Program provides ‘Future Hope’ for ex-offenders

Talia Whyte

Like many young men, Marcus Barrow got caught up in the negative influences in the community. He started hanging around the wrong crowd, eventually getting involved in gang activity. For the last five years, Barrow has been in and out of prison for his crimes. Determined to change his life after being released in April, Barrow took some classes while working a part-time job.

In August, Barrow enrolled in a program that would change his life. A friend referred him to the Future Hope Apprenticeship Program, operated by Greater Love Tabernacle Church in Dorchester. The intensive three- to six-week program prepares youth offenders and ex-offenders for jobs in the construction and trade industries, and provides U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety training and compliance certification.

Barrow, who already had 15 years of construction experience before entering Future Hope, aspires to be a certified carpenter and enter a union after completing the apprenticeship program.

“It is worth all my time and effort to come here every day,” Barrow said. “You put your all into this program and it will pay off in the end.”

Future Hope is the brainchild of Rev. Emanuel L. Hutcherson, a minister at Greater Love Tabernacle and the program’s executive director. A former chaplain for the Suffolk County House of Corrections, where he ran a male development program called Boomerang, Hutcherson was troubled by the high rate of recidivism he saw at the facility.

“In the prison, I saw a pattern of men coming back in repeatedly,” Hutcherson said. “I said to myself, ‘How can I change the course of these men?’”

Years earlier, Hutcherson had worked with ex-offenders through his own company, Cross Country Painting Co. In 2005, the Commonwealth commissioned him to run Future Hope, which instructs apprentices in painting, drywalling, carpentry, taping and roofing. Hutcherson says that apprentices not only learn the actual labor skills, but also the business side of how to become contractors themselves, bid on jobs, estimate a job’s cost and read plans.

In addition to the fieldwork, 10 students from Boston University come to the program each week to provide GED preparation and computer literacy courses. Social support is available for both apprentices and their families through caseworkers and mentors.

“The main objective of the program is to give them employment, whether it is in a union or a non-union,” Hutcherson said. “We give them the capabilities of a third-year apprentice or even a journeyman. We give them support academically, vocationally and emotionally.”

Construction is one of the few industries where a person’s Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) is not usually a barrier to employment. However, Barrow and Hutcherson agree that the current CORI system works against ex-offenders eager for the chance to do better for themselves and their families.

According to the Massachusetts Alliance to Reform CORI, approximately 97 percent of Massachusetts prisoners will return to their communities after release. Under the current CORI system, ex-offenders are barred from a wide variety of occupations, and are unable to secure housing and receive financial aid to go back to school.

“CORI is like a red flag,” Hutcherson said. “If you have a young man who has a desire to provide for his family, he might hit the wall with CORI. He will get frustrated and discouraged, and before you know it, they go back to prison.”

Future Hope has successfully placed apprentices into jobs and unions all over Boston, and Hutcherson is currently speaking with Northeastern University to get some of his apprentices onto their construction sites. Most importantly, Hutcherson hopes to inspire past apprentices to come back to the program and help those that followed them. Barrow would love nothing more than to be among that number.

“Through this program I hope to start my own construction company and come back and help others in the program, and have them come work for me,” Barrow said.

Right now, Future Hope is a volunteer-run program with a small staff and very limited funding. Hutcherson is looking for more funding outlets, and has his eyes set on expanding the program in the near future to address the larger problem of unemployment among black men in the community — while the program gives preferred admission to ex-offenders, Hutcherson says that non-offenders contact him on a regular basis looking to get into the program.

Whatever the future holds for Future Hope, Hutcherson feels blessed when he looks at the accomplishments of the program’s brief two-year existence.

“The program has made an impact,” he said. “We hope to change life for the better and hope to change the community.”