Breaking Down Barriers to Reentry

As the crisp April air heralds a season of renewal and Second Chance Month, imagine the power of extending that spirit of rejuvenation to those in our midst seeking redemption. On the Kindness Matters podcast, we're joined by the compassionate Kimberley Mansfield, co-founder and director of the De Muniz Legal Clinic, who lights the way for individuals striving to reclaim their place in society post-incarceration. Her narrative is not just one of legal battles, but of humanity's capacity for empathy and the transformative potential of second chances. Together, we peel back the layers of bias to reveal a truth often obscured in the shadows of our criminal justice system.

The roads to reintegration are fraught with obstacles that many of us might never have to face, but Kimberly and I tread these paths to uncover the realities for those emerging from behind bars. We challenge the misconceptions that can cripple a fresh start, discussing the surprising statistics surrounding recidivism and the quagmire of digital footprints left by expunged records. Housing, employment, and the restoration of familial bonds are but a few of the hurdles that former inmates overcome, and our conversation shines a spotlight on the tireless advocacy required to support these journeys of reentry.

Lastly, we take a moment to focus on the youth who find themselves caught in the web of the legal system. The narrative turns to the profound impact of childhood trauma on developmental trajectories and the stark transition between juvenile and adult correctional institutions. The episode offers a lens into the complexities of maturation within the confines of the legal age of adulthood, and the invaluable role of legal aid in supporting young offenders. Listen as we weave through the heartening tales of resilience and the community's role in binding the wounds inflicted by a punitive system.

Do you dread Mondays? Does the thought of another Monday steal the joy of your weekend? Let me tell you about a product I have found and tried that can do away with the Sunday Scaries. Oddly enough, it’s from a company called Sunday Scaries. I have personally tried their products, gummies and tinctures and I can personally attest to their efficacy. If you go to their website and order any product, use the code Kindness20 to receive a 20% discount on your order. 

Do you like good coffee? Are you like me and go to bed in anticipation of a great cup of coffee in the morning (and afternoon, maybe). Then let me introduce you to my newest sponsor, Coffee Bros. They have built their business on the cornerstones of sustainability, quality, consistency, and freshness. From coffee to brewing techniques to coffee and espresso machines, they should be your go-to for all things coffee. And if you order from them, use the code Kind10 to get a 10% discount on your order.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This podcast is part of the Deluxe Edition Network. To find other great shows on the network, head over to deluxeeditionnetworkcom. That's deluxeeditionnetworkcom.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Kindness we see it all around us. We see it when someone pays for someone else's coffee or holds the door open for another person. We see it in the smallest of gestures, like a smile or a kind word. But it's different when we turn on the news or social media. Oftentimes, what we hear about what outlets are pushing is the opposite of kind. Welcome to the Kindness Matters podcast. Our goal is to give you a place to relax, to revel in stories of people who have received or given kindness, a place to inspire and motivate each and every one of us to practice kindness every day.

Speaker 2: 0:52

Hey, hello everybody, and welcome to the Kindness Matters podcast. I am your host, Mike Rathbun. Make sure to check out the Deluxe Edition Network's podcast of the month. There you'll find, for the month of April, the Drink O'Clock pod, the Quad Pro Quo podcast and the Steven Crypto show. And also I want to remind you to check in the show notes for my partnerships with the Coffee Bros and Sunday Scaries. I have a special code that you can use to get some percentages off of your orders there.

Speaker 2: 1:31

Now let's get into the show. Hey, welcome everybody. This is going to be such an awesome show, and part of the reason is because my guest today reminded me that April is National Second Chance Month. In 2017, a nonprofit by the name of Prison Fellowship asked Senators Amy Klobuchar and Robert Portman to take the lead with the United States Senate Resolution to declare April 2017 as Second Chance Month, and it has been so ever since. And when I put out a call for nonprofits, I was lucky enough to stumble across Kimberley Mansfield and we kind of bonded over a quote from Ted Lasso, and that quote was I hope that either all of us or none of us are judged by the actions of our weakest moments, but rather by the strength we show when and if we're ever given a second chance. And if you are a fan of the show, you know that line, and my guest today really, really works to get people that second chance. My guest is Kimberly Mansfield, who is the director and co-founder of the nonprofit Demunas Legal Clinic, and welcome to the show, Kimberly.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Thank you. Thanks for having me, mike, it's good to be here.

