Maintenance Parolees Improve Roads While Gaining Experience
By Niles Koenigsberg, Process Improvement Intern
January 28th, 2019
Individuals recently released from prison on parole typically encounter an all-too-common problem: difficulty finding secure employment. In 2018, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) launched a new program to help correct this problem, per Governor Hickenlooper’s Workforce Development initiative. The Division of Highway Maintenance (DHM) sought to provide parolees with honest and fair employment by helping maintain the highway network of Colorado.
How Does the Program Work?
The Maintenance Parolees program is a collaborative effort between CDOT and the Center for Employee Opportunities (CEO), a nationwide organization that offers individuals just returning home from prison the ongoing support necessary to build career capital and financial stability. “CEO organizes the maintenance crews, supplies them with their own tools, and we typically have just one CDOT employee supervising them, helping them out, and setting up traffic control,” said Jori Ernst, Section 10 Superintendent, “They’re working around bridge structures, picking up trash, cutting trees, and helping preserve our highways.”
Volunteers for the Maintenance Parolees program stand with Human Resources Director, Susan Rafferty, before getting started on their maintenance work.
The program has mainly focused on the eastern range of Colorado. “The parolees meet at the Denver CEO headquarters and are dispatched from there,” Ernst stated. The rotating crews, running between five to seven parolees at a time, work on structures mainly in the Denver Metro area, Greeley, and Colorado Springs. “Crews will go up towards Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel and, after two weeks, they swap for Greeley structures or those along I-25.”
The CDOT staff that have supervised, or engaged with, these crews have had positive experiences as well. “It’s enjoyable to see someone trying to better themselves,” said John Wilson, a Labor, Trade, and Crafts Operations employee in the Denver metro area. However, they’re also readily aware of the program’s shortcomings. “We get some advance notices, but it can put a strain on our people,” said Rickey Parlier, a Technology Specialist IV in Greeley.
While CDOT structures get facelifts thanks to these rotating crews, the parolees receive their own benefits in return. These parolees, choosing to work with CDOT, are earning daily wages, gaining real-world experience they can build upon, and receiving terrific job search support from CEO. “They try to give [the parolees] 60-75 days of work, but some might be here for 3 days before they’re given a job offer,” Ernst continued, “We’ve actually recently hired one of the CEO parolees in the DHM as a temporary employee, so a lot of good is coming from this program.”
Parolees gathered at the CDOT Denver Headquarters in December 2018 for a meet-and-greet with the Executive Management Team.
Challenges Along the Way
The Parolee program has benefited plenty of people within and outside of CDOT, but it faces the occasional challenge. “If the crew supervisor can’t make it that day or there’s inclement weather, we usually have to cancel the crews for that day,” Ernst stated, “It puts us in a difficult position because these volunteers want to work, but we don’t have the flexibility for them those days.”
Other times, crews have showed up with four parolees ready-to-go, but CDOT’s contract mandates those crews to have at least five parolees at a time. “Again, we’ve got four people that are wanting to work and don’t get to work that day because someone didn’t show up,” said Ernst. Logistical challenges like these are still to be worked through
Continuously Improving through Incremental Changes
The Division of Highway Maintenance wants to continually improve upon this program which benefits both the parolees and CDOT together. “We have visions of moving the program out towards the West slopes as well, there’s hundreds of miles of fences that need repairs that these crews could help,” Ernst explained. Working with Human Resources, the program has also been exploring the possibility of providing Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) training to these parolees. “It could be a great opportunity to hire them on full time as plow drivers and add more CDOT staff in the regions,” Ernst continued.
As the program continues to move forward and assist parolees in their transitions to modern society, the DHM will continue to look for new ways to utilize these parolees in our everyday work.