OOR Graduates First

Trainee at SCI Cambridge

Penny Adams has gone home, at least part way home. She left SCI Cambridge Springs in October and went to a Community Center in Philadelphia, her next step toward being back with her family after two years of incarceration.

Before leaving, she said that she would be looking for a job right away and knew it would be hard. Adams wants to work in the construction trades. She worries about one thing that will distinguish her from other job applicants: she’s an "ex-con."

But something else will distinguish her from other job applicants, something positive: she is the first female graduate of the OOR program at SCI Cambridge Springs. Adams and Kim Scott joined the CReW when it opened at the women’s facility on April 30 of this year. (The current crew is at the maximum number of 10.) After 30 years of running on the job training programs in Pennsylvania’s male prisons, Operation Outward Reach is training women for "nontraditional" employment.

Adams developed an interest in carpentry before coming to prison, when she helped relatives with home repairs. She took the Building and Trades class at SCI Cambridge Springs. When she learned last year that OOR would be opening at Cambridge Springs she wrote to Superintendent Marilyn Brooks and asked to participate. She was approved through the Department of Corrections staffing procedures and became part of the first OOR CReW at Cambridge Springs.

What did she gain from six months of OOR? Adams said that she received an organized introduction to construction basics, including tools, measurement and skill training. "We got to make small decisions," she said. She liked going out five days a week to work on a "real project" for someone who needed help.

Having contact five days a week with the outside world took away some of the apprehension she felt at going from inmate to tax paying citizen.

She is ready for someone to give her a chance at that "nontraditional" job in construction.

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Penny worked on three projects

Concrete-set grade, form,

pour, broom finish, edge,

cut joints.

Interior-dry wall install-

ation and finishing.

Exterior-install siding,

replacement windows,

remove and replace porches

and steps.

She said she would do concrete "if she had to," but prefers

carpentry. "Concrete work is really hard," she said. No pun intended.