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He was ready to return to a life of crime. Dave's Killer Bread offered an alternative.

"It's the people who have been given that second chance who work all that much harder to make something of it."

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Dave's Killer Bread

Andre Eddings’ life was beginning to look dire.

After being caught and charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, Eddings was in jail with a felony record. “I remember thinking to myself, 'I’m a failure now,'” he says. “I will never amount to anything. I’m just throwing my life away.”

As a kid, Eddings had shown a lot of promise. Growing up with parents who struggled to get by, he was dedicated to creating a life for himself. “I wanted to make something of myself. I wanted to become successful. I wanted a good job making a livable wage,” he says.


Photo courtesy of Andre Eddings.

He kept a 3.8 GPA through high school, then continued to perform well academically as he went on to college and played football. So what happened? Watch:

It was only after a football injury that things went awry.

“The doctor basically gave me an ultimatum,” he says. “Keep playing and potentially injure myself for the rest of my life, or give it up and save my body.”

Eddings chose to give up his athletic career and ended up dropping out of college and moving home to work.

With no degree and stuck in a dead-end job, Eddings looked to others to find a path toward what he considered success. It didn’t take long for him to start dealing drugs — and to get caught.

When he got out of jail, Eddings wanted nothing more than a path back onto the straight and narrow.

Photo courtesy of Andre Eddings.

But with a felony on his record, that seemed impossible.

“I went to multiple interviews where I’d interview pretty well and they’d offer me the position,” he says. But once employers discovered his record, the job offers would disappear.

With few employment options and his restitution and court fees piling up, Eddings felt backed into a corner. “I was going to go back to selling drugs,” he says. What he really wanted was a solid job making an honest day’s work, but with his past preventing him from moving forward, he felt he had no choice.

That’s when he got a call that changed everything.

"I wouldn’t give up quite yet," said an encouraging friend who knew a better way.

Dave’s Killer Bread, an organic bakery in Milwaukie, Oregon, doesn't disqualify candidates based on their criminal backgrounds.

Eddings happily took a position low on the totem pole, eager to forge a path forward for himself. “I was nervous. I was a little scared. I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d never worked in production before, let alone a bakery,” he says.

He needn’t have worried: It clicked right away.

Photo courtesy of Dave's Killer Bread.

Two and a half years later, he's risen through the ranks and is a production assistant supervisor with aspirations to continue working his way up the company.

"My life has made a complete 180-degree turnaround," he says.

"Now I have two beautiful children, I’m engaged, I’m renting a house with the hopes of buying a house here in the future." He's also a mentor to other employees with similar backgrounds at Dave's Killer Bread.

Photo courtesy of Andre Eddings.

"I help other people coming into the company who have similar backgrounds to me, you know, talking to them, letting them know it can be done if you want it," he says. "With this company here, you can make something of yourself."

Dave's believes so strongly in the power of second chances because Dave himself co-founded the business after finishing a prison stint.

"The only reason employers don’t want to take on people with a background or who are convicted felons is solely out of fear," Eddings says.

For him, it's worth the risk. "You never know what you can get out of a person who is ready to make the change, wants to do better for themselves, wants to become somebody."

Photo courtesy of Dave's Killer Bread.

The hiring policy at Dave's isn't just informed by kindness — it's also good business strategy.

"In a tight job market, where motivated and engaged employees are hard to find, we have found that individuals who are given a second chance are highly appreciative of the opportunity given to them and are eager to learn and grow professionally," says Gretchen Peterson, the director of human resources at DKB.

Photo courtesy of Dave's Killer Bread.

"The second-chance partners we employ come to work grateful and happy to have a job every day — what employer doesn’t want to see that in their workforce?" she says.

If more companies hired like Dave's Killer Bread does, one desperate history after the next wouldn't have to repeat itself.

Peterson says she thinks H.R. professionals sometimes fool themselves into thinking they are getting a "better quality" candidate through the background check process.

"In my experience, there are just as many people with no background who end up being terminated for theft or fraud. In fact, it's the people who have been given that second chance who work all that much harder to make something of it."

Photo courtesy of Andre Eddings.

Keri Blakinger is a felon. She's also an Ivy League graduate.

After graduating from Cornell University in 2014, Blakinger found a good job and moved on with her life. But she watched too many women she spent time with behind bars — women who were equally motivated to put their pasts behind them — struggle to find their footing after prison.

"I was incredibly lucky," Blakinger, who was convicted of a drug-related crime in 2010, wrote in The Washington Post last year.


Photo by Jay Paul/Getty Images.

Right now, receiving a diploma — a key factor that helped Blakinger get on the right track — is out of reach for many people with criminal histories.

While colleges don't outright bar people with criminal backgrounds from applying, it's certainly a weighted consideration during the admissions process. What's more, if you're an ex-con, simply knowing you have to disclose your criminal history on the application might deter you from even applying (because, what's the point if you know it'll greatly weaken your chances?).

