From prison to a paycheck, By Howard Husock, August 3, 2012, Wall Street Journal: “Hector Morales might not seem, at first, to be an American success story. At age 50, he works the graveyard shift-7 p.m. to 5 a.m.-at the back of a garbage truck, part of a three-man crew that lifts and loads 80,000 pounds of waste each night in New York City. It’s his first job in years. The native of Paterson, N.J., a high-school dropout, still owes more than $9,000 in child-support payments to the state of New Jersey. But compared with Mr. Morales’s situation a year ago, his story is a success. Then, he was completing a five-year sentence at the Northern State Prison in Newark, N.J. The former heroin addict has spent, by his own estimate, 18 years behind bars, mostly on drug-related charges. Today, Newark-based Action Carting, one of the largest commercial disposal firms operating in New York, considers Mr. Morales to be a model employee and a good prospect for promotion if he completes his plan to get a commercial truck driver’s license. Currently, he’s on track to earn more than $60,000 a year, including overtime. Every week, part of his check goes to pay off his child-support debt…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty