
DATE: Monday, October 13, 1997              TAG: 9710130034

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: DECISION 97

SOURCE: BY LOUIS HANSEN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  111 lines

AT ISSUE: INMATES NEED TRAINING BEFORE THEY RETURN TO OUTSIDE WORLD.

Many baby boomers have changed careers several times by the time they reach their 40s.

Not Ricky Whitaker. He knew where he was headed from the time he was a teen-ager.

And it took him 30 years, five incarcerations, one bullet and one holy revelation to get him to change course.

Whitaker, 42, has spent much of his adult life in prison.

He has found help, he said, through a renewed Christian faith and programs that the state Department of Corrections offered to help his transition from convict to citizen.

In an era when candidates curry favor with get-tough crime initiatives and pose with every police prop this side of Dirty Harry's .357 Magnum, Whitaker wants people to know that, eventually, most of the men inside are coming outside.

Some may even want to contribute.

``Everybody's not going to be rehabilitated,'' he said recently during a break from his job as receptionist at Calvary Revival Church. ``Everybody doesn't want to be rehabilitated.''

Virginia does not count the rate of recidivism in its population of approximately 25,000 inmates. For the 1996-97 fiscal year, which ended June 30, the state considered 16,461 requests for parole and granted 3,208, according to state statistics.

Those on parole, Whitaker said, need some connection to a job or a stable community.

Whitaker was shot in a late-night attack in 1988, and was paralyzed from the waist down. He works from a wheelchair.

``Every day that I have freedom is a major milestone,'' he said.

He knew what happened to him four times: He left jail, went back to his old neighborhood, slipped into cocaine and heroin addiction, and shoplifted.

It's a commonly told story among ex-convicts, he said. ``They're right back where they started.''

Even though he felt qualified for several jobs when he left prison, he could never get past the simple application question: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

He would scribble in long explanations in the cramped space and into the margins. Three lines wasn't enough space to convince an employer that he had changed.

Whitaker took several training programs during his last 38-month stint in prison, including six months of computer training and life skills courses designed to prepare him for a job when he was released.

He learned how to talk to prospective employers about his incarceration.

He left prison in March 1995. Because of the training and support programs, he said, ``I was able to come out and not sit idle.''

Prison counselors enrolled him in further training at Goodwill Industries in Norfolk, where he became Goodwill graduate of the year in 1996.

He landed a job with Ticketmaster, where he worked for eight months before being laid off.

His church, Calvary Revival Church in Norfolk, hired him as a full-time receptionist.

He is taking classes at Tidewater Community College with the goal of earning his associate's degree and landing a job as a computer support technician.

Whitaker believes he's changed, and he's thankful for the chance.

Other parolees, he said, should also be taught work and life skills.

``Offer them something on the inside that can help them stay on the outside,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD L. DUNSTON

The Virginian-Pilot

Ricky Whitaker...

PHOTOS

BEYER

GILMORE

CANDIDATES RESPOND

Whitaker's question: People who have ``paid their debt to

society'' return to our communities to live. Is Virginia doing

enough of the right things to prepare criminals to live in our