Central Indiana Second Chance Fair

Written By Michelle Daniel

The Central Indiana Second Chance Job and Resource Fair is an annual reentry event designed to help justice-impacted individuals and formerly incarcerated people overcome employment and societal barriers. The event connects job-seekers with local "second chance" employers and critical community support services. Constructing Our Future tabled at this event and shared our resources.

Key components of the fair include:

  • Employment Connections: Attendees can meet, apply, and often interview on-the-spot with local businesses committed to hiring individuals with past felony convictions.

  • Supportive Resources: The fairs offer comprehensive resources for successful reentry. This often includes information on housing assistance, addiction recovery support, expungement clinics, mentoring, and transportation services.

  • Preparation & Confidence Building: Many fairs feature free on-site job coaching, resume reviews, and sometimes even professional attire or free haircuts to help prepare candidates for interviews.

Community & Family Support: Organizers encourage families of justice-impacted individuals to attend, as there are dedicated resources to support households navigating the reentry process. The events often feature panel discussions with formerly incarcerated locals sharing their personal success journeys.

Michelle Daniel

Michelle Daniel Jones, ABD is a sixth-year doctoral student in the American Studies New York University. Michelle’s dissertation focuses on creative liberation strategies of incarcerated people. As an organizer, collaborator, and subject matter expert she creates opportunities to speak truth to power and serves in the development and operation of taskforces and initiatives to reduce harm and end mass incarceration. She has joined Second Chance Educational Alliance as a Senior Research Consultant and the Women Transcending Oral History Project as a co-researcher. and serves on the boards of Worth Rises and Correctional Association of New York and advisory boards of the Jamii Sisterhood, the Survivor’s Justice Project, The Education Trust, Urban Institute and ITHAKA's Higher Ed in Prison Project.

She is Executive Director of Constructing Our Future, a housing organization created by incarcerated women in Indiana. Michelle author and co-editor of the award-winning Who Would Believe a Prisoner: Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920, published by the New Press. As an artist, Michelle finds ways to funnel her research into theater, dance and photography. Her co-authored play, “The Duchess of Stringtown” was produced in 2017 in Indianapolis and New York and her artist installation about weaponized stigma, “Point of Triangulation,” ran in New York 2019 and 2020, Philadelphia 2021 with a public mural. “Makes Me Wanna Holla: Art, Death and Imprisonment, explores COVID-19 in prisons, ran in Chicago 2023 and producer on the film, Degrees of Freedom that premiered in 2024.

https://www.michelledanieljones@gmail.com
Previous

2026 C.A.L.L. Fellowship ends and COF’s intern Riley Schuller reports
Next

Building Capacity, Strengthening Futures: COF and Butler University Collaborate on New Educational Resources