Q: Tell us about you, your journey, and the organization you work for.

My name is Maurice Q Jones; I prefer Q by anything else. I am the founder and principal consultant of Qism Consulting.

I also helped co-found PAR-Recycle Works. PAR stands for “People Advancing Reintegration.” PAR helps to remove barriers to employment and the workforce for individuals who are returning home from prison.

Q: Why are employment social enterprises so important for people striving to overcome barriers?

Employment social enterprises are extremely important because they help both the entrepreneur and the one whose barriers are being removed. There’s also the ability to show the donor, sponsor, or client that there’s a return on their investment. If you’re here, if you’re giving time, you’re going to build up your skills. If you’re a sponsor or a donor, you know your dollars are directly benefiting the participant. And I think that is extremely important.

Q: What’s your hope for Fair Chance Month, and beyond?

That we don’t have to say “Fair Chance Month.” It becomes a complete assimilation, and we don’t have to call it out, like, ‘Okay, we’re doing this for this minute, or this moment, or these 30 days.’

Basically, I hope one day I’m out of this job and don’t have to do this advocacy work. My hope would be that we don’t have to build particular enterprises to help people that are on the fringes or forgotten. That there isn’t a ‘returning citizen’ or ‘other’ population. We’re just human.

We all see ourselves as humans. We need to find some type of commonality of what that is. Because we can’t point our fingers and have the ‘other.’ We have to recondition ourselves and reeducate ourselves as to what it is to be human, because I think that’s where we’re lost. We are always looking at the differences, but if we can look at the commonality, which I do believe we can find — we can be better. 

Q: What’s one thing you wish people knew about post-release employment?

Post-release employment is pivotal, and it has to be done with care and understanding, of who the client/employee/participant is. And that’s not cookie cutter because no one’s reentry experiences are the same.  The things that they went into incarceration with, could carry over, [and] there’s new things that come with that as well…

It takes time, trust, and safety for things to start to be relearned or introduced. I’m talking about things like emotional intelligence, interpersonal space, interpersonal relationships — things that aren’t taught in the traditional workspace or in the traditional not-for-profit space [but] that employment social enterprises really nails and do with so much dignity.

The employment social enterprises that are getting it right are doing so by putting the participants first and treating them with dignity.

Q: A fair chance is____.

A fair chance is a blank canvas.

[It’s where] one is able to control what is said, what is felt about them, versus what one perceives they are.