By Vinny Vella
The Philadelphia Inquirer
COATESVILLE, Pa. — Tyler Ramaley wakes up every morning grateful that he’s able to do “respectable work in a hardhat” as he clocks in for his shift at JGM, a steel fabrication plant in Coatesville.
Nineteen months ago, that would have been impossible: He was struggling with an opioid addiction and waking up to a monotonous routine in a Chester County Prison cell.
A new program offered at the jail, Exit, Enter, Employ, gave him an opportunity to move on from his past mistakes. He had help building his resume, getting certified in his chosen field, and, crucially, landing an interview for a job that was waiting for him after his release.
“I was in there, and I just didn’t like who I was and I just knew I needed to change,” Ramaley, 37, said in an interview during a break from running a plasma cutter on a recent day. “It gave me a purpose to wake up every day, and it makes me not want to waste the opportunity I’ve been given.”
Ramaley’s experience, county officials say, is just one of many success stories to come out of the E3 program since its inception in January 2023.
More than 100 people have graduated from the course, with a recidivism rate of 2%, according to Jill Stoltzfus, the program’s career-readiness coordinator.
“Everybody needs a second chance,” she said. “And I’m very candid with people when I interview them. Like, we’ve all made mistakes, I’m sure I’ve made mistakes that I could be in the same situation.”
Job-readiness programs are nothing new for county jails — they’re offered almost universally across the region. But Stoltzfus said E3 is different because it provides a direct path, with job openings already lined up for graduating inmates from multiple companies that partner with the county.
And in the first few months in those jobs, coordinators from the program follow up with former inmates, checking in to see how they are faring.
“I don’t like the judgment we often hear of ‘Why should we fund this?’ or the idea that some people deserve a chance over others,” Stoltzfus said. “I think it’s crucial that we at least put that opportunity out to them.”
E3 is available only to inmates who have been sentenced to county jail, meaning their crimes were not serious enough to warrant state prison time. And county officials carefully screen those who apply to the program to make sure they are ready.
Besides workforce skills like OSHA certification and courses in customer service, E3 offers financial-planning advice, as well as cognitive behavioral therapy and anger management.
Current partner employers, besides JGM, include J.P. Mascaro & Sons, FASTSIGNS, and MacKissic. Stoltzfus is hoping to expand the offerings to include agricultural and culinary posts.
Howard Holland, the warden of Chester County Prison, views the program as a way to help incarcerated people prepare to reenter society in a productive way.
“We’re engaging them in a way other than just ‘Here’s your cot, stay behind the bars,’” he said. “You just have that same cycle over and over and over again because that’s the way our institutions are run.
“At the end of the day, we’re humans, right?” he added. “They’re here, and it’s our responsibility to, while they’re here, try to do the best we can for them.”
Ramaley, who was named JGM’s employee of the month in June, said the opportunity was an important step toward reversing years of bad decisions.
His drug abuse, he said, began in 2020, when he was injured on the job while running a hammer drill at a concrete mill. The drill skipped and jerked his arm hard, shredding multiple tendons. After several surgeries, he said, he was prescribed Tramadol in bottles of 150 pills at a time. He became reliant on the pills, using them to deal with the pain.
And when his workers’ comp ran out, he said, his doctor cut him off cold turkey and he turned to other ways to support his opioid habit and purchase drugs, racking up convictions for theft and forgery and landing in county jail.
His moment of clarity came this spring, he said, and he graduated from E3 in April, weeks before his jail sentence ended and he was released.
“When I was in my active addiction, I never thought I would be able to go to work and not be on something,” he said, “and there’s times I’ll stand out there and just kind of think about how happy I am here, actually doing hard work and respectable work and doing it the right way.
“And that’s a better feeling than anything I had when I was in my addiction.”
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