About a dozen former inmates sat around a meeting room table in Ward 1 last week, expecting a city official to tell them about programs to help them reenter society now that they have been released from jail or prison.
But Lamont Carey changed their expectations with a single question: “How many of y’all got a dream?”
Every person raised their hand. Mr. Carey went to each of them and asked what their dream was — and how they planned to achieve it. One woman said her dream is to become a seamstress.
“You letting the world know that you do that?” he asked, challenging each ex-convict at the Jubilee Housing-sponsored meeting to dream and strive for a better life.
“Once you get that stuff [housing and employment], you still have to figure out what you are going to do with the rest of your life,” he said.
As the acting director of the Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizen Affairs since October, Mr. Carey wants to do more than just help former inmates find jobs and housing upon their release. He wants to help them achieve their dreams.
Like many of them, Mr. Carey is a native Washingtonian. At the age of 11 he started selling drugs, and at 16 he was arrested on charges of selling heroin and attempted murder.
He told the group that during his 11 years in prison, he earned his GED and a business degree, and started writing books. He said he realized that he already had learned a lot of the business material while selling drugs, like supply and demand and customer service. This informed his motto: “Keep the hustle, but change the product.”
After he was released, he started selling socks to people on the street, then bags and jewelry. His parole officer noticed his success and asked him to do some public speaking about his experience.
His passion for writing and entrepreneurship developed into a public speaking career and performing slam poetry. Def Slam Poetry invited Mr. Carey to perform his poem “I Can’t Read,” which landed him a role on HBO’s “The Wire,” for which he was able to hire more than 200 other people for various jobs.
“If you make freedom the foundation of where you want your every day begin, I know it helps me focus on what I want to avoid,” Mr. Carey said. “And there are going to be barriers, there are going to be people telling you you aren’t good enough, that you have a criminal record, that you can’t do this, you can’t do that, but I live my life like I don’t have a criminal record.”
In 2005, Mr. Carey founded a nonprofit called Contact Visits to engage at-risk youth and former inmates around the country to help them make healthy lifestyle choices through art therapy, financial wellness programs and job training.
With 10 staffers comprised of case workers and outreach specialists and a budget of $1,129 million, Mr. Carey has resources to continue the work he started with Contact Visits, but for the D.C. government.
The Office on Returning Citizen Affairs connects people to services such as job training, continued education and mental health treatment. It also directs them to housing providers and helps them purchase new birth certificates, pay off outstanding fines and acquire commercial driver’s licenses.
Mr. Carey’s vision is to create new partnerships with different industries that match the interests of returning residents and offer a “living wage,” especially in the tech industry and entrepreneurial opportunities. On Tuesday, he met with members of the arts community.
He looks for partnerships everywhere: After appearing Tuesday on “Crossroads” — a WPFM Radio program on injustice in the prison system hosted by Roach Brown — Mr. Carey connected with a woman looking to offer training and jobs to returning citizens in the solar panel industry.
Every year more than 2,000 people return to the District from incarceration, according to the Office on Returning Citizen Affairs’ fiscal 2018 report.
Next Thursday, the D.C. Council’s Committee on Facilities and Procurement will conduct Mr. Carey’s confirmation hearing which will bring him one step closer to officially having a dream job of his own.
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