The best way to keep ex-cons from returning to a life of crime?

Get them a job.

That's the consensus of numerous studies, and the basis for a new effort by the Roanoke-based federal probation office for the Western District of Virginia.

Probation Officer Bryan Murphy, who this year became the head of the district's work force development program, describes the initiative in financial terms as well.

"Our goal is take someone who unfortunately has been a drain on the local tax system and make them a taxpayer themselves," he said recently.

Getting felons into steady employment -- or any employment -- can be a challenge. The former prisoners are required to find work as a condition of their supervised release, but many emerge from prison with little education and minimal job skills, or with health issues.

Some may have never held a legal job. Working regular hours, reporting to a boss -- "it's nothing they've ever considered," Murphy said.

And employers often are wary when an applicant confesses that he has been convicted of a felony.

Every case needs an individualized approach, said Murphy and others who work with similar efforts. And resources are always in short supply.

The federal Second Chance Act, which became law in April, authorized new money for re-entry efforts, but not until 2009.

Without new funds for a program, Murphy has spent much of this year stitching together a network of contacts to help ease people into employment. He became a certified trainer in a "cognitive restructuring" program aimed at educating people about the expectations and routines of the work world.

Probably the most successful partnership so far, Murphy said, was a program with Goodwill Industries to place welders with Freight Car America.

Murphy sent three former prisoners into an accelerated welding certification program organized by Goodwill through Virginia Western Community College. The trio ended up with jobs making more than $12 per hour.

One of the newly certified welders is Frank Pickens II, a Roanoke man who served about two years after a federal drug conviction. Pickens, whose resume included roofing and work as a laborer, had begun working banquets at a Roanoke hotel after his release last year, starting at $7 per hour and rising to an hourly rate of $8.50.

Banquet work was fine, he said, but it was hard to pay his family's bills on the low wages.

In November, about a month into his new occupation of welding structural ribs to the sides of coal cars, Pickens, 31, said he was much happier. Better pay, marketable skills -- the new job was an opportunity he could not have imagined before the training program came along, he said.

This month, Pickens reported that he was out of work after Freight Car America idled the operation he was part of. But the probation office placed him in classes that start next month and will teach him additional welding skills.

With the new skills, "there's lots of jobs out there," he said.

Another of the new alliances Murphy created this year was with Occupational Enterprises Inc. A nonprofit based in far Southwest Virginia, OEI provides case management aimed at getting people into work.

Executive Director Aleta Spicer said OEI's Project Reconnect deals specifically with prisoners, with most referrals coming from the federal halfway house in Lebanon. OEI may provide medication to a recently released prisoner who doesn't have insurance. It may provide a ride to work

Ronald Lee Davis, a 44-year-old resident of Austinville, in Wythe County, just needed a pair of work boots. He'd long been qualified to work as a high-voltage lineman. But after returning this past summer from several years of incarceration on a methamphetamine charge, he had no money for the required steel-toed boots. Murphy sent him to OEI, which provided $75 -- which in turn proved to be the ticket to a job where Davis now makes more than $28 per hour.

Davis said he's planning his own donation to OEI. "I want to put that money back in that fund so you can help the next person," he said.

Murphy also is reaching out to employers, seeking to forge relationships such as one he developed with American Mirror in Galax.

Dennis Bryant, who recently retired as the company's human resources director, said he liked working with the people Murphy channeled toward him. One reason was that if managers had a problem with attendance or work habits, they could contact the probation officer to handle it, he said.

Murphy said the work force development effort is still in its early stages. But he's encouraged by his first assessments of unemployment among the 1,000 or so former prisoners who are supervised by the district's federal probation office. In early August, almost 12 percent did not have a job. At the end of October, the last time he ran the numbers, the rate was down to just more than 10 percent.