Speaker 2: 3:03

Oh you're. And you said the name perfectly, Did I? Mansfield or Demunas?

Speaker 1: 3:08

No, the Demunas there, you said it twice.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Okay, let's not tempt fate anymore. Okay, we'll just, we'll go with what we've got. So you there's a great story here about how you came. Clearly your name is not Demunas, it's Mansfield. Tell me the story about how you came to to found this organization and then we can talk about more about what it does.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Sure, sure. Well, the name Demunas the name's sake of the organization is the retired now retired chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, paul Demunas. And then chief justice Paul Demunas was on the campus for a panel at Portland State, where, at university, where I happened to be finishing up my undergrad, I was a returning student. I'm a first generation college student. I was very late to the academic party, but I had my eyes on going to law school once I graduated and it was about the year before I think and he came to the panel. And the only thing I remember about the panel is he was the moderator and they introduced him and said that he was a Portland State alum and he was a Willamette College of Law alum as well, and those two things. Well, I was going to be a Portland State alum and Willamette, because it's here in Oregon, was also on my radar. It was way down on the list. I thought I was going to the East Coast and afterwards I didn't bother talking to the panelists.

Speaker 1: 4:46

I talked to the moderator, the oh so gracious chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, and we kind of hit it off. We just really connected on a lot of things. Kind of he was a defense attorney when he, when he started out a public defender and was very much in kind of the justice, justice, right side of things. I've always been a champion of the underdog and I always you know, the runt of all the litters of kittens was always my favorite and I just I was really connected with. You know, I think it's being so need a voice, and that I too had needed a voice through life, and I was raised to be shiny and silent. So this whole going into law and being a litigator thing was, you know, maybe my defiance of that, or maybe, let's just say, my growth and my evolution, or both. But we hit it off and he proceeded to say, hey, I'm going to hop on recruitment up there.

Speaker 1: 5:54

And suddenly the next thing I knew things rolled along and I made a bunch of meetings and there was an early admitt, and then I had the ridiculous good fortune of clerking for him at the Supreme Court through law school, wow. And in January 1, 2013, we came off the bench. That was when his term was over and he was retiring from the bench and he had founded, two years before, a public private partnership known as the Dimmuna's reentry resource center. That's a wrap around services for individuals who are re entering from incarceration or who have a history of convictions, and that's housing, medical shoes, clothes, employment, that sort of thing wrap around services. So he said, hey, I think it would be a great idea you should start a legal clinic at the resource center. And I didn't have a diploma or a law license yet, so you had a natural my answer was Okay and, and that's kind of how it happened.

Speaker 1: 7:01

So we formed, I formed, I kind of, you know, we drove the bus while we were building it and the legal clinic provides a little piece of the pie. Now to the resources that the wraparound services at the reentry resource center provides. So we are a standalone 501c3, so nonprofit now, but we provide that, that piece, to them and are very integrated with with them. And that was 11 years ago, january Wow.

Speaker 2: 7:33

Time flies.

Speaker 1: 7:34

We've been around.

Speaker 2: 7:36

Yeah, congratulations. By the way, thanks, wow. That's amazing because, and you know, as you say, this is a wraparound service, so everything from finding people jobs to but you guys take care of the legal end of it, anything legal services.

Speaker 1: 7:55

So we help with civil legal side. We don't. We're not direct defense attorneys, we are not working on with their offenses or any of that. We're on the release side and just so everyone knows. I probably the biggest thing to point out here is people like well, why, what's the purpose? And the purpose is that we can.

Speaker 1: 8:13

We know there's been a lot of research done on this that if you can remove some of the barriers to reentry and some of the roadblocks Because right now it really socially I wouldn't even talk about the system, but socially it's people are set up to fail when they walk out.

