Coming home from prison is jarring. After years of dreaming of release, when the day finally comes, few people are truly prepared to reenter a world that has gone on for years without them. Prison is an inhuman environment—one of gray concrete walls, ultra-processed food, and constant surveillance—to which incarcerated people adapt, as much as we can. Then we are suddenly inserted back into a fast-paced environment, where we experience more choices and freedoms in a single day than in the entire past month. On release day, we walk out beyond the barbed-wire gates and enter a world of unimaginable opportunities and dreams, to say nothing of obstacles and dangers. Ask any formerly incarcerated person: the newly released are given almost no assistance in preparing for or making this transition. We are expected to simply figure it out. It is a miracle that so many of us do so successfully, but it shouldn’t have to be so difficult.
When I was nineteen, I was sentenced as a first-time offender to a state prison term. My punishment wasn’t nearly as long as other people in the system. Yet I’ll never forget my first day out, two-and-a-half years later. I walked outside, to the street, and froze at the intersection. For a moment, I actually forgot how to cross the street. I stood on the sidewalk looking one way—then the other—thinking: “How fast do cars move? Can I even cross here? Are there street signs that indicate where you’re supposed to walk?” It sounds trivial now, but that’s just one example of the small things that anyone could forget while incarcerated. I can only imagine how confusing it must be for someone who is released after ten or twenty years.
For just about everyone leaving prison, the challenging experiences that follow far surpass merely crossing the street. Relearning social norms, finding a job with a criminal record, and navigating the parole system are but a few of the hurdles. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to overcome obstacles like these. We go through reentry largely unaided, except for the goodwill of friends and family (for those who have them)—and certainly without any meaningful help from the carceral system itself.
Ironically, the carceral system has direct access to the largest source of information on successfully navigating reentry, and it does nothing to leverage it. I am not talking about research studies or government data here, but of the extensive knowledge possessed by formerly incarcerated people themselves. Thus far, this wealth of knowledge has been almost completely ignored, even though we are the ones best prepared to instruct future generations of people reentering society.
That’s why I applied to be a research fellow for the New York State Reentry Guide Initiative. I am one of eighteen formerly incarcerated men and women who were hired in 2023 to provide expertise that, alongside scholars from the State University of New York (SUNY) and Cornell University, will be used to create an informed reentry guide. To draft our contributions to the guide, our team’s formerly incarcerated authors analyzed our own experiences and offered advice based on what worked for us and what we wished we had known at the time. The goal of the NYS Reentry Guide Project is to help the men and women leaving prisons to take control of their future and remain free members of society. The guide focuses on pivotal steps in the reentry process—such as obtaining employment, managing personal finances, and using new technology.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea to create reentry guides specifically authored by incarcerated people came from incarcerated people themselves. The NYS Reentry Guide builds upon the work of the Reentry Guide Initiative, a project of the Education Justice Project (EJP) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. EJP began by teaching college courses in the state’s Danville Correctional Center in 2008. Over the next few years, some alumni who reentered society kept in contact with EJP and eventually began working there. EJP decided to form an advisory council made up of its formerly incarcerated students, who could inform the organization and help them make decisions. “The future is hiring more formerly incarcerated people and training them to take leadership roles,” Lee Ragsdale, director of the Reentry Guide Initiative at EJP, told me. “We need to challenge the institutions that marginalize people with records.”
One of the topics that the EJP advisory board repeatedly brought up was that there were few helpful resources for the people released from prison. For example, one alum said that the Illinois Department of Corrections gave them an eight-page pamphlet with addresses and phone numbers that hadn’t been edited since the 1990s. It had been photocopied so many times it was barely legible.
Taking directive from the needs of students and alumni, EJP harnessed the knowledge of its formerly incarcerated alumni and started building a statewide guide. Volunteers conducted Internet research, spoke with people who had been through reentry, and began compiling advice and organizational resources. In 2015 the first edition of Mapping Your Future, a reentry guide specifically for Illinois, was released. Since then, EJP has continued editing and improving the guide—going on to produce a national version as well as a different guide for people who face deportation from the United States. Over 19,000 total copies of these three guides combined were distributed across the country in 2023.
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According to Lee, the increase in people released from prison during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to an increased demand for reentry guides in Illinois. Prison administrators who were previously reluctant to receive the reentry guides were requesting copies by the thousands. In 2022 EJP expanded its focus and began teaching other organizations how to create a reentry guide specific to their own county, state, or region. Out of many proposals, EJP selects an annual cohort of proposals that will have the greatest impact and guides them through the research and writing processes. The New York State group I ended up being part of was in the very first cohort in January 2023 to be chosen to participate. The most recently selected cohort in 2024 consists of proposals for statewide guides in Arizona, Oregon, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Utah; a regional guide for Buffalo, New York; and a guide for the country of Nigeria. The facilitators in each cohort are invited to participate in a virtual workshop and given resources to create their guides, including a template, a work plan, and other tools. The opportunity also includes a year of technical assistance as well as a stipend to produce the guides.
The New York State group is made up of educational organizations—several of which are involved in college-in-prison initiatives. SUNY, Cornell University, the Petey Greene Program, Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, and Columbia University have collaborated to contribute the staff hours and funding necessary to facilitate the creation of the reentry guide.
The NYS Reentry Guide we generated is divided into sections that each focus on a different stage of the reentry process. Typically, reentry resources produced by the state contain only very basic advice, and do not address the nuances of real situations. By contrast, we tried in our guide to pass on the lessons that we had learned from firsthand experience.
