- April 25, 2024
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When someone gets out of jail, they don’t get out with much: a bus ticket, a little cash. It’s not long before many are back inside, and a local pastor wants to help change that.
“A lot of people are in prison because in a split second they made a bad decision that cost them many, many years,” said the Rev. Charles Silano, of Grace Tabernacle Ministries. “They deserve another opportunity.”
Silano is creating a faith-based jail-diversion and addiction-recovery program called Open Door Recovery, designed to let people get their lives back together after they’ve been convicted of or charged with a crime or released from jail.
The program’s clients would be court-ordered, Silano said. They’d live with a few other program members in a converted house for a year, with daily classes, weekly drug testing, and unannounced police K-9 unit visits. They’d have help finding work, and pay part of their program cost from their wages. They’d have addiction counseling.
That framework, Silano said, would give them a chance to build normal productive lives and save the government money by keeping them out of jail and lowering the likelihood that they’d re-offend when they’re released.
As things are, he said, “They get $50 and a bus ticket. That’s it. And after years in prison, where are you going to go? What are you going to do? That’s why the recidivism rate is so high. They’re going to do what they have to do in order to survive.”
Silano knows these tough realities because he has lived them. Born poor in Italy in 1951, he made his money in America working for a drug cartel until a sting operation sent him to prison in 1991.
“I have a prisoner background. I came out with a vision like this because I’ve gone through it,” he said. “I’m a poster child for a program like this.”
Silano went to Bible college after his release from prison, and he founded Grace Tabernacle Ministries International in 1998. He also runs the Grace Community Food Pantry, one of northern Florida’s largest.
Silano is collecting donations for Open Door through Grace Tabernacle Ministries in Palm Coast, but has applied to register Open Door as a 501c3 nonprofit. Once that happens, he said, it will be its own entity, funded entirely through donations and payments from program participants.
Kentucky model
Silano hopes to start his program in four to six months in a converted house in Bunnell, and he’ll address the Bunnell City Commission this month about his plans.
When he does, he’ll tell community members about Open Door’s sister program in Daviess County, Ky., called Friends of Sinners.
The program serves as many as 30 men and seven women at its recovery houses in Owensboro, Friends of Sinners board president Jim McBrayer said, and was formed several years ago during a push to reduce the state’s high incarceration rate for non-violent offenders.
If it’s anything like Friends of Sinners, said David Osbourne, the elected head of the Daviess County jail system for the past 11 years, the program could do a lot of good.
“They’re really making a difference in a lot of people’s lives,” he said. “They’re providing a second chance. We’re glad they’re here.”
In the several years since Kentucky partnered with the Pew Charitable Trust to study the state’s incarceration problem and reduce it through jail-diversion programs, thousands of inmates have been released to programs like Friends of Sinners, and others have been sent there instead of prison, Osbourne said.
“The state finally realized they can’t incarcerate their way out of the drug problem,” he said. “So they decided to do these things that are definitely working.”
The crime rate hasn’t risen, and the state has saved money, he said. Friends of Sinners doesn’t accept government funding, and even jail-diversion programs that do accept government funding tend to cost less than jail itself.
McBrayer, board president of Friends of Sinners, expects to spend a lot of time in Flagler County over the next few years. His term as president of the board of Friends of Sinners ends in January. After that, he’ll become president of the board of Open Door.
‘Tough love’
McBrayer is an ordained minister who has preached to prisoners for 20 years. He kept seeing the same people cycle in and out of the system and wanted to do something to help break that cycle.
“They’re thrown out on the street, and they fail,” he said.
The program at Friends of Sinners uses a 12-step, four-phase model that gives participants increasing responsibility, he said.
The program includes regular Bible study and church attendance. “It’s the same 12 steps, but it’s a biblical worldview,” he said. “Faith is a very big part of recovery.” Church attendance also allows participants to network and become part of a community, he said.
By the time they leave for their post-residency, one-year transition program, they have a job lined up and a mentor to help them stay on track.
McBrayer said the program is most effective with first-time offenders who haven’t yet been imprisoned.
“Those are the ones you can really touch because they’re not part of that prison culture,” he said. “And they’re scared to death.”
The Open Door program in Flagler County will probably start out small, McBrayer said, with just a few participants and one employee to oversee them. The building McBrayer and Silano are considering purchasing for the program in Bunnell is fairly small — about 2,000 square feet, Silano said — and could house about 10 people.
But the structured, rigorous recovery program could have a big impact, he said.
“It’s tough love, there’s no question about it,” he said. “But it’s love nonetheless. It’s the kind of love that changes lives.”
