Giving Building Materials and Ex-Inmates a Second Chance in Baltimore

Rather than fleeing or fighting the twin threats to its business from criminal gangs and an aggressively anti-business government, the managers of Venezuelan rum-maker Ron Santa Teresa chose to make peace with both through social programs that have calmed what once was one of the violent country's most troubled towns. The company's Proyecto Alcatraz creates economic opportunity for gang members, providing them with job training and psychological counseling. It also courted favor with the socialist government with a housing initiative for the poor. Both programs have proved a boon for business.

When Pennsylvania's largest medical-marijuana dispensary, TerraVida Holistic Centers, struggled to find enough employees, given the state's ban on the industry's employment of people with marijuana convictions, TerraVida joined with the Urban League of Philadelphia to expand aid to the formerly incarcerated. Through Urban League's Out4Good program, the partnership helps people expunge their drug convictions. It also counsels and financially helps groups of 10 trainees at a time, dozens of whom have started careers and stayed out of trouble. The group also seeks a longer-term fix: marijuana legalization.

How do you find a job when you get out of prison? For some, it’s almost impossible. But, UpLift Solutions trains former offenders, and if they pass the six week course, they get hired at ShopRite, a grocery store. For some, the program is life changing.

What does a business like IKEA do if they want to hire former prisoners? They listen to a panel of people who have already done it.

Recipe for Change is a program that teaches incarcerated people Italian cuisine skills, which is meant to help them gain employment when they reenter society. An estimated 200 people have gone through the program. Similarly, other programs are focusing on helping formerly incarcerated people gain employment.

The USA has one of the highest rates of incarceration, and reoffending is a likely outcome after prison. 'The Last Mile' and similar programs are providing inmates with the opportunity to learn marketable skills and earn degrees while in prison, and then find jobs once their sentence is finished, in order to decrease the likelihood of reoffending.

The Future Leaders Apprenticeship Program (FLAP) provides formerly incarcerated individuals with paid positions, benefits, and hands-on training in prison advocacy, helping them transition successfully into meaningful careers while contributing to criminal justice reform through legislative victories like Illinois's 2019 youthful parole bill.

The Community Release With Support program provides wraparound services to people on pretrial release by connecting them with housing support, employment services, and education programs, as well as helping participants make their court dates. These services have become even more vital since Illinois passed the Pretrial Fairness Act to eliminate cash bail requirements. Roughly 3,000 people have participated in the support program, which has connected 1,000 people with employment services, more than 740 with education programs, and more than 250 with housing support.

Transfr is a tech company that provides free virtual reality job training and education to help facilitate employment opportunities. Transfr specifically focuses on providing these opportunities for disadvantaged people in places like domestic violence shelters, mental health clinics, juvenile detention centers and state correctional institutions where access to skill-building and further education is often hard to access. So far Transfr has 30 partnerships across 18 states.

Jackson County's correctional facility has a transitional center that allows people who are incarcerated to begin working and building job skills while they are still finishing out their sentence. The wages they earn go toward paying off any charges associated with their conviction, and the rest is funneled into a bank account that is there for them when they're released.