Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • PowerCorpsPHL trains Philly youth for careers that have a future

    A workforce development initiative, PowerCorpsPHL, pays participants to learn skills and gain hands-on experience for jobs that offer long-term career opportunity in the field of environmental sustainability. Participants generally have criminal records or have been in the foster care system. In addition to job training and education, PowerCorpsPHL also provides services such as mental health counseling, securing childcare, navigating SNAP and AmeriCorps tuition benefits and helping with paperwork. The program helps 92 percent of participants secure either a job or post-secondary education.

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  • How a Cincinnati manufacturer is changing lives & slashing turnover

    At Nehemiah Manufacturing, more than 80% of the employees are "second-chance" workers: people with a criminal record, a history of drug abuse, and such. Not only does the company bring more jobs to the city of Cincinnati, but it also connects employees with resources in the community, such as job training, housing assistance, food assistance, or mental-health counseling. Turnover rate is only 15%, and employees themselves describe how the job changed their lives.

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  • In Reversal, Counties and States Help Inmates Keep Medicaid

    If incarcerated, low-income individuals who are reliant on Medicaid typically lose access to their benefits which accelerates the difficulty of reentry. To help close the gap, the National Association of Counties and the National Sheriffs’ Association have joined together to implement stopgap measures to help inmates either retain their benefits or have them only suspended instead of terminated.

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  • An Airbnb for the Formerly Incarcerated

    The Homecoming Project in Oakland provides people recently released from prison with a soft landing by giving them free housing for six months, along with a menu of support services, in private homes willing to take in the formerly incarcerated. The recently released are at high risk of both homelessness and recidivism, two factors the program addressed successfully in its first group of tenants. With fundraising challenges, the program remains small. But it is developing a tool kit to help others replicate its model.

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  • Why are there so few prisoners in the Netherlands?

    Providing care to individuals with psychiatric problems reduces the need for incarceration. With the help of a psychological rehabilitation program known as TBS, the Netherlands has shut entire prisons following a decline in the number of individuals sentenced to time in prison. TBS works with offenders at its detainment centers to help them manage their mental health issues and re-enter society.

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  • Would You Open Your Home to an Ex-Prisoner?

    Home-sharing programs help formerly incarcerated individuals avoid homelessness. The Homecoming Project, operated by Impact Justice, a nonprofit in California, leverages the sharing economy model to reduce homelessness and recidivism among ex-prisoners. The program pairs individuals leaving prison with good records with hosts willing to share their homes. The arrangement provides stability and a supportive environment for ex-prisoners to reintegrate into the community.

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  • Art Helps Returning Citizens ‘Cross the Threshold'

    Performance art provides a healing outlet for formerly incarcerated individuals. In New York City, the Ritual4Return program encourages participants to express the transition in their lives through art. Using an artistic expression helps individuals cope with the experience of incarceration and encourages them to reflect on crossing the threshold into the next stage of life. The program operates with the support of grants from universities, foundations, and private donations through a Kickstarter campaign.

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  • Can basketball reduce gun violence? It did in Richmond, Virginia.

    RVA League For Safer Streets uses a basketball league as "bait" to change young men's lives by teaching critical thinking and better ways to resolve conflicts. The Richmond, Virginia, program was co-founded in prison by a former drug dealer convicted of murder who learned the methods of cognitive behavioral therapy behind bars. Paroled after 23 years, he began counseling youth with an approach that police say contributed to a significant drop in Richmond's gang violence and other crime.

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  • One Bay Area organization found a radical and surprisingly simple approach to helping former prisoners start over

    The Homecoming Project pays homeowners to rent their spare bedrooms to people just released from long prison sentences, providing welcoming, free, stable housing option to people whose re-entry is often hamstrung by housing instability and grim, restrictive halfway houses. Only 12 formerly incarcerated people were served in the project’s first year, but the service providing its clients with six months of housing hopes to serve as a pilot for other organizations outside the Bay Area. All 12 have jobs and six have gone on to live independently.

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  • Inspiring Tale of a Chicago Neighborhood That Would Not Die

    Community members and local organizations on the South side of Chicago collaborate to reclaim their neighborhoods from crime, violence, and poverty by engaging in community conflict resolution, policing and networks of support. Groups like the Southwest Organizing Project and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network banded together to interrupt gang violence in the city, relying on the experience of former gang members and offenders to guide the organizations' missions for non-violence in their communities.

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