Beyond bars

By CAITLIN SULLIVAN/Staff

“That’s gotta be him with that clean white shirt,” said Delo Marshall.
He’s standing behind the counter at the Holston Café off Route 19, talking about Derek Lynn, who was released from the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail in Abingdon earlier that morning. Lynn had just spent more than 23 months behind bars.
Riverplace founder Stan Green had picked him up at 8:15 a.m. Before arriving at Holston Café, they had stopped to eat at Shoney’s. Lynn had a breakfast of eggs, biscuit, bacon, sausage and potatoes. It was a step up from the eggs, two pieces of white bread, jam, juice and milk he was used to.
“Phew,” Lynn said. “I’m happy to be out but I got nerves. I’m a little nervous.”
It was Lynn’s first day with Riverplace. His first day outside.
Green and his wife, Regina, began the ex-offender re-entry program two years ago, but it was in the making for about seven. As a youth minister for 25 years, Green said he watched too many young people get stuck in the cycle of incarceration. And then one of his own adopted sons got stuck in the cycle as well.
“When you’re incarcerated you lose your job, you have no place to live and are often alienated from your family,” he said. “When they get out they don’t have a place to live so they go back to the same playground and hang out with the same tribe and end up violating parole.”
Riverplace not only gives ex-offenders a place to go, but also a job and a family of support.
Green goes through an extensive interview process to make certain about-to-be released inmates are serious about turning their lives around. He said he can’t waste his time on people who aren’t serious.
“I love people in their late 30s early 40s because they’re ready to get their life together,” he said. “People who have been one, two and three times incarcerated and they’re sick of it.”
The recidivism rate is 80 percent in Southwest Virginia, Green said. About two-thirds of incarcerated people go back to jail, usually on a technical violation, he said.
“650,000 inmates will be released this year,” Green said. “Without any re-entry effort those will end up going back.”
So how much does that cost the taxpayer?
Well it costs $37 a day to keep an inmate at the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail, he said.
If some of that money went toward re-entry programs it would cut down on the recidivism rate and save money in the long run, he said.
But it’s not popular to help felons, he said. So Riverplace runs mostly on donations and good will. That and, so far, $50,000 of his own money. Green also pays mortgages on three properties and rents two more. And he spends $14 on drug tests each week. Participants have to submit to them.
The money they take in from the Holston Café where the ex-offenders earn their keep takes care of the rent and gives workers a $50 per week stipend.
Still they need more.
Green should know by October if he received a $400,000 federal Offender Reentry Program grant. He said if he gets the grant Riverside can expand its program to help 20 to 30 people, hire a manager, two part-time counselors and an executive director. He’d like to renovate a seven-bedroom farm house to use for Riverplace and as temporary housing for ex-offenders. He’d also like to build cabins.
“Last week I’ve had 11 letters asking for help,” Green said. “One fella who’d been incarcerated for 29 years called from Georgia. When he was 19 years old he robbed a jeweler. He was supposed to be released eight months ago, but he had nowhere to go so he wasn’t released. He said, I’ve never paid rent, a bill, I don’t know how to live life out of these walls.”
Jim Valentin joined Riverplace on April 24, 2008. He was incarcerated for three years for a DUI and driving without a license.
Before landing in jail Valentin had spend nearly 14 years in the Navy and worked as a plumber for 15. Originally from Fairfax, Va., he had nowhere to go once released into Southwest Virginia.
So Stan and Regina took him in.
He stayed at their house. But even if you have a place to stay, he said, there are so many obstacles to navigate. Take getting an identification card. You need a computer and three different forms of identification.
“If it wasn’t for Regina and the computer I don’t know if I would have taken the time to do all that,” he said.
If he hadn’t, though, he wouldn’t be able to get a job, cash a check or get a driver’s license.
“If they don’t have family who do they rely on,” Valentin said. “You got people coming out that don’t have skills. Here they have a place to stay and take the time to learn a skill or trade and they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
“The support takes getting used to,” he said.
He said in the winter he’d find loads of firewood in his driveway from people from Pleasant View United Methodist Church in Abingdon. Another day the café was short paying him and someone from the church sent in the money for him.
