As he waited next to the prison gate, John “Freddie” Nole struggled for the right words to say to the man who would soon be walking out. Five years ago, Nole came out those same prison doors. He remembered the big plans he had. “I didn’t have a clue,” said Nole, 72. He kept a stack of rejection letters from all the jobs he’d tried to get in recent months and failed. Managers unfailingly loved his attitude. Then — as always — came the background check and rejection. Two years ago, he started picking up other prisoners on the day they were released. Anyone who didn’t have family or friends to get them — he’d be their ride, reports the Washington Post. That was how Nole found himself back at the prison he’d hated and spent 49 years trying to leave. Nole knew little about the man being released that day, Franklin Hons.
“I need all the help I can get from you’s,” Hons wrote to Nole. He asked for a ride to his hometown, Scranton, two hours away. Between pastor William Jones and other drivers Nole had recruited, they had picked up 42 prisoners in two years. Hons would be No. 43. More than 600,000 people are released from U.S. prisons every year. More than 60 percent are rearrested within three years, more than 80 percent within 10 years. Prisoner advocates argue that the system is rigged against people who were incarcerated. They struggle to find anyone willing to rent them a home. They often find it difficult to find work and a way to escape the poverty, conditions and drugs that landed them behind bars. Nole had seen guys come out — without the plans or belief needed to pull their lives together — and end up back in prison within weeks. He’d also seen those with the biggest ambitions lose hope after running into bitter reality. When Nole and Jones arrived at Nole’s old state prison — a 3,830-bed maximum-security complex outside Philadelphia called SCI Phoenix, Nole wondered how much they should warn Hons, the man coming out, of the uphill battles he faced. Nole was 17 when he first entered Pennsylvania prisons. By the time he walked out, he was 67.
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