Drill Deeper: Blue Jacket Serves 300 Formerly Incarcerated Per Year, 82% Get Jobs

But how do they employ 100% of their graduates when they’ve never done it?

Three indicators for success for the formerly incarcerated, according to Blue Jacket Executive Director Anthony Hudson, are housing, family integration, and employment. Blue Jacket’s lane all day is training and job placement, most especially for citizens recently released.  “Work organizes life,” Hudson said.  “The more organized, the less likely you are to fall back.”

Blue Jacket has what Hudson called the “audacious goal” of finding gainful employment for all 100% of its graduates.  Never turning anyone away, Blue Jacket has done the arduous by finding jobs for those with 30-year sentences, a hard group to place.  But the nonprofit has been stuck at just over 80% employed.

Who are those 18% unemployed and how do you overcome that deficit? According to Hudson, the hardest to place are over-18 youths who’ve never had a job, the elderly, and the disabled.  For their next phase(s), Blue Jacket’s expansion plans are being set up to solve their unemployment gap.  Their plans include a short move around the corner for their clothing store, located at 2826 South Calhoun St., into a new facility.  The nonprofit employs their graduates at that location, as well as their second spot out north, newly opened at 5511B Coldwater Rd.  A more ambitious plan could see Blue Jacket, after a capital campaign, transform part of their Calhoun Street building into a restaurant…more jobs for their graduates.  In the short term, Blue Jacket, having taken over producing duties for the Festival of Lights at the Embassy in 2015, has employed their graduates the past two years.