PAROLE SUCCESS continued from page 3.
At the Department of Corrections, Kelly works in a Day Reporting Center, assisting released inmates who have mental health or addiction issues.
“I help them get back on track, I advocate for them. I just show them a different way to live and a different way to do things and that life has so much more to offer. I address my mental health issues and help them address theirs and let them know that it’s okay. I get a chance to work with some awesome people who want to recover, they just never knew how.”
Kelly’s future is working with a business partner to start an offender reentry program. “There’s so much we need,” he says. “I am so thankful for the system. Ya’ll have recognized that we don’t need to be locked up. That’s not the answer.”
Kelly says prison wasn't his answer.
“I can do time. What I couldn’t do was life, and I needed somebody to show me how to do that."
The system today is affording so many more opportunities for people in recovery says Kelly. “It’s such a wonderful thing.”
Kelly says he now looks forward to what the future will bring.
“I’m in the trenches. I work with people like me every day. I’m on the clock. I’m on call, every day, seven days a week, 24-hours a day. My people can call me and I help them deal with any issue they have, whether it’s substances, whether it’s mental health medication, or whether it’s a problem with their parole officer or probation officer,” he says. “They have hope now and it’s a bunch of people like me that does this work. We are trying to bring hope to a hopeless community.”
As he wrapped up his comments to the Board he reflected back on being banned from DeKalb County. The county he was not allowed to return to had accepted him back. “They gave me a job. Straight out of prison they (DeKalb County) gave me a job!”
Kelly says it was hope instilled in him by his parole officers and counselors that pushed him to want more than handling garbage on the back of a DeKalb County garbage truck.
“Parole and counselors taught me something, that just because I was at 40 (age), I still had dreams." And Kelly dreamed. “Someday I want to drive this truck; I don’t want to be on the back of this truck. Six months later I was driving, I was up front.”
Kelly received a promotion to Watershed Management in DeKalb County, supervising others, but he left that job for what he's doing today.
“I quit that job that I thought I was going to retire at, to do this job,” says Kelly.
Working with offenders with addictions isn’t paying as much as his county job, but he says, “spiritually, mentally and as a whole person, I can’t make what I’m making now. This keeps me clean.”
Kelly celebrated 11 years of sobriety on February 10, 2016, one day after speaking to the Parole Board.
“My life is amazing today. I’ve got to give the glory to God for that.”
Below: The Kelly Family
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