How Moore’s Tornado Recovery Can Get Ex-felons Back On Their Feet

• Logan Layden
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  Logan Layden is a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma. He is a native of McAlester, Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. Logan spent three years as a state capitol reporter and local host of All Things Considered for NPR member station KGOU in Norman and six years as a reporter with StateImpact from 2011 to 2017. Most recently, he was news director for McAlester Radio before returning to public radio in 2020.

Logan Layden / StateImpact Oklahoma

The North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla.

Moore, Okla. continues to rebuild following May’s deadly tornado, and will now enlist the free help of some former inmates in the process.

How to deal with the tornado’s destruction still dominates Moore city council meetings, including Monday’s, where The Norman Transcript‘s Joy Hampton reports a one year contract was approved between the city and the Center for Employment Opportunities:

The group can provide the partnership opportunity at no cost because of a National Emergency Grant through the Department of Labor.

… City Manager Steve Eddy said the level of supervision makes him comfortable with the program. Supervisors are CEO staff and are not criminal offenders.

StateImpact visited CEO’s Tulsa office for a story in 2012 and found out just how difficult it is for convicted felons to rejoin society once they’ve served their time. Finding a job can be the key to breaking the cycle of crime and poverty.

CEO provides transportation to interviews, teaches ex-offenders basic life skills and places them in transitional jobs. The jobs don’t pay a lot, but it’s better than just cutting them loose.

At the time, Tulsa County CEO Director Kelly Doyle told StateImpact the program had been proven to reduce recidivism by “upwards of 20 percent.”

That was when CEO just had the one office in Oklahoma. Since then, it opened an office in Oklahoma City, which will provide the workers for the partnership with Moore.