For ex-inmates like Gonsalves, education halts downward spiral

PROVIDENCE — James Monteiro, 49, manager of Reentry Campus, has been there.

“I dropped out of school in the eighth grade and spent probably the next 20 years of my life incarcerated up and down the East Coast” on various sentences for drug-related charges, Monteiro told The Journal.

Every time he was released, he said, he was lucky if he found a job. An eighth-grade education qualified him for few jobs, and fewer still that paid a living wage or proved personally fulfilling. So he went back to drugs.

Until, like Mark Gonsalves, he experienced his own epiphany.

“The last time I was incarcerated, I decided enough was enough,” Monteiro said. “My concern went from being, 'How am I going to get out of prison' to 'How am I going to stay out?'”

Guided by a childhood friend whom he happened to encounter in 2009, Monteiro earned his General Equivalency DegreeDiploma and then, “in approximately a year-and-a-half,” a bachelor’s degree from Roger Williams University.

“I haven’t had to look back,” he said.

Now, he looks to people currently or formerly incarcerated, people like Gonsalves, who, with an education and support, can break the cycle that once contained them.

“There's a huge disconnect between what happens behind prison walls with education and what happens when people release,” Monteiro said. He estimated that some 90,000 inmates in the U.S. are working toward degrees, but that number dwindles significantly post-prison.

“So the program I created serves as a conduit between what happens in prison and what happens outside, in the same way that my childhood friend helped me get back into school,” he said. “This is what I try to do.”