Parole Officer Reflection

Within the three weeks I had to complete my volunteer work, I was able to clean excessively. More importantly, the opportunity to redo the check in area was enormous. There was clear evidence that a parole officer had been in charge of this room prior. It gave off an awful vibe, and nothing that was hanging up would benefit a parolee. The posters and warning signs that were hanging up when I was on parole were still there, and still made me feel uneasy. I took down the posters about mandatory sentences for gun violations, and all of the signs that possibly could have been hung up in a “tough love” sort of fashion. Where those posters hung, reminding parolees what would happen if they failed, I replaced with encouraging paintings, and phrases from one parolee to another. There is now a job board where the parole officers or felon friendly companies can post
I was at the Family Center about an hour early because of how exciting this was. We had sent out advertisements at this point, public to all of the agencies in Brockton. Apparently, the people who wanted to be interviewed decided that they too, were going to show up about an hour early. Everyone, for the most part, dressed very well for their interviews. It was impressive to see that they were taking this very seriously. I am not sure how to describe how proud I was of these people. Many of them I did not even know, but it was an amazing thing to see. The Kraft Group was also early and decided to start taking people since they were there. By 4:00pm, there was still about 15 people waiting. As people left, they were calling their friends and family members to come, people did not stop continuously showing up. By the end of the event, Kraft had hired 80+ people in this one day from the Brockton community. The job fair in fact, was so successful for everyone involved, that they agreed to do another one the following week because they did not get to meet with every single