Former inmate works to create program to help released prisoners find work

A Columbia man who spent several years in prison is now helping other former prisoners find a second chance.

Fred Barney struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, but after after he got treatment and was released from prison last year, he got a job and began volunteering in the community.

And now, he’s working to launch what he’s calling the “Hands Down” program to help people recently released from prison learn skills, find work and lead a productive life.

Barney said seeing the violent crime that has been happening in the community is heartbreaking. And he told ABC 17 News that many many criminals don’t understand they don’t have to live that life and that they can change.

With his experiences and the support of leaders in the community, Barney is moving forward with the project.

Barney works for a cleaning company and helps low-income members of the community with yard work, landscaping and any type of cleaning or maintenance needs they may have.

But it wasn’t always this way. Barney, a Hickman High School graduate, said he started hanging out with the wrong people and fell into a life of crime. Although he tried to get his life back on track, he said he slipped even further.

“I lost my grandma back in 2005,” Barney said. “I couldn’t get over that. Then I fell back into my drug addiction, you know what I mean? I was basically smoking and drinking all the time. I was still basically in denial. I didn’t want to step up at the time. I felt like I wasn’t being a real man. I just basically had an ‘I don’t care’ attitude.”

Then in 2010, he went to prison to serve a five year sentence. But he got a second chance, when last year, he was sent to a treatment center.

“Then all of a sudden, I went to treatment and started learning the way life is supposed to be, you know, that structure,” Barney said. “It took me to actually sit back and watch normal people go to work every day. They have a schedule. They have that structure.”

That’s when Barney said he realized that was the life he wanted.

“I don’t want to sit back and live eating state food in state boots laying on a state bed,” he said. “I don’t think I want to do that because that’s miserable.”

“I felt like if I’m going to die, I want to live for what I want to be a memory of,” Barney said. “You know, ‘Oh, there goes Fred Barney. He gave back to the community. He did a lot of things with people.’ That’s how I want to be remembered. Not, ‘Oh, there goes Fred Barney. He was nothing but a thug and a criminal.’ I don’t want to be remembered like that.”

Now, Barney works in the community and leads a productive life. He said he wants other people to have the same opportunity.

It was in the treatment center when Barney came up with the idea for the “Hands Down” program to help former prisoners like himself find work and learn positive life skills.

“I was thinking of the handcuffs,” Barney said. “And I was like, hands down. I was thinking of when people say they’ve had enough and they want to change their lives around and be more dedicated to the community. They eventually put their hands down and say, ‘I give up,’ I want to go the right way.”

Barney feels his experiences will be able to help others walking through the same struggles.

“There’s some people who don’t have nobody when they come out of prison, you know what I mean?” Barney said. “I started realizing then that smaller things matter in life. Even though I made mistakes in my life, it’s not over yet. And I can stop other people from making mistakes in their life.”

Some leaders in the community are behind Barney 100 percent, saying programs like the one Barney is putting together is a necessity.

“In Columbia, in Boone County alone, in the average month, 30 ex-offenders are being released right here in Boone County,” said Lorenzo Lawson with the Youth Empowerment Zone. “If they’re not working, what are they going to do? There’s an industry that’s hiring every day for people like them and that’s the drug industry.”

Lawson is advising Barney on the project and said it’s up to the community to help keep them from going back to the criminal lifestyle.

While the program is still in the beginning stages, Barney said over the next few months he is going to attend local AA meetings and support groups for addiction to spread the word about “Hands Down” and how it can help them re-enter society in a positive, productive way.

Barney said he feels he owes this to the Columbia community.

“It’s almost in a way saying, you know, that I want to apologize for the mistakes I made toward my life by giving back,” he said.

Barney has already started designing T-shirts and is working to promote the cause in the community. He’s still working to get funding together to officially kick off, but hopes to have the program up and running before the end of the year.