WAILUKU, Maui — With companies scrambling to find workers in an extremely tight labor market, a Wailuku job fair yesterday aimed to connect employers with an untapped resource: Maui Community Correctional Center inmates.

The event was sponsored by the BEST Reintegration Program, a division of Maui Economic Opportunity that prepares inmates for their return to the community during their last six months behind bars. The program provides housing and employment assistance, mentoring, mental health and other counseling, family reunification services and substance-abuse treatment.

Carrie Ann Shirota, director of the BEST (Being Empowered & Safe Together) program, said vocational education programs and stable employment go a long way toward reducing recidivism by instilling a sense of pride, hard work and responsibility.

A small community like Maui, with its extensive family ties, is more receptive to the idea of inmate reintegration, she said.

"Everybody knows somebody," Shirota said. "These are our sons and daughters returning home, and having those connections helps."

Still, getting companies to hire inmates can be a challenge.

Statewide, there are only about 450 inmates on work furlough, a program that allows prisoners to hold jobs outside of jail while still serving their sentences.

Some employers "fear the unknown" of hiring a convicted criminal, Shirota said, and others are turned off by procedural hurdles. But employers can benefit from tax credits and reimbursements for on-the-job training, and can obtain theft coverage from a federal bonding program.

Shirota said employers also can be reassured that inmates involved in the BEST program are assigned case managers who monitor their progress.

Participating in the job fair were companies including Despins Construction, Kealoha Construction, Home Depot, Akamai Employment Agency and the state Workforce Development Division, as well as education providers such as Maui Community College and the Maui Community School for Adults.

Another participant was Maui Land & Pineapple Co., which imports laborers from Micronesia, but would rather hire locally, according to training coordinator Debbie Revilla. She said the company has openings for fieldhands and cannery trimmers, packers and sanitation workers, but hasn't hired inmates on work furlough, mainly because of paperwork delays of up to six weeks.

Revilla said that if the processing period could be reduced to no more than a few days, the company likely would hire inmates.

CHANCE TO 'FEEL HUMAN'

Department of Public Safety spokesman Michael Gaede acknowledged the work-furlough employment process can be tedious, because inmates and employers must sign contracts that require approval by state officials.

BEST program client Ryan Ha'ole, 34, is scheduled for release in six months and looking for a work-furlough job in the meantime. He said employment will provide stability and a feeling of self-worth.

Ha'ole worked as an electrician's helper and was close to finishing his apprenticeship with the Hawai'i Carpenters Union before he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for growing marijuana and a subsequent parole violation. He said he is working for reinstatement by the union with credit for his past training.

"I just want a job, something positive in my life so I can feel human again," he said.

Three Maui inmates will begin training next year with Hawai'i Laborers Union Local 368 under the work-furlough program, according to union official George Aikala. He said many employers wrongly label former inmates as troublemakers. "Everybody's gotten into trouble at some point in their life, and I would want someone to give me a second chance," he said. "You have to give people the opportunity to change their lives, and if you do, and it works out, you feel good about it."

GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Ed Jensen came straight to the job fair from a parole hearing with news that he will be released Dec. 14 after serving almost all of a 10-year sentence for sexual assault. For the past five months, Jensen, 35, has been living in the community under an electronic monitoring program, and for nine months before that, he was on work furlough. During those 14 months he has been working for a fencing company.

It's not the kind of work Jensen wants to do for the rest of his life, but he said qualifying for work furlough and finding a job was a big step toward getting his life back on track.

"When it takes some eight years to really walk out of that gate, it was a huge thing for me and my self-esteem. Making a wage and being productive, giving back to society, it gives you a sense of being a part of society and not being so isolated," Jensen said.

For more information on the BEST Reintegration Program, call (808) 249-2990 or see www.meoinc.org.

Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com.