Matt Waltz
speaker
40 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Matt Waltz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So for RFK Jr., Dr. Ross. That's amazing. Just know we exist. We're creating miracles. We're helping people become good citizens, good neighbors, good fathers, good sons, and helping the community with adding to the GDP, reducing crime. There's so many benefits.
I'm not, that term does not ring a bell for me.
So what we're doing, we're providing discrete services, peer support, you know, group therapy. So it's just the clinical services that are being reimbursed.
Correct. Shall we bring in Fred?
Well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've started and exited about five businesses in my career. I've never seen anything come together the way New Freedom came together. The employees love working there. I mean, the second we started hiring, we had lined up out the door to get in there. And great people who have turned their lives around. I mean, it's been nothing short of amazing.
And I would love to give you a tour in person, Dr. Drew, because you hear about this program and it sounds amazing. Every time I've given a tour, people tell me, I can't believe what's happening here. You're walking, you feel the energy. The employees are fired up. The program are fired up. You feel this energy of success and hope and change that's hard to describe.
It's like nothing I've seen before. So we didn't realize when we first started, we didn't even plan on doing vocational training. It's something that evolved. People are saying, hey, we want jobs. Can you help us get jobs? So we developed this vocational training program. I've been in construction development for close to 30 years. So I brought some of my trade contractor partners in.
They started teaching classes and then hiring these people. Today, there are over 90 employers who hire out of New Freedom. Some of them exclusively hire from New Freedom because they're the best employees I've ever had. I mean, the average incarceration... That's a major piece of this.
There are about 15 different vocational tracks, commercial driver's license. We offer peer support certification so they can go out and work in other behavioral health facilities. We have a commercial kitchen, so we're training people how to work in restaurants and do food service.
um yeah but the overwhelming majority are in the trades I mean it's a natural fit if talk to any general contractor or subcontractor finding people who want to work in construction is incredibly challenging and the men and women coming out of prison love that work they're not afraid to work hard they roll up their sleeves they're again you hear all the time they're some of the best employees that our employer partners are hiring
That's correct. We started with our first facility was men and women. And about three months ago, we opened our women's only facility. So we have two facilities in Phoenix. We're serving just over 400 people total. So we're really proud of our success.
Well, you're right. And I told you when we first started, you know, the coronavirus affected, we went through our special use permit process without a person showing up. Well, a few months later, the neighborhood group found out about us and they came with the proverbial, you know, pitchforks and torches. But once they came inside and saw what we were doing...
The Neighborhood Group is now our biggest supporter. They love us. They support us every way. So it's just been magical to watch what happens. When you help people get better, the American people at large, they want that.
So we've got a team of people that does nothing but write letters to incarcerated people in Arizona prisons. In fact, we write over 7,000 letters a month.
And so what happens is we build a relationship with people inside prisons, and when they say, hey, I'm done with this life, but maybe I don't know how to be done with this life, our mentors say, great, that's exactly what we're here to do is help you do that. So the first thing we do is we send them six courses. There's a six-course curriculum that is basically homework.
They do the homework in prison. They send it back to us. And for the last six to 12 months of their incarceration, we require that they don't get into trouble. So no gang activity, no drugs, no fighting. And those two things are the cost of admission to new freedom. And if those two things can get completed, then they can fill out an application to be accepted at new freedom.
This program is not for everyone, right? You need to fit a specific criteria. You can't be currently addicted. We don't take SMI. There's a few parameters. And again, we're helping about 15% of the people that are coming out of Arizona prisons today.
Yeah, so there are a lot of options at New Freedom. It's not compulsory. There are some faith-based options. There's a lot of different paths. Fred's a great example. Not everyone chooses the path of faith. A lot of people do. But really, and Fred's right, the people that come to New Freedom, they want to change.
One interesting thing I want to tell you, Dr. Drew, is the thing that I've come to realize, especially as a business owner, The skill set that it takes to be a successful criminal in the criminal world is almost identical to what it takes to be successful in the business world. The main difference is the stakes are so much higher. Someone like Fred, who was a leader in the criminal world,
If he doesn't do his job right, his life might be at risk. You know, in the business world, if you don't do your job right, you lose a client, maybe some people quit. But so what we're doing is we're taking those skills all these men and women already have and repurposing them for good and success in the business world.
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