DETROIT – Delenia Howell has spent the last three years trying to rebuild a life that was nearly destroyed.
“After incarceration, a lot of people don’t see us, they don’t hear us, they don’t know what our issues are,” Howell, 36, said. “They don’t care.”
She’s a peer leader with Nation Outside – a nonprofit organization based in Southwest Detroit that focuses on helping the formerly incarcerated.
Howell helps people like her who have served their time and are trying to start over.
She was first introduced to the organization’s program manager, Rachel Worthy.
Howell was openly skeptical about them until finding out that all of the people who work there – including Worthy – were also former felons.
“They made me feel welcome, and I found out everybody essentially there had, you know, experienced incarceration or had a felony or knew what I was feeling,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I was walking in there with my number on my forehead”
Worthy pled guilty to identity theft and embezzlement while she was a student at Wayne State.
“I met Delenia through work we were doing at the Oakland County Parole Office,” Worthy said. “Her agent actually came to me and was like, she a big part of our program and she just needs someone to talk to.”
“I’ve served my time”
In March 2021, Howell was one of six people charged in the killing of her ex-boyfriend, Jason Foster, in Eastpointe on Dec. 9, 2020.
Foster, who was also the father of Howell’s children, was killed in apparent retaliation for the killing of her then-boyfriend, Jonas Williams, one day earlier in Detroit.
She was accused of organizing the killing.
“I lost my boyfriend at like 11 p.m. maybe, and then at like Noon the very next day, I lost my kid’s father,” she said. “Everything changed for me.”
Staring down a life sentence, she accepted a plea deal in Nov. 2022 and was sentenced as an accessory and served three years in prison.
She was paroled in 2023, and her sentence was officially discharged in December 2024.
The hardest part of incarceration for her was being away from her three children.
“I never ever wanted to be away from my kids, and I feel like I made a decision to be around the wrong people, and I made them suffer for a decision that I made,” she said. “I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to be back with them, but it was the worst time of my life.
“I thought I would never be able to serve my community again”
“Delenia is a great representative of what happens when you are supported, when you’re heard, when you’re seen, and somebody gives you a second chance,” Cecilia Zavala, Nation Outside’s executive director, said. “We all are formerly incarcerated, have a post-conviction in everybody we serve, so we’re all in this unique community.”
Like Howell and Worthy, Zavala is living out her second chance.
“You get in trouble with the law, have a conviction, and now are starting over,” she said. “We’re lucky if they let us fold pizza boxes at Little Caesars.”
In August 2016, she pleaded no contest to embezzlement while serving as COO of the now-defunct nonprofit Esperanza Detroit, an agency that served at-risk students at Detroit Western High School.
She didn’t serve prison time, but the conviction sits like a scarlet letter on her record.
“Being walked off jobs because of your felony conviction, having trouble finding a place to live,” she said. “I still feel that felony is the first thing people see.”
Zavala was accused of using Esperanza’s credit and debit cards without approval between November 2011 and May 2014. She says that evidence that would have exonerated her was not allowed in court, and she took the plea deal.
“I was so ashamed and embarrassed of my conviction that I just didn’t think I could do it,” she said. “It’s really difficult to build and thrive after you get a conviction.”
Zavala says one of Nation Outside’s goals is to also shine a light on the criminal justice system that disproportionately affects Black and Brown people and also does not do enough to rehabilitate people, particularly those who have a release date.
“The system is designed especially for certain people to keep people in that cycle of poverty,” she said. “When you see people that are successful, that starts to break that cycle and end that stigma.”
Howell is set to be honored at their “Seeds of Change” event on Friday night in Southwest Detroit. Her goal is to continue to rebuild her life for both herself and her family.
Nation Outside’s state funding was cut in last year’s budget, and they are constantly raising money to stay afloat. Howell says the organization has helped change her life.
“I really hope that Nation Outside finds exactly the funding they need,” she said. “It’s really for us to help people because when they come back from being incarcerated, it is very hard.”
“It’s a barrier to even wanting to ask for help because you feel so ashamed and you feel so alone,” Zavala added. “We’re trying to end that.
“We want people to feel supported,” she said. “We want them to come home to community. We don’t judge; we support.”