“Being out is one thing but finding acceptance is a real big thing,” he said. “You get out, get a hug and you’re part of the family. That’s like night and day to just getting out and saying hello to the cruel, cruel world. You’re accepted by someone that doesn’t want something from you.”
There are no sign-in and sign-out sheets at Riverplace. No curfews. The rules are simple. No alcohol and no drugs.And if you want to go out, the Greens have to meet the person you’re going with.
“It’s not going into a program it’s going into a relationship,” Green said. “As soon as you start shackling someone down they’re going to buck. I don’t think that will ever change.”
The other rule is that everyone must attend the Thursday night 12-step addiction meeting called Stop the Madness by Christian-based LifeWay.
Although you don’t have to be Christian to join Riverplace, Green said everyone is encouraged to attend church because they need the connection with people and the community.
Janet Matney, 32, was the first person in Riverplace in March 2008. She grew up in Castlewood with her grandparents.
When she was 18 she started smoking pot. At 17 she married her high school sweetheart whom she met when she was 14. The pot let to acid, which led to pills. The next thing she knew, she was snorting 350 milligrams of morphine a day, she said. Then she did heroine. By the time she finally made it to jail she said she had a bad cocaine habit. Along the way, she had three kids.
“We can’t get back what we lost,” she said. “I missed so much already. I don’t have to miss anymore.”
She spent three years behind bars. In jail, Matney kept to herself and didn’t make friends. She spent most of the three years alone. When she left, the guards told her they’d see her in six months, she said.
Going from jail to working Riverplace’s Rockybrook Garden & Gifts on Mendota Road was complicated.
“I’d stand here and clam up and let them browse,” Matney said.
“Now I could sell you a ketchup Popsicle if you were wearing white gloves.”
When she first got out, Matney said nothing seemed normal. Now her life, though different than how she was raised, is her normal.
“Some days you get tired and everything gets a little overwhelming,” she said.
She said she’s paying child support to her ex-mother-in-law. At night she talks to her kids in West Virginia over the Internet. They’re 10, 13 and 14.. She also has a 5-year-old son in Grundy.
Last December she went to visit her daughters for the first time in four years.
“They were sitting on the porch,” she said. “We drove by and I didn’t recognize them. They were babies the last time I’d seen them.”
She hasn’t spent the night anywhere else since she’s joined the program and she’s not allowed to date. She’s also not allowed to drink alcohol.
Still she’s working on anger issues.
“I have a temper,” she said. “If I was having words with someone I’d fight.
“When I didn’t have dope the world wasn’t good and now I don’t even think like that,” she said. “Whenever I have those thoughts of beating the crap out of someone I take those five minutes and I think about what I would lose. I have my kids.
“Now I choose not to get violent,” she said. “I choose now not to get high and I’m not saying life is peachy.”
Matney said she wants to go back to school and get her kids back in her life. It’s a tall order if she can’t save much money or pay her court fines. Until she pays her fines, she can’t get a license to dirve. So she feels a little stuck.
“Right now, this is reality. I can’t tell you I’m gonna get a better job. I don’t know myself. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
Matney walks to work from her apartment on Mendota Road.
She said if she hadn’t joined Riverplace she thinks she probably would have been back in jail after six months, just like the guards said.
“Now I don’t think I’ll go back to jail,” she said.
She’s still not certain of anything.
“I had so much potential and how my life went the way it did blows my mind,” she said.
Nine people have been in the Riverside program. Only one ended up going back to jail. Green’s interviewing four more.
“At my age I don’t have time for jail,” Valentin said. “I should’ve been dead a few times over.”
He’ll be off probation in October, but he says it doesn’t really mean much because he’s just going to keep doing what he’s doing.
“I’m here for the duration,” he said. “He’s stuck with me and he knows that.”
Valentin said hasn’t had a beer since his release because he would never want to disappoint the Greens.
“After everything they’ve done for me, it’d kill me it I let them down,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lynn is moving in with Valentin. Valentine says he remembers when he first got out. It took some getting used to not having someone tell you when to eat, when to cut the lights out. He knows. He can help.
For more information about Riverplace visit www.riverplaceholston.org.
To contact Caitlin Sullivan e-mail csullivan@wythenews.com or call (276) 628-7101.