For Darin Armstrong, getting a job in December was a win. What made it even more significant is that he was released from the Cedar Creek Corrections Center only a month earlier. The Washington State Department of Transportation hired him as a natural resource technician.
Armstrong, a previously incarcerated individual, is one of the people who benefited from a state interagency partnership that taught him the skills he needed to land a job.
For the past year, the Department of Corrections, along with the Evergreen State College, teamed up with the Department of Transportation to give people being released from prison a chance to work for the state. This was possible through a program called the Sustainability in Prison Project.
Gov. Jay Inslee has long supported re-entry efforts. He signed an executive order in 2016 that requires agencies to work on specific actions that will positively impact someone re-entering the community.
Read the rest of the story on the governor's Medium page.