Fortunately, that tide seems to be changing for the better.

On June 10, 2016, the White House asked U.S. colleges and universities to stop considering an applicant's criminal history during the admissions process.

"This is about persuading institutions to do the right thing with respect to how they admit their students," Secretary of Education John King told The Atlantic. “This effort is about removing arbitrary obstacles.”

Photo by Olivier Douliery, Pool/Getty Images.

The announcement is part of the White House's Fair Chance Pledge — an effort to encourage both businesses and higher ed institutions to consider retooling their hiring practices and to press student admissions to give people with criminal histories a chance at bettering their lives.

The pledge makes sense for people like Blakinger. Not only has past research suggested there's no empirical evidence suggesting screening students for criminal histories makes campuses safer, but doing so also can actually exacerbate existing problems, like grappling with our massive prison population — a group that's disproportionately people of color.

The White House's new effort is a big win in more ways than one.

The decision not to consider criminal histories — a move several schools, including Columbia University, Arizona State University, and Blakinger's alma mater, Cornell, have already enacted — benefits marginalized groups and can help keep people out of prison.

Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images.

Seeing as our prison population is disproportionately nonwhite, allowing more former inmates to access education after serving their sentences (an effort that has been known to curb recidivism) would mean more black and Hispanic Americans choosing school, rather than relapsing into criminal behavior.

There's already been significant progress on this front too. Earlier this year, the Department of Education worked with the creators of the "Common App" — a standardized college application used by about 700 schools across the country — to change the wording of the question that asks applicants about their criminal history.

Considering that question often keeps many people from applying, the tweak is expected to encourage more students with criminal backgrounds to take the leap and go to school.

Obama hasn't just talked the talk on this issue, either — last November, he walked the walk when it comes to the federal government's hiring practices.

The president issued an executive order that ended the requirement of applicants to federal positions to disclose if they've been convicted of a crime. The order essentially "banned the box" that ex-cons would be forced to "check" on applications revealing their criminal history.

"We can't dismiss people out of hand simply because of a mistake they made in the past," Obama said in a speech addressing the order.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

To Blakinger, who's used her platform to fight for change, giving people like her a second chance is a no-brainer.

"If we want to lower the crime rate, we need to make education accessible to former inmates," she wrote. "Banning the box on college applications not only gives people a chance to rehabilitate their lives, it also makes our communities safer."

Blakinger shouldn't be one of the "lucky" ones: Everyone deserves a fair shot at getting on the right track.

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5 myths about putting people in prison and what actually works.

Why putting people in prison might not be the best way to keep us safe.

I used to think the prison system was just a fact of life.

One of my relatives spent 10 years in prison when I was a kid, and I would visit him with my mom several times a year.

So as I grew up, I understood prison as just another place: You go to the grocery store when you need food, you go to church on Sundays, and you go to prison if you do something bad.


Is this the best way to rehabilitate people? Photo via tiegeltuf/Wikimedia Commons.

It wasn't until I got older that I started really thinking about the criminal justice system.

And the more I thought about it, the weirder it sounded: When people commit crimes, we send them away from their families and communities to become better by locking them in cells.

That idea really starts to fall apart when you consider the number of people who abuse drugs, people with mental illness, and people of color in the prison system.

Sometimes society's most egregious myths are right in front of our faces.

But because they're so integrated into our realities and systems, we don't even notice them.

Thankfully, as a society, we're starting to take a second look at the parts of our criminal justice system, especially prisons, that might not be working well.

Photo via Jess Judd/Wikimedia Commons.

Here are some things that we're learning along with the actual facts about what really keeps communities safe:

Myth 1: Higher incarceration rates cause corresponding decreases in crime.

Truth: Imprisoning people isn't always a good way to fight crime.

A study by The Sentencing Project found that simply putting more people in prison isn't an effective strategy for fighting crime.

In fact, states that imprisoned fewer people actually saw significant improvements in crime reduction compared with states who were more aggressive about incarceration.

In the words of the study's authors, "Increasing incarceration while ignoring more effective approaches will impose a heavy burden upon courts, corrections and communities, while providing a marginal impact on crime."

Myth 2: Downsizing prisons makes surrounding communities unsafe.

Truth: Research proves otherwise; just look at California.

In 2011, California decided to address prison overcrowding by shrinking the state's prison population by 30%. Some people feared that downsizing prisons (basically, putting fewer people in jail) would cause a jump in crime rates, but that wasn't the case. Researchers found that in 2012, 2013, and 2014, rates of violent crime and property crime stayed the same in California.

Myth 3: Prisons make communities safer by reforming criminals.

Truth: Recidivism rates (people returning to prisons) are high in the U.S., in part because prison doesn't prepare people for life after their sentences.