Speaker 1: 8:30

I'm not going to talk about reasons for that in a minute, but if we can reduce some of those so they can reintegrate with communities, it reduces recidivism. So recidivism is the risk of reoffending, right, and so we want to reduce that. Because if you can reduce that think about it they can stay out in communities with their families, they can be gainfully employed and pay taxes. It reduces the cost to communities. It reduces prosecution and defense costs. It reduces imprisonment costs. It improves public safety. So there's lots and lots and lots of reasons to do this, and one also being, as far as I'm concerned, the human component, and that wraps around to where you started, which is, I wouldn't want to be judged on my worst moment because I wouldn't be sitting here right now, and I don't mind saying that, right? So anybody want to throw stones on that, knock yourself out, but I haven't met anybody yet, right?

Speaker 2: 9:32

And I think that's a lot of what goes into that is because everybody's initial reaction is well, they're criminal and whatever happens to them, they deserve it or whatever. And you guys, you went and looked at that and went again to be judged on your worst moment for the rest of your life, and I don't know what the stats are for your area as far as how young are these young people coming back out or coming back into society? Well, there's a nice mix.

Speaker 1: 10:11

I don't know, you know what's an interesting thing is. I thought, well, I'm going to make a little list of points I think are most not known about this whole scene, and I thought I'll just, you know, make a few punchy points. Well, I think I ended up at 14.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Because I think it is overwhelmingly. People don't understand kind of the why things get where they get. And don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to the system in general. I'm not opposed to individuals having to serve sentences depending on crimes. I get the laws and how they're you know. Unfortunately they're not. They're applied.

Speaker 1: 11:00

There's disparate impact on the application, and I'm not going to go into that today because we would be here for two weeks. That's a whole other show and then some oh yeah, but there's so many things that people don't understand, so my 14 point list I'll try and write full through this One. Over 97% of individuals are coming back out, so I think that a lot of times people think, well, they go in, they're off the streets, don't have to worry about that person anymore, but they're coming back At some point, most of them are going to come back into and to give you some numbers for Oregon.

Speaker 1: 11:37

I'm in Oregon, so the numbers for Oregon, for instance, I don't have any new numbers since I think I think the numbers I'm remembering are like 2016,. Maybe 17 or 18. So about a 700 inmates per month release in Oregon.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: 11:53

In my county, marion County, alone, that's about 700 inmates a year to Marion County alone. Oh wow, just my community, and for instance, they, more than half. These may be national numbers, sometimes these get mixed, but more than half don't have a place to live. That is an Oregon number. Most don't have a job. Most mainly need treatment for drug related offenses or mental health medications and that sort of thing. They and it's nationally, I guess that about 60% don't have an ID or a driver's license when they come out. They have no home to go to. They probably aren't employed when they're coming out. Most people also on my list the majority were working before they went in.

Speaker 1: 12:40

Sure, 12 kiddos, minors, in the United States have had or have had an incarcerated parent. That's one that people don't look beyond that there's no treatment inside. So compliance when they get out probably involves them coughing up the money for their own treatment. So and that's you know whether we're talking drug and alcohol treatment. There's some low level courses, so to speak, but there's not credentialed treatment. So we think, oh, they went in and they got rehabilitated. It's like, oh, not exactly, which is not to say that there isn't rehabilitation going on, but it's less specific and directed as you would think. There's no did your time or paid your debt, because when you come out I mean you kind of did by definition. So we say the social sanctions there's the stigma of a criminal record leads to housing, employment, social discrimination, lengthy sentences often lead to a loss of custody or contact and parenting time with kiddos, and fines and fees and debt often destroy credit history and end up in collections, and consequences could be professional licenses or even driver's licenses can be suspended or revokes. Those are some what's my. I already named the disparity that many of these individuals maybe I should say this for last, but in my experience and now at this point it's thousands and thousands of people in, but many of them end up going back to work in the system to benefit individuals who have the same challenges or came from the same backgrounds.

Speaker 1: 14:29

A lot of people don't understand the difference, that arrests are not convictions and you can say where there's smoke, there's fire all day long, but that doesn't get you anywhere most of the time. And so we now you know we can hop on the internet, you or I, right, we could pay 299, 599, 1999 and go pull someone's anyone's arrest history online. It wouldn't be an official record. But also, even on the official record, people don't know how to read their record and don't understand that an arrest, that most arrests, the vast majority of arrests, don't end up, you know, in even charges, and then even a smaller percentage of those end up in convictions. So big difference.

