27 Jun Unlocking Opportunities
Angelena Jackson’s remarkable turnaround shines a light on the power of training and job placement
Born to a seamstress and a merchant marine, Angelena Jackson describes her family life as “discombobulated.” “My mom was a paranoid schizophrenic with bipolar disorder. My dad was a womanizer,” she said. “And they met at a point in their lives when I don’t think either one of them was ready for children.”
As a result, Angelena says she ended up in foster care at the very young age of three or four. “I became a product of the system early,” she said. “And it was inside of foster care that I suffered molestation and sexual violence.”
To escape the reality of the experiences she was having in foster care, Angelena turned to school. Reading, in particular, gave her an outlet. Unfortunately, like so many children in foster care, as Angelena got older, she got moved around, eventually being placed into a group home. That’s where she says she met her first daughter’s father, an employee at the group home. By 16, she was pregnant.
From Turnstile to Turnaround
“I was just seeking a way to get out of the situations that I was in,” she said. “I started dibbling and dabbling with marijuana, alcohol, and it later progressed to cocaine and then later crack cocaine.”
It wasn’t long before her life started spiraling out of control. The drugs, Angelena says, became a part of her everyday life, and she turned to a life of crime to get the drugs that were numbing and dulling her pain.
That led to her first stint in prison on charges ranging from larceny to fraud to possession. Angelena would then enter and exit the prison turnstile six more times, battling her addiction as well as at least two stretches of homelessness before her turnaround story began.
Power to Change
It was the realization, she says, that life was quickly passing her by that finally made her want to make a change. “I was steadily losing all these people and all this time because I was incarcerated,” she said. “Things started to really hit me hard. I was losing so much while I was on the inside, and it had me thinking I wasn’t going to have anything or anyone when I came on the outside.”
She needed a solid support system. Once she found that, it made all the difference.
Angelena got her GED, PC support certification, Theology certification and cosmetology license while in prison. “The more I started to build on me, the more empowerment it also gave me,” she said. Then, she says she made the hardest decision of all. “I made the decision not to go back to my family, not to go back to my husband, not to go back to where my children were,” she said.
Instead, she came to OIC of South Florida to get her food handling and food management certifications and started working on getting a job and achieving the financial stability she needed to stay clean — and stay out of prison.
Today, Angelena is thriving. “I’ve become more responsible. I’ve learned techniques like journaling and grounding and meditation to help relieve stress,” she said. “I just see so much going on for my life, for my future, that I’m not stopping.”
Prison Pipeline
Angelena’s story is not uncommon. In fact, the 2021 report, Child Welfare and the Criminal System: Impact, Overlap, Potential Solutions from the Georgetown Law Journal on Poverty Law and Policy found:
- An estimated 25% of children in foster care will become involved in the criminal justice system within two years of exiting care.
- By age 17, over half of youth in care experience an arrest, conviction or overnight stay in a correctional facility.
- More than 90% of foster youth who move through five or more foster care placements end up in the juvenile justice system.
- Children placed in group homes are more likely to become justice-involved than those placed in a foster home.
Sadly, this is commonly referred to as the foster care-to-prison pipeline.
OIC of South Florida’s flagship re-entry program, in existence for nearly 25 years, helps formerly incarcerated individuals like Angelena return to the community and achieve economic stability and self-sufficiency through workforce readiness, training and job placement.
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