On Sept. 24, chef Jeff Henderson was teaching Cincinnati State students to cook. The next day, he spoke to a crowd of dozens about incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline.
Henderson is a best-selling author and the former executive chef at the Café Bellagio in Las Vegas. He’s been on the Food Network and Oprah. He’s also an ex-felon, having spent nearly 10 years in prison for dealing drugs.
But in this crowd, they don’t say ex-felon, they say “justice-impacted individual.”
On Sept. 25, he spoke at the Building Bridges Disrupting the Pipeline to Prison for Our Youth conference, hosted by the Hamilton County Office of Reentry and other agencies. There, he met people who work in inmate reentry programs around Ohio to talk about how people become criminalized and how vocational opportunities in prison changed his life.
Henderson grew up in Southern California. When he was 16, he was stabbed in the chest in a gang dispute. At 23, he was sent to prison.
“Sometimes the journey and the process of transformation begins when you’re in a cage,” Henderson said. “It gives you time to to reflect and look in that mirror.”
It was there he formed his dream of becoming a chef. He experienced positive feedback, some of the first in his life, for his skills at the stove.
Chef Jeff Henderson works with Cincinnati State students on Sept. 24. He came to Cincinnati to meet with people from all over the state who work to help inmates enter society after their sentences.
Behind bars, he earned his high school diploma and dozens of certifications. He became head inmate cook and head inmate baker.
Henderson said when he was growing up, he and so many others never saw education work. He parents didn’t benefit from it, and neither did generations before that.
“When you grow up in poverty, and you see your mother struggle, your father’s not in the home, food needs to be put on the table, it just does something to young males, especially young Black males,” he said.
But no one was born a criminal or born a drug addict, he said.
“My addiction was the American Dream,” Henderson said. “These young folks and adults in the prison system have so much potential, but they never had the opportunity … to discover their greatest gifts.”
Now through his Chef Jeff Project and his Academy Behind Bars, Henderson travels across the country and works to help people find their skills and the passion.
“You’ve got two choices: You’ve got freedom or you have this world inside the prison,” Henderson said. “Freedom to me means being able to open a refrigerator and have choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner; going to the beach, playing with your children.”
With 30 years on the outside, he said he wants to continuing serving as living proof that people can change when given a second chance. They can achieve their dreams even after a prison sentence.
He said next to mental health support, vocational training is the most important thing for incarcerated people.
Hamilton County Office of Reentry disrupts cycle on incarceration
Trina Jackson is the director of the Hamilton County Office of Reentry. Formed in 2011 to disrupt the cycle on incarceration, her office has seven people on staff. They serve 500 new clients each year, and make about 1,400 client engagements each year.
“There are so many barriers that individuals with convictions face. They need the right support, they need familial connections, and they need a livable wage.”
Jackson said her office is one of the biggest of it’s kind among Ohio’s 88 counties. They help with obtaining IDs, getting jobs or even managing their child support.
She said Henderson’s work goes hand-in-hand with what she does, which is really a focus on prevention.
“His story is so inspirational,” Jackson said. “People need access to resources so that they can take care of themselves and their family and feel successful and contribute back to their community.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ex-felon, chef Jeff Henderson promotes reentry programs for inmates