'Society doesn't see the success stories'

Salisbury, N.C. — Tracey Everhardt is a lab technician at plastics additive maker Carolina Color Corp. in Salisbury.

He's also a felon — he joined the company after serving 14 years in North Carolina prisons.

But he's not alone in having that unusual detail on his resume. He's one of 21 former or current inmates on the job at Carolina Color.

The way Everhardt and his co-workers see it, their workplace should be celebrated for what it does to help felons leave prison and rejoin society.

“Society doesn't see the success stories,” Everhardt said. “They get the negative or the unsuccessful. Automatically you do something wrong, you are going to be on the news.”

The plastic colorant maker works closely with the work-release program at the minimum-security unit of nearby Piedmont Correctional Institution.

Employees see it as a pipeline back to a normal life.

Kerry Briggs has operated an extrusion line at Carolina Color for 13 years. For the last two years of his seven-year prison term for selling drugs, he left the penitentiary five days a week to work in the factory.

It eased the transition. He was mentored by other parolees at the company on both emotional challenges and practical steps, like how to build a credit line.

“It was so helpful to me to come out into society with a job and an opportunity,” he said. “Most guys who don't have that opportunity to join some type of outside organization, they're coming home with basically nothing, no support and it can get tough.”

Briggs said working at the company while in prison gave him the credit history to buy a home within a year of getting released.

He said his motivation was his son.

“I thought about him every day [in prison],” Briggs said. “I worried about his welfare and his well-being. And the mistakes that I had made.”

Briggs regained custody of the teenager within a year of getting out of prison. Now 22, his son is about to graduate from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte with a degree in nursing: “I'm super happy about that,” he said.

Briggs sees Carolina Color as an example of what work-release can do.

“I just wish we could have a discussion as a nation, you know, and focus on guys coming home from prison,” he said. “I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. I don't think we as a society, we're not doing enough.”

Like Briggs, Tracey Everhardt bought a home a few months after getting out of jail. The time in work-release was key in showing employment history to a bank, he said.

“Without the Carolina Color work-release program, I'd have gotten out of jail with nothing,” he said. “By being on work-release, I become a homeowner.”

Everhardt had been sentenced to prison for second-degree murder — “I regret that because I took an innocent life. And this person didn't deserve that” — and spent time in one of North Carolina's toughest prisons, the maximum-security Raleigh Central Prison.

“I was around guys that had double life, life plus [sentences],” he said. “Yes, it can be dangerous.”

With good behavior, he eventually moved to the minimum-security unit at Piedmont.

Everhardt comes across as a very sober-minded person in conversation. He reluctantly talked about why he went to prison. He credits his Christian faith with helping him get to a better place in life and said that he's now married and is a church pastor. He goes back to penitentiaries monthly to tell his story.

“I thank God for Carolina Color,” Everhardt said. “They didn't make me feel like ‘Oh, he's out of prison.' I never got that vibe. Nobody looked upon me as ‘He got out of prison.' I was an employee of Carolina Color.”

James Harley, a batcher in the production department, was at another company on work-release and applied for a transfer to Carolina Color because he'd heard good things from other inmates.

“Some companies, even if you're on work-release, they may look at you a little different,” Harley said. “Here at Carolina Color, they treat you the same whether you're on work-release, whether you're a regular employee off the street. They respect you.”

Harley, who went to prison for selling drugs, studied to become a pastor when he was behind bars. Now, in his spare time, he ministers at two churches.

He said former inmates are loyal to Carolina Color because of the prejudice they face from the rest of society.

“What I found out is when you hire felons, they appreciate, because other people already turned them down,” Harley said.

“As far as the work-release program, what's awesome about it is society, many times they don't want to give people a second chance,” Harley said. “I'm not trying to get religious, but we all make mistakes.”

The person who does the hiring for the factory floor at Carolina Color, Mike Linnane, is also a felon.

Linnane came to the company 24 years ago on work release from Piedmont while finishing up a prison sentence for armed robbery.

He stayed after his release, has risen through the ranks and now is the production manager, supervising the 25 employees.

Linnane is aware of volunteer programs, many from churches, designed to help former inmates. But he thinks work release is the single most effective way to ease the transition.

Of course, not everyone succeeds in work release, he said.

The company sometimes loses inmates who fail drug tests, or are caught on the job violating the strict rules of the program, like having a cell phone, Linnane said.

Carolina Color will not take prisoners convicted of certain crimes, like sex offenses, and Linnane said the company can choose from multiple inmates for each opening.

For the company, the program is worth the effort because it provides a pool of motivated employees, he said.

Early in the interview, he mentioned that he had saved money from work release and bought a home soon after getting out of prison. He said former prisoners see that as a big step toward their larger goal of rejoining society.

“It's such a huge accomplishment for these guys,” Linnane said. “These guys being told they're not going to amount to nothing ever, and here they are succeeding and working every day and raising families and becoming part of society like anyone else.”

Read more about Carolina Color's program.

Read an editorial about the Carolina Color's effort.