It took Erick Washington more than a dozen failed cocaine addiction treatments and a two-year prison sentence for armed burglary, but when his “light-bulb” moment finally arrived, it proved enduring.
“Oh, this is it,” Washington recalled thinking as he sat handcuffed in the back of a squad car the night of his arrest in 2009. He knew then that he wasn’t going back.
Washington, now 62, doesn’t hesitate to share one of his lowest nights with men and women coming home from their own federal prison sentences. Leaning on his lived experience, he is now a pillar of a Minnesota federal court strategy to interrupt the patterns that can send people back to prison.
More than 300 federal inmates have been released to Minnesota on average each year during the past decade. During that time, Minnesota’s federal “re-entry court” program has partnered with the nonprofit Kingsmen Project that Washington started with his wife, Tammi, to steer the same people away from committing new crimes.
“He’s understanding of where our participants are coming from, but he’s also able to hold them accountable in a way that I think is meaningful for them,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright, who with U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez preside over Minnesota’s federal re-entry court program.
Since linking up with Minnesota’s federal re-entry court — still one of the only programs of its kind to match offenders with mentors from the community — the Kingsmen approach is catching on. Thanks to the advocacy of an ex-Detroit motorcycle gang leader-turned-mentor, the Kingsmen Project is considering expanding into Michigan.
The Washingtons manage their nonprofit out of their Spring Lake Park home while holding down full-time day jobs. Their mentees include people whose criminal records can include robbery, drug trafficking or murder convictions, and are in need of help finding work and staying on the right side of court-imposed release requirements. The couple often invites those they work with into their home to lend a hand, walking some through their first-ever job applications. At other times, mentoring might look like standing guard outside the hospital room of a young man shot in the stomach.
“I’m just trying to do the next right thing,” Washington said.