August 15 • 2019 5
jn

I 

will always free associate Sam 
Marvin with wood pallets and 
wood pallets with Sam Marvin. 
In the days leading 
up to the opening of 
Repair the World’
s 
Workshop space in 
2014, one of Sam’
s 
many tasks, as he 
tripled and quadru-
pled his part-time 
hours, was finding 
and arranging pallets to serve as the 
Workshop’
s couches.
Sam has long since moved on 
from Repair the World. But the 
pallet couches — which have been 
greeting people and their butts with 
nary a splinter for five years strong 
— provide a passable metaphor for 
his current work.
Start with something that could 
easily be considered disposable, if 
not dangerous. Identify the tools 
and assemble the resources so that 
they can be assets rather than lia-
bilities. Help others to see them as 
something stable, something with 
worth, something with integrity.
Sam works with — for, really 
— returning citizens. If you’
re not 
familiar with the terms, think of 
“returning citizen” as a long-overdue 
reframing of “ex-con.” It acknowl-
edges that people who were incar-
cerated are products of and once 
again members of our community. 
Their pursuit of self-sufficiency is in 
the community’
s interest; their tran-
sition can be unduly complicated by 
entrenched policies and prejudices.
There are currently 2,500 parol-
ees and 8,000 probationers living 
in Detroit. Through the Mayor’
s 
Office of Workforce Development, 
Sam works from multiple angles to 
create opportunities for his fellow 
Detroiters:
1. Opening doors to opportunity. 
The focus here is on motivating 
employers to give returning citizens 
a “fair chance.” By way of example, 
Ban the Box has gained traction as 
a way for job applicants to receive 
due consideration by not having to 
disclose their criminal background 
on their initial application.

2. Reducing individual barriers 
to employment. Beyond sweeping 
statistics, every returning citizen has 
his or her own set of circumstances 
that can make hurdles ever higher, 
like access to stable housing, reliable 
transportation and vital documen-
tation. (It can take weeks of wading 
through layers of bureaucracy and 
months of waiting to obtain copies 
of your birth certificate or social 
security card.) 
 3. Up-skilling job-seekers. Some 
80 percent of people paroling back 
to Detroit were unemployed when 
they were incarcerated. Lack of 
access to quality education is a 
major part of the vicious cycle that 
leads people into the justice system 
in the first place and can trigger 
recidivism. The city and Michigan 
Department of Corrections have 
a 
range of partnerships that focus 
on remedial education, high school 
completion, post-secondary, voca-
tional skills and soft skills.
Sam has learned through the 
course of his work that one of 
the big things standing between a 
returning citizen and a job is a job: 
 “Transitional jobs have very low 
barriers to entry and are ideally 
provided by a nonprofit or social 
enterprise with the sole purpose of 
supporting an individual’
s transition 
into permanent employment,” he 
said. 
“Buying clothing, food, bus passes 
and paying rent become substantial-
ly easier when a returning citizen 
has a transitional job. Large employ-
ers and public institutions can create 

these opportunities and my efforts 
are directed toward growing the 
number.”
He notes two nonprofit partners, 
among myriad programs providing 
a strong return on the public and 
private investments in returning 
citizens.
Goodwill Industries, in Detroit 
since 1921, provides more than 
900 local businesses with a reliable 
workforce. Their Flip the Script 
program provides mentoring and 
job training that address the unique 
challenges returning citizens expe-
rience.
Center for Employment 
Opportunities, new to Detroit last 
year, provides immediate paid 
employment — caring for 100 parks 
and green spaces around the city — 
along with skills training and ongo-
ing career support.
Many factors stemming from con-
centrated poverty conspire to create 
a pipeline into prisons. 
The number of incarcerated indi-
viduals in Michigan is dropping, 
in an encouraging trend, but it will 
take a comparable conspiracy to 
manage the flow of people back into 
Detroit neighborhoods and suburbs. 
Ultimately, people aren’
t pallets. 
Their lives are messy. Both their 
problems and their potential can be 
powerful. Sam and his colleagues 
have seen all the constructive ways 
returning citizens can contribute 
to their communities — as long 
as they aren’
t trapped under the 
weight of a debt to society they’
ve 
already paid. ■

views

jewfro
Sam Marvin and Our “Returning Citizens”

Ben Falik 

Sam Marvin

BEN FALIK

Rock-on!

