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| Post-Prison Program Offers Second Chance |
| By seattletimes.nwsource.com |
| Published: 07/16/2009 |
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Post-Prison Education Program helps some get another chance The Post-Prison Education Program helps people who want another chance in life by moving any obstacle that gets in the way of further education. Jerry Large-Seattle Times staff columnist I'd have bet he was a Texan based on his drawl. But Ari Kohn, sitting in his small office downtown wearing a T-shirt, jeans and sandals, grew up in Central Florida. He's 62, which is old enough to remember when there was a paved part of his town and an unpaved part and that the people who worked in his parents' home and in their citrus groves lived in the unpaved part. Pavement was just one indicator of a stratified society that made it nearly impossible for poor people to rise out of poverty. Kohn's blue eyes get teary when he talks about the effect racial inequality had on people he cared about, and when he recalls how his parents fought for equality. Four years ago he got three friends to help him start his own war on inequality, the Post-Prison Education Program. "To me there is a titanium ceiling that blocks poor people of all races from rising," he said, "and I believe the only key to get through that titanium ceiling is education." PPED helps people who want another chance in life by moving any obstacle that gets in the way of further education. That could mean paying tuition, helping with rent, running interference with various bureaucracies, even tutoring. Kohn and the two young women who work with him do whatever the students don't have the wherewithal to do. Kohn says he's trying not just to rescue former prisoners, but their families as well. He cites a study that found 82 percent of prisoners in Washington have children, and the children of inmates face a higher risk than other kids of winding up in prison themselves. "Prisoners are people," he kept saying. Sometimes they are people shaped by bad circumstances and failed by the justice system. There is some of that in the story he tells about his four-and-a-half years in prison. In the late '80s, he bought a financial-services franchise that he says turned out to be a sham. He sued and won all the company's assets, including its bad books, which he tried to fix. There was an impasse with one of the victims and Kohn was charged with wire fraud. He said the charges were so bogus that he refused to retain an attorney. The court disagreed. In prison he got a reputation for stirring things up and advocating for other prisoners. He decided to become a lawyer and to do it at the University of Washington because he'd spent time here and thought Seattle was the most beautiful place in the country. An acquaintance took him to a welcome-home event for five people who'd just gotten out of prison. Kohn befriended one of them, changed course and started the education project. State Rep. Roger Goodman, R-Kirkland, serves on the board. Goodman said, "It's just about doing what makes sense. "The recidivism numbers are so starkly different between those who get a college education and those who don't" that the state shouldn't have to depend on a nonprofit to do the work on a shoestring budget. For most of the past four years, Kohn and his 88-year-old mother have paid nearly all the cost themselves, but that well is running dry. Read More. |
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