Over the course of the two-day re-entry fair, inmates at the Humboldt County jail were offered opportunities to meet with local service agencies and employers as those who are incarcerated look to the future.

On Wednesday morning, representatives from 16 local service agencies — for-profit, nonprofit and government entities — gathered in the Humboldt County Sheriff Office’s briefing room at the courthouse for a short briefing from Administrative Sgt. Dennis Griffin.

The briefing was the first step of day two of the Sheriff’s Office’s award-winning re-entry fair in which local employers and service providers meet with inmates in the county jail.

The goal is to provide inmates with some of the skills and knowledge they will need to reintegrate into society.

“We want to see people as people,” said program director Vanessa Vrtiak, who along with Griffin coordinates the re-entry fair. “To me, it makes no sense to put these guys in a box to serve their sentence and then expect them to be better people when released.”

The re-entry fair is a two-day event. On Tuesday local employers came to the jail to sit down with inmates and help them set some post-release goals and for some inmates, it could mean a job once they are released.

“We’re not going to get to every inmate, but we’ll get to a few,” said Griffin as he oversaw a table where employers were interviewing inmates on Tuesday afternoon. “This is a call to service and this is how we can have a positive impact on our community.”

On Wednesday morning, the service representatives sat down at tables while inmates from the dorm gathered. Drug counseling and mental health services from the county, substance abuse services, legal services, the Veterans Administration and the Humboldt Literacy Project were among those present. The goal is to connect inmates with those services that will keep them from coming back to jail once released.

“Initially, the hope is to help people feeling hopeless,” Vrtiak said. “The county has several news outlets that shame people and in this program they can get back a sense of worthiness and we hope that they can be welcomed back into the community.”

Since 2017, the re-entry fair has grown from being a one-day event to now taking place over two days. Griffin said that the goal is to make it a biannual event to held roughly each April and each October. In the week prior to the fair, representatives from the Employment Training Division and the Job Market worked with inmates to help them practice interview skills and techniques before they sat down with employers.

“The stigma of people in jail is that they are criminals and they will always be criminals,” said inmate Don, who requested his last name not be used. “This is proof that people do care. This is making it a whole lot easier, I know I have support and someone to help me when I need it.”

The county provided representatives to assist inmates with housing and family services, food security, tribal services and education. Vrtiak said goal-setting is a key component because once inmates have established a goal, it gives them something to work toward. In the end, the goal is to keep them in the community and not behind bars.

“We can’t just have them serve a sentence and let them go on their own,” Vrtiak said. “Maybe it takes multiple tries until they gain some control over their lives.”

Another key part of reintegration into the community is the coordination with the county probation department.

“They play a big role,” Vrtiak said. “We want the inmates to learn how to talk to and interact with probation officers because they’re such a really big part post-release.”

The California State Association of Counties has been paying attention to the program. In 2018 the fair was honored by CSAC with the Challenge Award for its innovative program aimed at reducing recidivism and investing resources to those impacted by incarceration.

The Re-Entry Fair was one of 16 programs honored by CSAC and it will be used as a model for other rural counties that struggle with less state funding for correctional programs.

The program will also get a boost once the new $20 million expansion is built onto the jail, Griffin said. It will feature many of the services geared toward reintegrating inmates back into the community under one roof and the Re-entry Fair lays the groundwork for expanded services once the new facility is opened.

Dan Squier can be reached at 707-441-0528.