Speaker 1: 15:13

I'm not blaming people for not knowing, I'm just saying there's a lot of misunderstanding out there that were a couple of us. There's no true expungements. So people think, oh, you can get your record, expunge, sealed, set aside what it if you will, and there isn't a true expungement anymore because of the internet, so because we can go search these, you might get it off the state background check, but if you're applying for a apartment, let's say, or a job in the private sector, they may be not pulling state background checks.

Speaker 1: 15:47

They may be pulling private background checks. Like I just said, you or I could go online and so they are unregulated, and it just depends on when they trolled for information whether they would see, let's say, you got something sealed it still may show out there. So again, no true expungements. And that here's maybe I kept maybe to my biggies for last is the most serious offenders are the least likely to reoffend. So, which is the exact opposite of what most people, I think, would think. It's the exact opposite of what I would think.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Me included.

Speaker 1: 16:24

Yeah, and you know a lot of people like yeah, but the sex crimes? And it's like okay, but we can't just put all sex crimes in a bucket, because here's one for you and it may vary by state. Well, I'm sure it varies by state, but in Oregon, urinating in public is a sex crime.

Speaker 2: 16:44

Oh, it's like explosion.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Oh, that's the theory. So you get people who you're were I got to tell you people who look like I'll say me, but I'll say you and me, who were outdoor concert goers in our youth. Hey now there's a good chance. All of us at least me and all my friends would fall in that bucket.

Speaker 2: 17:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Oh sure, but we wouldn't be the ones, we are less likely to be the ones who would have got one stopped or picked up for it to charge and three convicted, yeah. So think about homeless people. That would be unhomed people are, you know, could automatically all be.

Speaker 2: 17:32

We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Kimberly Mansfield after this commercial message from another deluxe edition network podcast.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Hey, this is Casey Shearer and this is Ray. Do you like pop culture? We're pretty sure you do. Then come on over and check us out at deluxe edition dot show. You will not be sorry, or maybe you will be, I don't know. Sex matter. So I think it's very, very, very important that individuals look beneath that label, because that is one where there's they're not all alike and they are serious and I'm serious about them, so I am not giving anybody a pass. However, I think that lends a little bit of perspective, or maybe just a crack in the veneer in our minds about how we think about one bucket, and it's more than that sure, because you just see the phrase Sex offender and you stop right there.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Yes, which is a serious deal. I I'm not. I am not for a second arguing.

Speaker 2: 18:42

No, but you don't look behind it. But it was the label dissect. Oh, because he was peeing outside. Well, sign me up. I'm guilty of that too, right?

Speaker 1: 18:50

Well, not anymore, right, but you know we all did again the moments that we'd rather not be judged on exactly thank you.

Speaker 1: 19:01

I Think also that most of the reentry clients, at least in Oregon and I suspect that you would get a national truth to this Are part of our low income and elderly 850,000 low income and elderly in Oregon and most of our reentry clients are going to fall into that as well. And we have that number because our legal aid services in Oregon know those numbers because that's their, their, their population, that they serve, and the reason that that's important is 85% of those needs go unmet. Wow, in Oregon we have around One legal aid attorney for every. It used to be over 9,000 in need. I don't know what the new number would be on that. They keep track of it. So you have these individuals who there's just not assistance out there. Wow, it doesn't.

Speaker 1: 19:57

So we do lots of family law, so you know when individuals are reentering and they're trying to set up parenting time and we Don't freak out parents. This isn't that we just like throw everybody back in the mix, but there's safety plans that can be put in in into place. There's graduated plans we call them step-up plans. There's supervised plans for starters. But we do know that in the best interests of the child and there is longitudinal research on this right. Right, some contact, kiddos knowing, and there are extreme instances where I agree that we would carve out of this, but sure, some contact is better than no contact, because kiddos brains aren't developed enough and evolved enough to understand that what they see as half of themselves Subconsciously they're not articulating this but you know is absent, missing, the lack of roots and the individuals who I Mean overwhelmingly it's not the majority that reoffend. So they are coming back and they are Reinstalling themselves in the community and with their families and their children.

