Earnest “Bear” Spencer completed his 10-month sentence at the Kalamazoo County Jail in October 2024. Now, he has hopes of going back – but for a different reason.
“They were saying that it was an opportunity,” Spencer recalls, speaking to visitors to the jail, themselves formerly incarcerated and involved in street violence but now building a mentorship program to help people identify self-worth and change their choices. “Not only for us, but an opportunity for them to do something that was unprecedented, which was allow community programs to come into the jail and offer their services.”
Spencer was among the first cohort to graduate from IGNITE in July 2024, a program adopted by the Kalamazoo County Jail that stands for Inmate Growth Naturally and Intentionally Through Education. Inspired by the outcomes of the pilot program out of Genesee County, Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller and his team implemented a version of the program at the jail with assistance from local nonprofits and government entities. One of their strongest partnerships is with the nonprofit Urban Alliance, which acts as a “backbone support structure,” according to the organization’s executive director…