Organization Helps Ex-Inmates Find Jobs

These chairs are empty now because we can't show you the criminals sitting in this room earlier tonight. All of them did time in the penitentiary. Now they're looking for a place of employment.

"I’ve made the mistakes. I’m a changed person now, just take a chance on me," said Cornelius Stribling.

He did two years for selling drugs. He’s been out for a couple years. Stribling says he tried to hang out with the boys on the streets again, but realized he needed to change his life for his son. He says that the hardest question on a job application is “have you ever been arrested?” Stribling and his career counselor say he could not lie or be ashamed.

A community organization called Project Safe Neighborhoods holds these parolee forums every month. They're making another push for business owners to take a chance on hiring a man or women who has committed a crime and served time in jail. US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald says that if the ex-cons are offered an opportunity, most of them will take it.