![]() “If I’ve got a man with a plan, just the smallest plan, and I’ve got a room … that’s what I need,” she said. Butler meets with potential residents and talks to them about their lives and plans. ![]() What I like about her is that she’s willing to give guys chances.” – Larry Patin, manager of the Inn Towne Hotel, on owner Terry Butler “She’s very supportive of everybody that’s here, and likes to get involved with what’s going on with everybody. Of recidivists, 25 percent have reentered the correctional system within the first 4½ months of release, and 50 percent will receive convictions for an offence within a year.īutler uses her connections with the Wisconsin correctional system to find good candidates for residency at the hotel, giving them a helping hand in successfully rejoining their community after incarceration or treatment court. Men, who already make up about 90 percent of the state prison population, have a higher rate of recidivism by about five percentage points, according to the same study, with 31.7 percent of formerly incarcerated men reentering the system within three years. But as of 2014, 31.3 percent of people released from the Wisconsin correctional system re-offended within three years, according to a performance measurement report by the Wisconsin Department of Justice. ![]() Recidivism – which is when a person who has served a sentence for an offense is convicted of another crime and reenters the corrections system – has been trending downward for decades. “What I like about her is that she’s willing to give guys chances.” Without that chance, he and Forden believe, making the transition from incarceration is harder to accomplish. “She’s very supportive of everybody that’s here, and likes to get involved with what’s going on with everybody,” Patin said of Butler. … You’re at the bottom of the list.” In his eight years at the hotel, he has seen many men come and go as well as the transition of ownership between the Robinsons and Butler. “But if you just got out of the slammer, and you’ve got two jobs. “Right now it’s hard enough for an upstanding guy that’s got two jobs (to find a place to live),” Larry Patin, who manages the hotel for Butler, said. She thought she might spend her time helping inmates reintegrate with their communities when she found out that the Inn Towne Hotel was for sale, she started talking to the Robinsons and quickly sealed the deal. “Housing is just a huge problem with reentry,” Butler explained. ![]() They wanted to get their lives turned around, get back to their families.” Upon retirement, she figured she had 20 good years left, and wanted to spend them doing something meaningful. “Focused, funny, motivated, resourceful, making the best out of a pretty stressful situation. “The men that came into my classroom as a student or tutor, most of them were really great guys,” Butler said. Earlier this year, Terry Butler, fresh from five years teaching at the Stanley Correctional Facility, purchased the building and took the helm. Dan and Nancy Robinson, the hotel’s previous owners, have been providing men a safe, supportive living environment since 2005 and a background check was never necessarily a dealbreaker. Rent is weekly: $105-$125 will get a man a room, utilities, garbage pick-up, and food. “Housing is just a huge problem with reentry.” – Terry Butler, owner of the Inn Towne Hotel, on the challenges faced by those who leave prison For now, though, he’s in the market for a job so he can pay rent at the Inn Towne Hotel, a rooming house at 678 Wisconsin Ave. He’s a fast talker – all this shared in a matter of seconds. But he’d prefer to work more with animals. It’s sort of in the family, he said: His parents own vineyards. Zack Forden, almost 26 years old, is planning on taking courses in horticulture and animal husbandry at the Chippewa Valley Technical College next semester. Clockwise from upper left: Zack Forden, Jeff Moyer, and Larry Patin. Terry Butler (lower left) recently bought the property, continuing its role in the area. near downtown Eau Claire, has been providing men with a safe, supportive living environment for years. The Inn Towne Hotel, a rooming house at 678 Wisconsin Ave.
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