The first section, “Before You Leave,” helps incarcerated people get ready for their release. This section covers getting mentally prepared for reentry, the importance of acquiring all your personal documents, and the little things that can be done while still incarcerated to make the transition easier. For example, I had dental work done in prison that wasn’t performed correctly and I had to get it fixed years later. It would have been helpful to have a record of the procedure to show to my next dentist. Thus, one piece of advice I offered was that anyone receiving prescriptions, medical treatments, or dental work of any kind should request their medical history before leaving. Small tasks like this are easy to overlook but are worth the effort.
The second section, “Once You’re Out,” is intended for the reader who is taking the first steps to build their life again from the bottom up. This section, which makes up the bulk of the guide, gives instructions on how to apply for social services and obtain health care, plus the basics of renting an apartment and finding employment. These are basic, essential survival skills, and mastering them means the difference between stability and the risk of reincarceration.
Navigating parole is a huge part of the reentry process. This is one topic where input from other formerly incarcerated people can be very specific. One point that I made was that if you live with other people, make sure they understand they can’t leave anything out around the house (for example, an empty beer bottle) that could get you in trouble if your parole officer saw it.
Another uniquely relevant topic we discuss in the guide is technology. Given how long some people are incarcerated, it’s no surprise that using smartphones, software, and work-related technology can be a hurdle for them. Research fellows believed this was a very important component of the guide as we know that, the longer someone spends in prison, the more aspects of modern life they will have to adjust to upon their return. One of my suggestions was how learning to use software such as Microsoft Office or Google Docs would be necessary if they wished to further their education or pursue certain careers. I also recommended using ChatGPT or another virtual assistant to polish your resume and reword it.
I also mentioned that social media can be like a drug. We’re all familiar with the addictive pull of endless scrolling, insanely effective algorithms, and the pressures of online comparison. Now imagine experiencing that for the first time after twenty years of incarceration. The sudden exposure can be overwhelming, even risky, as old influences can resurface, seemingly harmless interactions can be catalysts for parole violations, and virtual distractions pull our attention from daily responsibilities. That’s why I suggested a cautious approach of learning the tools but setting boundaries. Today’s technology provides many opportunities, but without limits, it can become another kind of prison.
The third section, “Healing and Moving Forward,” is about getting used to life after prison, focusing on healing trauma, and maintaining mental health. I know that my family’s support helped make that awkward transition much smoother for me. My best piece of advice for people in the same position—that is, for those moving in with family members—is: Let them know what your goals are and how you plan to move forward. Likewise, ask them what they expect from you and what they think you should do at this point. That way, you make sure everyone is on the same page.
An appendix offers a regional resource directory with contact information for organizations and agencies that have resources to help support reentry. The services provided range from temporary housing to free legal consultations to building peer support groups. All of the local resources listed were provided by the research fellows who live in those same communities. It serves, in effect, as a green book of service providers that other formerly incarcerated people have experienced as both safe and effective. We compiled the phone numbers and addresses for shelters, local offices for social services, and other sources of help. In our digital age, writing all this down may seem pretty rudimentary, but we know that many of these men and women return to society without a smartphone or technological literacy.
Klarisse Torriente, the project coordinator for the reentry guide project, saw the harsh reality of reentering society during her time administering the Hudson Link college program at Greene Correctional Facility. Alumni of the program would contact her after their release, and while she expected them to ask for help obtaining transcripts or applying to college, what they really needed help with was finding shelter and not violating parole. “What I’ve seen is that humans are so hopeful, powered, and ready. People come home ready to hit the ground running,” Torriente said. “But almost immediately they hit obstacles that they did not see coming. When they come out, they are almost immediately blindsided by these inconceivable barriers that are thrown in their way.”
Upon release from prison, many people have the understandable goal of leaving everything associated with it behind. Doing so is often quite isolating, though. Few of the people they encounter out in the world can understand what they’ve been through. Feeling alienated and disconnected is a common theme among formerly incarcerated people. Torriente hopes that the reentry guide will help people to connect and learn from each other’s shared experiences. “This project is different because there is no disparaging tone in the guide,” Torriente told me. “We want to lead with love.”
Klarisse believes this approach is more likely to attract the attention of the people it is directed toward. Resources produced by the carceral system tend to use language that shames the reader and makes them less likely to trust it. After all, nobody wants to be talked down to and reminded of their past mistakes. Our guide aims to produce a more personable guide by encouraging research fellows to write in their own voice and to use person-centered language. For example, instead of “felon” or “offender,” we simply address the reader as a formerly incarcerated person. This philosophy was evident in EJP’s original work, which noted that “these labels do not describe the full breadth of a person’s humanity.”
The decision to invite formerly incarcerated people to help author the reentry guide is a prime example of the forward thinking that has driven the project. Torriente insisted that these participants be given a professional title and paid for their work. “Our goal is to humanize the experience. Directly impacted representation has been tokenized in some organizations—just checking a box,” she said. “In this project, we wanted to be genuine. People don’t realize how powerful it is to have a platform.” As Torriente put it, the knowledge provided by formerly incarcerated people has allowed the NYS Reentry Guide to turn into a kind of “master class” in reentry.
Everyone’s reentry journey will differ, but a little guidance from those who have found their way can make all the difference. I hope the advice and anecdotes we wrote will be helpful to future generations of people starting over from scratch. By channeling our grueling experiences into this resource for positive change, we hope someone somewhere will walk a less lonely path. Although I don’t think there’s any advice that could have prepared me to cross that busy city street on my first day out!
The integration of formerly incarcerated people into reentry guides reflects one hopeful trend in the zeitgeist—recognizing the importance of rehabilitation over punishment. Initiatives such as this one will continue as long as there is a collective will to look back and empower the next generation of people coming home from prison. And that’s what this project is all about—helping others find their way home.