Speaker 1: 21:08

So, you know, helping transition that. Or some some people when they went in they had a family member who took a guardianship, for instance, and we needed to dissolve the guardianship so kiddos can go back to the individual. We did lots of that stuff we also do. Sometimes there's landlord tenant issues or we've helped people not lose their teaching license, at least get kind of a stay on that for a few years to get themselves To kind of, you know, prove them a self, sure, which is meaningful. But if you gotta hear at least at that time, if you got a revocation, it was a lifetime revocation. So if we could avoid the revocation and keep a Suspension and give somebody, and then they can, you know, balls in their court.

Speaker 2: 21:50

They can kind of fly or die on that and and so sure cuz that's gonna impact their their ability to get out and find a job and go to that job if their Licenses are both just sure Yep or evictions are a biggie, because individuals, when they get out, by and large Want to kind of just keep their head down.

Speaker 1: 22:08

And so there are landlords not all, not all by any means but there are landlords who will have Rentals that are, say, let's say, sub par from you know, on habitability issues and stuff, and they know they have an individual who's just gonna keep their head down and not say anything. And so I've also come across lots and lots and lots of living conditions that for anyone else are Just a you know straight up, you just don't get to do. These individuals are going to just they have a place, they have a roof over their head. They know that's hard to get, so they're not gonna make waves and they don't understand their rights necessarily either.

Speaker 1: 22:52

And then we do lots and lots and lots of the expungement like I said, expungement work, where we do the analysis on Whether individuals are eligible with their set of criteria, with their offenses and the time that's passed, whether you know the math outs up and they could ask, seek with the court to have records sealed. Some states called expungements, some states call it sealing. Our Expungement is the kind of colloquial, coast-to-coast way talk about it in Oregon, the formal name would be set aside. So okay, whether or not they have set aside that, so lots and lots of those, and that opens, opens doors.

Speaker 2: 23:33

Yeah, I think you had mentioned People who go away that had families and and I think most people you know they look at that Okay, well, jane Doe or John Doe went away for XYZ and and we just kind of see it as that, not realizing the ripple effect that that might have had on any family they had, because it goes well beyond that. I mean, you've probably lost somebody who provided an income for your household, all of the things that go into that, and yeah, it's just Right.

Speaker 1: 24:18

And then I mean, if we wanna talk about the economics and even a political sense, then you have individuals who state monies are coming into support, yeah, and that a lot of times there's such a threat. I did a little bit of work with OIA, that's Oregon Youth Authority, with some individuals in there where we did some clemency petitions for them so for individuals who had been convicted as minors, and even we did lots and lots of interviews and on a rare occasion, because it's incredibly labor intensive, we would find an individual that we would hop on board and help them with the clemency. But we did lots of interviews and the thread, the thread throughout was and I'll refer to the guys because it really was we were in OIA, the location we went to was for guys. There are fewer females. It's not that there's no females who would fall under the same life history, but it's very much that they had to be providers, often at very young ages.

Speaker 1: 25:26

So there's not a lot of jobs available for a 12 year old whose provider either goes away or ends up sad, and they're providing and they're getting picked up for really mature crimes at really young ages. I mean these are, think about 12 year olds, what none of us had developed brains at 12 years old. There's no such thing as a 12 year old on the planet who has a developed brain. We could even put prodigies in there. They still don't have developed brains. So that whole and the options when everyone looks to you and says you're the man at the house now, for instance, and no, they don't take the right avenues and know there aren't individuals necessarily stealing the right directions, and maybe they do have bad examples and role models because they haven't been exposed outside of a very small radius and that they do have, where gangs are, often become their shelter, become their family and they protect each other because they have nothing else or nowhere to go.

Speaker 1: 26:27

We just really saw there's so much. If you looked into the background of these individuals, you can, they really can. There's a predictability level now because there's lots of research being done to it. If you look at ACEs adverse childhood experiences is one scale that's really used and on that scale there's all kinds of different traumas and situations of life and you look at the ACEs scale and they can say over three, then you're almost guaranteed the risk of trauma are really, really high. And then when you get it up high, where some of these kids would be six or eight I mean they can almost the criminogenic risk is off the charts.

