceptions is that family is supportive and that somebody that has family or strong family ties, that that's going to be a positive for them. But what we actually see, sometimes is that the men that we work with have very deep family roots that are tied to criminal past. So if someone's closest family members have been incarcerated or continuing to commit crimes and be involved in a criminal lifestyle, basically you're asking somebody to distance themselves and sometimes cut themselves off from their family. That is just incredibly difficult to do. I have somebody that I've worked with for a long time that had a very involved criminal family, and ultimately he needed to distance himself for almost everybody in his family because those people ultimately were risky for him. So I think there's, just a misconception sometime around, like, why people don't change and why people continue to get incarcerated. But when we really stop and reflect on what it would truly take to change our own lives, like it's hard for us to change even just one thing. And oftentimes what we're doing is we're asking people that are coming out of prison to change many, many things about themselves. And sometimes the hardest things like family.
Switzer: Well, Amy, thank you so much for what you are doing and thanks for spending time with us today.
Barch: Thanks so much, Mike.
Switzer: Amy Barch is founder and executive director of turn 90 in North Charleston, South Carolina. We will have a link to her organization posted at our webpage so you can learn more South Carolina Public Radio.org where you can hear this show again. And remember, you can find us wherever you find podcasts with the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer.
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