To Reduce Labor Shortages, Chicago Tries to Ease the Path From Prison Into Jobs
Illinois is considering $2,500 grants for small businesses that hire formerly incarcerated people and lowering licensing barriers for barbers, truckers and other trades.
Juan Rivera, owner of Legacy Barber College in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, is helping others who have been released from prison find a career.
Photographer: Amy Yee/BloombergAt Juan Rivera’s Legacy Barber College in Chicago, clippers buzz as students give fades to their customers. In adjacent classrooms decorated with anatomy posters, other trainees gather at tables crowded with mannequin heads and tools of the trade. One man, Anthony, sweeps hair from the floor after giving a female patron a trim.
Juan, the teacher, and Anthony, the student, are united by more than the bustle of the shop in the Rogers Park neighborhood. Not so many years ago, they were playing basketball and lifting weights together — in prison. Anthony, 44, was released in May after spending 27 years behind bars.