Speaker 1: 27:09

And so if you looked at the background of individuals and if you could empathize enough to put yourself in the shoes for a moment and go, what would I do If all that was my surroundings? What would I really do? Maybe some people go. You know what? I'd be the rare rock star individual who becomes a professional athlete and who is a celebrity and we see them on TV. That's this many. That's less than this many. Yeah, that's like the two.

Speaker 2: 27:36

And they get publicized.

Speaker 1: 27:37

So then everyone can use them as an example and go well, they did it. So if they did it, why don't you?

Speaker 1: 27:43

And it's like wow, they are outliers and I'm not taking any cred from anybody who does that, but it's a bigger picture than that and that's, I think, another biggie that should have been on my list. I don't think that individuals understand that when people go into say youth corrections, that they don't necessarily come out of youth corrections. For instance, if you did a clemency for an individual, one of our rare who, if they have a sentence that extends beyond youth corrections, they turn them over to DOC, the Department of Corrections.

Speaker 2: 28:19

Oh, so they go in at like 16 for a five year sentence Three years of that is gonna be an adult correction.

Speaker 1: 28:28

So they're leaving, you're pulling them out of this very therapeutic environment, because that's really what juvenile corrections is by and large. That's what their aim is. You know how, you know what level that's executed. You know remains. But OYA, for instance, does a pretty amazing job. I'm really impressed. And they go in and they can be the kid we took up and did a clemency petition for to the governor. He did everything and beyond what he was required to, he was an absolute star. He got they can get degrees or partial degrees in there. They can get certificates for all sorts of you know skills and engineering skills. They can bring peer mentors in their units and things like that. Like this kid had done everything and he was gonna get flipped to. You know, pull him out of that environment and flip him to DOC. For I don't remember what his months were. It was right about two years, oh boy.

Speaker 1: 29:22

And when they hit that point they get terrified. I don't blame them Because the fact is they are walking into where they're gonna have to go back to a life like before. They're gonna have to find protection, they're gonna have to find their safe places, and there are some and luckily for our kid, we. It was a very painstaking procedure. It's very thorough, it's very kiddo has to take ownership or things. But really they have to walk back through the crowd. They have to talk about what they've done since, what they've gained, what they've learned, what time they've put into things. They have to reown the whole thing.

Speaker 1: 30:01

So the petition for clemency to the governor was a hundred and I don't know 27 pages, something like that. They're a production and we find them and do this and our kiddo was granted Nice, one of the best days of my life, and he had turned over when the word came through. He had turned over to DOC. He had been in like I wanna say like a week and was and we'd visited him in DOC and he was a changed. He was already so fearful in that time, in a week, of the individual who we'd met and interviewed and taken on, you know, a year before, to lodge this petition. I think there's a lot of things like that. That I think people think they go into juvie and they walk out this fixed adult at 18. Yeah, doesn't really work like that.

Speaker 2: 30:55

No, no, it doesn't. There's no light switch there. You turn 18 and suddenly you're a grown man or what have you, and even then let's talk about that.

Speaker 1: 31:06

I mean, I did juvenile, I were adults then, right. But our brains? We now know that we really don't have evolved adult brains until like 26, 27.

Speaker 2: 31:12

I'm pretty sure I had an involvement until like five years ago.

Speaker 1: 31:15

So I know I agree, but fully developed brains are really it's just past that mid-20s point, so not equipped. They're ill-equipped, we're all ill-equipped, you know. We're just under different circumstances.

Speaker 2: 31:33

So now your clinic, though I mean, you couldn't do what you do without volunteers, right?

Speaker 1: 31:41

At the moment I am, oh, at the moment, at this very moment, I'm kind of a one person show, but no volunteers. We do, and sometimes they're law students. I've definitely done. Sometimes we do credited externships, where they can apply to do an externship with me and get credits during law schools. So sometimes it is.

Speaker 1: 32:02

Oh, that's nice Up until about nine months, into six months, into COVID. We I gave up the physical office. I had a full staff I mean I had a staff then and a full time staff attorney and stuff and and had to get in place elsewhere Because we were, you know, like everything else. It was changing. So that was top. So, yes, now it is me and then sometimes volunteers. It definitely forced me to streamline things so I could do more. I just added up, in fact, my numbers. I think we had the most in client touches this past year, which was just me, and I helped 215 people. Wow, and I guess I should clarify like the legal clinic is a small part of what I do. I'm in practice, private practice as a family law attorney outside. Oh, okay, so my legal clinic hours are I have three, five clinic hours a week. I do 30 minute appointments back to back during those times and then I have the work for each of those clients, whatever I'm helping them with in between, and that's just aside from.

