Andrzej Zoll Komentarz Pdf Reader. “I didn’t picture it like this,” says Darwin Hailey of his life after prison. Hailey is the executive sous chef at Edwins, a French fine dining restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. He got the job after completing six months at Edwins’s own Leadership and Training Institute, a program designed to train people who have served time in prison for careers in the restaurant industry. Karen Webb, a current student at Edwins, spent 13 years in prison; during that time, she worked as a baker. She says a strawberry Jell-O cake she created was a hit with her fellow inmates. A few weeks into the back-of-house portion of Edwins’s training program, she made a green-apple vinaigrette so impressive that a group of paying customers asked to meet the chef. Webb has long enjoyed cooking and worked in restaurants both before and after she served time, but she says the structure and training regimen that Edwins provides will help her advance in the industry at the end of the six months.
“It's just a challenge that I want to succeed in,” she says. Hailey and Webb are two of many former inmates who are building their post-incarceration life in the restaurant industry. Why the Fight Against Recidivism Came to Restaurants Recidivism is astoundingly common in the U.S. ( that three-quarters of released prisoners are re-arrested within five years of release). But organizations across the country are combating recidivism by helping ex-offenders kickstart long-term careers in the restaurant industry. In addition to those mentioned here, there is the Doe Fund and Drive Change in New York City, DC Central Kitchen in Washington D.C., which was the subject of, as well as culinary-training programs within prisons, designed to give inmates a head start on the job search even before they are released, like the Clink, a restaurant inside of a London prison. In San Diego, meanwhile, Kitchens for Good takes a comprehensive approach to solving some of the restaurant industry’s staffing problems: Aviva Paley, the organization’s director of programs, describes the 12-week intensive culinary program as teaching “everything from knife skills to life skills.”.
Restaurants are often ideal places for someone with a record to start. Since 2013, Edwins has graduated 177 students. During the six-month, two-part program, students learn traditional French cooking techniques and fine-dining service. They spend their days taking classes and the evenings running the restaurant, which recently earned from Cleveland’s Morning Journal. And while the Leadership and Training Institute doesn’t guarantee job placement, Edwins chief operating officer Gerry Grim estimates that 95 percent of graduates are working in the food or hospitality industry “from fine dining on down.” Without the help of organizations like these, jobs, let alone careers with growth potential, can be hard to come. Geoffrey Golia, a program director at GOSO Works, the employment development wing of Getting Out and Staying Out (GOSO), a New York City re-entry program, says that the youths of color he works with are massively underemployed because they often face discrimination — even before any involvement with the criminal justice system is disclosed. “We over-police and over-arrest young men of color, then we have employers who are [reluctant] to hire any young men of color for fear they might be justice-involved,” he says.