In theory, prisons exist to rehabilitate people who commit crimes. But in practice, prisons don't usually provide healthy rehabilitation programs. Plus, there aren't enough resources for people who want to get a job, a home, and a stable life free of crime after they serve their sentence.

A U.S. marshal guards prisoners. Photo via US Marshals/Wikimedia Commons.

Myth 4: Even if prison isn't an ideal solution, it's the only solution we have to deal with crime.

Truth: There are a lot of alternatives to incarceration.

These other alternatives help prevent crime and are actually cheaper than prison, including drug courts, halfway houses, and restorative justice programs.

Particularly for drug-related crimes, there are so many alternatives to incarceration that actually improve the lives of offenders. Drug courts prioritize addiction treatment and accountability over punishment, and they actually save taxpayer money.

Incarceration doesn't have to be the only option on the table when someone commits a crime.

Myth 5: Alternatives to prison aren't worth the money.

Truth: Other solutions, like the above, are generally more cost-effective. They're also healthier for offenders and their families.

A prison sentence doesn't just affect the prisoner. Incarceration can be devastating for a whole family, both emotionally and financially. And the emotional strain prison puts on the children of incarcerated individuals can cause significant developmental delays as well.

60% of fathers and 39% of mothers in the U.S. hold full-time jobs, so losing that paycheck could push a family into poverty. In short, incarceration can cause lifelong harm for not just incarcerated people, but families of incarcerated people too.

Photo via jmiller291/Flickr.

As citizens, it's our job to think about whether our criminal justice system is actually just!

Looking at the evidence is just the first step. But to actually achieve progress, we need better policies for mandatory minimum sentences, alternatives to incarceration, and reintegrating prisoners to the outside.

Let's get to it.

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He was an inmate. Now he's a Ph.D., and he wants to pay it forward.

Want to rehabilitate and reintegrate prisoners into society? Offer them education.

For many former convicts, punishment extends far beyond the time they spent in prison.

A National Institute of Justice study found that 60-75% of individuals are unable to find work within the first year of being released from prison. With increased unemployment comes increased chances that they will return to their previous habits, winding up back in prison, and continuing a disturbing cycle.


Photo by Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Getty Images.

Daniel Geiter knows this struggle firsthand.

In the 1980s and '90s, Geiter found himself spending years at a time in and out of prison for what he describes as "petty-theft-type crimes." He served his time, and, in 1999, set out to get his life back on track — but first, he needed a job.

"You have to background check to get a McDonald's job in Chicago, and there's no landlord in Chicago that doesn't background-check you," Geiter told Upworthy about some of his initial struggles. "In most of those instances, they discriminate against anyone having maybe an arrest, but definitely a conviction on their record."

Photo courtesy of Daniel Geiter. Used with permission.

While Geiter eventually found jobs, it wasn't until he went back to school and earned a degree that he found success and normalcy.

Geiter found that once he attained a college education — he now holds four degrees, including a doctorate in education — he was able to overcome some of the obstacles that kept him unemployed and on the verge of returning to prison.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Geiter. Used with permission.

Now, Geiter wants to provide others in similar situations with the tools they need to stay out of prison. His solution is Ward College, which opens this fall in Chicago.

Ward College has come to exist in part because of Geiter's belief that Illinois is doing a poor job of offering prisoners resources to help get them back on their feet after leaving. While the Illinois Department of Corrections offers some educational opportunities, he believes they can do much more, all while saving some money.

"Our goal is to change the understanding of life after incarceration, because it should be life after incarceration. It shouldn't be a lifetime of incarceration." — Daniel Geiter

Ward College is made up of educators, administrators, and community members that Geiter gathered together.

"My challenge to them and my hypothesis that I presented to them was that if others had the support and the mentorship that I had, then they can be just as successful, if not more than I was."

Photo courtesy of Daniel Geiter. Used with permission.

There's no escaping his criminal past, so Geiter has come to embrace it while showing he can overcome it.

Last year, he put on an orange jumpsuit, laced up his shoes, and set off to walk from Chicago to Springfield (nearly 200 miles) to protest how little the prison system does to actually rehabilitate and reintegrate former inmates back into society.

"My life is eternally wearing that orange jumpsuit," he explained. "As soon as someone does a background check on me, that's how they view me. It doesn't matter what I've accomplished. Our goal is to change the understanding of life after incarceration, because it should be life after incarceration. It shouldn't be a lifetime of incarceration."

Photo courtesy of Daniel Geiter. Used with permission.

"95% of everyone that goes to jail is going to be released," he said, making the case for more programs aimed at rehabilitating offenders.

If all goes according to plan, by this time next year, Geiter will have data about the effect programs like Ward College have on prison recidivism rates.

He hopes the state of Illinois takes notice and begins modeling its own education programs after Ward College.

Until then, he's willing to carry that load as best as he can.