David,

Thank you for hosting this discussion and asking so many good questions.
I will comment on your last ones in another email, but I wanted to share 
a few other comments first. 

In the formerly incarcerated community, people in general don't use
the term "ex-offenders" any more, as it tends to emphasize the 
offense and not the fact that they have been incarcerated. 
We tend to us "formerly incarcerated", though that can make for some pretty
awkward sentences. "Former prisoners" is also used, though some people don't
like it. I realize this gets into the area of political correctness around 
but what we call each other does matter.

There have been a few questions around what crimes people in our programs 
have committed. I'm not sure where this question is coming from, but the
answer, at Fortune, is all kinds of crimes:  drug offenses, robbery,
computer-based crimes, homicides, sexual crimes. I had a student last year 
who was convicted of a felony for animal abuse. He had taken his dog on a
long run on the pavement. The dog started bleeding from his paws. He 
stopped by the pond in the park to wash the dog's feet. A woman saw him 
and called the cops and accused him of abusing the dog. They arrested him,
took the dog (which he loved), and charged him with a felony. He was facing
two years; his lawyer advised him to plead guilty and he ended up in an 
alternative to incarceration program at the Fortune Society. 

My experience has been that the people we work with are, by and large, 
struggling really hard to change their lives. Not all of them succeed; that's
for sure. Sometimes it can be pretty intense working here, but it's been
incredibly rewarding, a privilege really. We have a saying at Fortune: 
"No one should be defined by the worst thing they ever did." I think that 
applies to all of us.

john
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