The Coffee Shops Countering Recidivism

When people leave prison, they quickly find themselves on trial once again—not in a court of law but rather in the court of public opinion. This court may not be able to put them behind bars, but it can limit them from just about everything else, including housing options and work opportunities. 

That was the case for Duke Dalke. After spending six months behind bars, he tried to return to his previous line of work as a leader in the beverage industry in the greater Chicago area.

“After being released from prison I could not find a job,” Dalke says. “When it got to a background check, or just being honest and disclosing my history, they would close up the folder and say, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’” Dalke says. 

According to a 2023 report in the Journal of Labor and Employment Law, 60% of employers said they would not hire someone with a criminal record. According to the report, 87% of all employers said they do background checks prior to employment across all sectors. For clerical, service, and sales jobs it’s even higher, at 90%. As a result, 60 to 75% of people who were formerly incarcerated remain unemployed a year after leaving prison. 

Those circumstances are what brought Dalke to I Have a Bean—a coffee roaster in Wheaton, Illinois, just outside of Chicago—at the recommendation of someone else who was incarcerated. The roastery helps people like them in the uphill battle to find gainful employment. Dalke has been with I Have a Bean for eight years now and has since transitioned into a leadership role. He even interviews potential new employees—passing the baton of social mobility to candidates who were formerly incarcerated. 

Some say the purpose of a business is to turn a profit. “For us it’s about making a difference in society,” says Fidalgo Coffee CEO Darryl Miller.

Dalke is one of many around the country who have gotten a second chance at life with the help of the coffee business, be it in roasting, brewing, or being a barista.

Individual and Collective Success

In Washington state, Underground Ministries—an organization that helps the formerly incarcerated get re-acclimated to daily life outside of prison, has a similar program. Executive director Chris Hoke says the coffee business was born in 2016 because the ministry had a direct trade relationship with a farm in Honduras. 

“We started on our own, bringing big bags of coffee up,” he says.  

Underground Ministries then partnered with Fidalgo, a regional coffee brand. They launched Underground Coffee, which aims to help the previously incarcerated get gainful employment and build up a solid record that could help them progress in a new career path. 

Fidalgo Coffee CEO Darryl Miller says that in the eight years since the company launched, some of his best employees have been formerly incarcerated, including a current delivery driver. 

When people ask what the purpose of a business is, some people say it’s to turn a profit, Miller says. “For us it’s about making a difference in society.”

Burgeoning Baristas

New York City’s Department of Corrections teamed up with Procreate Coffee—a Brooklyn-based organization that offers a number of barista-training programs for the general public—to launch a training program for inmates. Procreate, which operates a brick and mortar location in Brooklyn, now has a training facility on Rikers Island—where the prison is located. The collaborative first launched the barista-training initiative at Rikers Island in 2017 and has expanded several times since then to be open to more inmates. They’re set to grow even more in the months to come.

The move comes despite massive budget cuts across New York City, which has led to Sunday closures of the New York Public Library, a 40% reduction in sidewalk trash collection from the Department of Sanitation, and even a reduction in other classes and programs at the Rikers Island prison. The barista program at Rikers, however, was spared. 

The program gives inmates who’ve been infraction-free for at least 30 days a crash course on everything from coffee roasting to latté creation to customer service.

The program stands out within the city’s criminal justice system, which has been plagued with a number of massive systemic problems. 

Rikers is historically one of the most overcrowded jails in the country. The jail faced numerous allegations of misconduct over the years, including the case of Kalif Browder, who spent three years in jail, despite never being convicted of a crime, before he ultimately took his own life. 

Now the Department of Corrections is also in the hot seat amid newly surfaced images that show inmates locked up in caged showers. 

The barista program is making a difference at Rikers.

Brew the Change

Starbucks, the world’s biggest coffee shop chain, endorsed the “Ban the Box” movement on its job applications in 2015 by omitting the mandatory criminal history box. The Seattle-based coffee shop chain joined other large retailers like Target and Walmart in doing so. 

The move largely proved to be successful. According to a report published in Iowa Law Review, by removing the box, people who were formerly incarcerated were 27% more likely to receive a callback than before the initiative took effect. 

“People deserve a second chance, and no one is going to hire us, so we created our own business.”

—Patrick Davis, The Fringe Coffee House co-owner

There are dozens of independent coffee shops around the country that are specifically designed to help the formerly incarcerated get back to work, including The Fringe Coffee House in Hamilton, Ohio—about 20 miles north of Cincinnati. 

“My wife and I are both ex-felons. We both have been to prison, so for us this is a lived experience. When we came home there were not a lot of opportunities,” says co-owner Patrick Davis.

“We figured there’s got to be a better way. People deserve a second chance, and no one is going to hire us, so we created our own business,” Davis says.

Now in business for five years, The Fringe Coffee House employs 15 people.

“We started a business that, rather than discriminating against someone with a criminal record, we made that a requirement—kind of flipping it on its head,” says Davis.