Speaker 1: 33:11

So it's not a I'm not devoting the full time to it. So so the 215 was a pretty happy number for me, and again you know it would be thousands at this point over oh sure Years.

Speaker 2: 33:24

So what drove you to do private donations.

Speaker 1: 33:29

I should add on to the volunteer part. Private donors are where our funding comes from. So that's all. Not the state, not county, we are not. We are an independent 51c three.

Speaker 2: 33:40

There's a donation link on your website, right.

Speaker 1: 33:43

There is a donation link on my website.

Speaker 2: 33:45

Thank you, that's very, very welcome that website will be available in the show notes. Folks, and if you love what Kimberly's doing and want to help her out, please feel free to be generous, or you know, whatever you can afford. How about that?

Speaker 1: 34:02

Yeah, it all, it all adds up. I mean we run on a shoestring budget, so really a little bit, I really do go a long, long way.

Speaker 2: 34:12

It's you're doing. That is very gratifying part about it. Yeah, I really love what you're doing and I love the fact that it's you know giving, giving people who some people may think don't deserve a second chance, a second chance, because we all do, and I can't even count the number of second chances I've had in my life and uh and so this is what what you guys do is fantastic.

Speaker 2: 34:43

I love it. It's the definition of kind, and thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Kimberly, I really do do appreciate, do, do, I do, do appreciate it and just helping us understand how, how needed something like this is your legal clinic and and just the work that you do. And, yeah, can I put one?

Speaker 1: 35:10

last plug in there, that I think is absolutely people.

Speaker 1: 35:13

If they listen to the center, considering in it Nima, whether it applies to themselves, or they might think of individuals that they know are in the community or whatever, who were always looking to develop. The resource center is I'm not personally, but really in this area to develop what we call rapport with friendly employers and employers who are willing to take on individual. You know the capacities. I'm not saying throw open the gates, but there's often capacities which individuals can can get into and in my experience they are often so grateful for the opportunity that it often comes back. We hear back around that they're the best employees they've ever had. Because they don't. They know it's really important to them to make it happen, to stay out, to keep. So I hope that it may be just opening that up a bit.

Speaker 1: 36:04

I'd also suggest that there are podcasts now that have fantastic. If anybody wants to hear more information on that not my podcast, but podcasts out there with some really amazing voices. If you want any podcast source and put reentry in, one of my favorites is reentry connect. There's also reentry reframed, reentry, journey reentry network, but the gentleman whose name is escaping me on reentry connect it's just, it's a lot of that stuff you wouldn't think of and it's geared both for individuals, you know, like us, who aren't justice involved, individuals who want to understand, but also for individuals who are justice involved, individuals to find some suggestions and tips and support from those who've gone before and no, they're not the only only person wandering around, because it's that sort of isolation and loneliness certainly doesn't help.

Speaker 2: 36:55

Well, any of them? Oh, no, anybody. Yeah, for sure, absolutely. I will put that in the show notes as well. Thanks for your time, kimberly. I really appreciate it and I hope you have a fantastic week.

Speaker 1: 37:11

You too Take good care.

Speaker 2: 37:13

You too, bye bye. Such a great show with Kimberly Mansfield, damina's Law and I just I can't imagine when I think back about all the second chances I've had in this life, and it's not. It's not a small thing to get a second chance and it can truly be life changing, and I took so much from this episode. I hope you took so much from this episode as well. All of Kimberly's links and all of the important information will be in the show notes. Please be sure to check that out, including my partnership with Coffee Bros and Sunday Scaries. And that will do it for another episode of the Kindness Matters podcast. We will, of course, be back next week with another show, but until then, be that person who roots for others, who tells a stranger that they look amazing and encourages others to believe in themselves and their dreams, and for this show I'm going to throw in another one. Be that person who gives someone a second chance. You have been listening to the Kindness Matters podcast. I am your host, mike Rathbun. Have a fantastic week.