For some inmates, being released is more terrifying than being locked up Walking out of a jail cell doesn't make a prisoner free. Finding purpose, community support does.

Terrance Coffie | Opinion contributor

The day began like so many others.

I was standing in my apartment, drinking coffee and watching the news.

My past — which was filled with horrible decisions that had led to drug use and multiple attempted robberies — was weighing heavily on my mind. I had long since left that lifestyle behind. But, as a former felon, I live in a society that doesn't let criminal pasts be easily forgiven or forgotten.

It was 8 a.m. — just 25 minutes before I had to catch the train to work.

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Nearly anything can trigger a prison memory. That morning, it was the audible tick-tick-tick of the clock in my kitchen. It reminded me of a moment eight years earlier when I was sitting inside the Miami-Dade County jail watching a similar clock, waiting to hear about my release.

After 19 years in and out of prison, I was no longer afraid of incarceration. But when the guard opened the cell door and told me the charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against me had been dropped, I was terrified.

I was used to prison. It had been the only constant in my life. Freedom, on the other hand, made me feel lost and anxious.

I left the jail and walked three miles across town to a halfway house. It was full, so they offered me a bus ticket to New York City — a place I’d never been.

I slept through the trip, dreaming of the New York I’d seen in movies. As the bus rolled through city traffic, a siren woke me up.

“Where’s the Statue of Liberty?” I asked the person sitting next to me.

He looked at me, in my ratty clothes, and laughed.

I climbed out of the bus, stepped onto Eighth Avenue and looked up at the skyline. I immediately felt like I'd made a mistake. I called my mom to ask for money to go home. Then I remembered, I didn’t have a home to go to anymore.

Lost, lonely, dirty and hungry, I stumbled into a run-down men’s shelter. Someone there mentioned a program that gave guys like me work and a place to stay while we got ourselves together. Initially, I was indifferent to the suggestion and shrugged it off. I figured it was too late for me to get work. But desperation won. I needed to get out of that overcrowded shelter. I eventually begged for a referral to another New York program that helps the formerly incarcerated get back on their feet.

I got a bed there and a job cleaning the streets. In return, I had to stay sober and attend classes for as long as it took to land work and housing on my own.

I’d completed a lot of things in my life: gun sales, drug runs, prison terms. But I’d never done anything of value. I thought, as long as I stayed near the bottom — as long as nothing mattered — I couldn’t fall very far.

Now, I worried I’d gotten myself into something that was too good to be true. Where was the scam? What was the game? Worse, maybe it all was true and I’d fail. All those years I thought of myself as tough. Now, I had a real opportunity, and I was afraid.

A week after I arrived, the director of the facility spoke to me and several other men in the program. I sat in the back of the room as he told his story of addiction and incarceration. I knew that story. And I knew what he meant when he talked about what he used to believe. He'd let society tell him that because he was black, he had nothing meaningful to offer. Yet there he was, wearing a suit, running a program in New York City, and telling us that if we stuck it out, we could make it, too.

I stepped outside and felt something change in me. I grew up thinking that men didn’t cry. But in that moment, I didn’t care. For the first time in 40 years, I realized I wasn’t alone. I looked down as my tears hit the sidewalk.

When I started my cleaning shift the next day, I envisioned the avenue as a dirty canvas. When I finished my route, a vendor thanked me for bringing beauty back to the street. Until that moment, I’d never felt so satisfied with anything I’d done. I craved more.

I called my mom and asked if she needed anything. It was so quiet on her end of the line, I thought she’d hung up. She was crying, but I could hear pride in the tears. The same as mine.

In prison, I watched my life tick away. I consoled myself with the lie that men like me — black and poor — didn’t have much to do except lose our lives to prison, and hustle in between. Now, for the first time, I imagined my future.

If someone on that bus had told me that I was riding toward a master of social work degree from New York University and holiday visits with my family, I would’ve called them crazy. Walking out of a jail cell, I knew, didn't necessarily make an inmate free.

What I learned later was that we need other people on the opposite side of those bars: someone who knows our journey and our pain. Someone who can show us the way to a life of meaning and purpose. Someone we can count on.

As I finished my coffee and headed to the door, I checked my tie in the reflection of my diploma. For a moment, I didn't recognize the man whose name was at the bottom of it. My phone buzzed, it was 8:25. No more time to waste.

There were people out there, counting on me.

Terrance Coffie is a graduate of the Ready, Willing and Able program run by The Doe Fund, a non-profit social enterprise that provides the homeless and formerly incarcerated with transitional housing, paid work and holistic social services. He recently founded the Educate Don't Incarcerate organization and received the Leadership in Education Award from Citizens Against Recidivism.