Reentry Services
The RISE Reentry Team has the privilege of being up close and personal with the most magnificent successes as well as the darkest depths of struggle with our program graduates. Living out RISE’s mission—to break generational cycles of incarceration—through our reentry programs is messy, beautiful, and oftentimes both simultaneously.[1]
Over the past year, we have welcomed over 50 individuals home to the community. We’ve provided over $16,000 for rent, reentry housing, transportation, and other basic needs. We’ve handed out prepaid cell phones as part of our reentry assistance program so people can stay connected to us, their loved ones, employers, and parole officers. We’ve given out 40 “Welcome Home Bags” as part of our reentry life‑skills toolkit so people don’t need to worry about basic necessities immediately upon release. But those numbers do not tell our complete story.
The numbers do not show the graduate we welcomed home after a lifetime of system involvement—foster care, youth detention, and finally incarceration.
It leaves out the story of a mother planning diligently for her reentry program, only to struggle with her relationship with her children, sending her back into a cycle of depression and addiction that led her to prison years ago.
The numbers could never show the conversation our team facilitated between a son and his mother as they both struggled to navigate one’s alcohol use and the other’s mental health, part of our rehabilitation after incarceration efforts.[3]
But yet, the magnificent moments not captured by numbers exist as well:
Supporting a mom while she got her first reentry housing where her children have their own bedrooms.
Sitting next to a reentering father, practicing how to send a text message so he could communicate with his children in a different state; rehearsing how to lovingly have a tough conversation with friends whose values no longer align with their own, part of our reentry life‑skills training.
Walking into a community organization for mental‑health services with someone who stated, “I would have never come, had you not been with me,” as part of our community re‑entry initiative.
The cumulation of these small wins adds to the cycle of success for our program graduates in our reentry programs. Their confidence grows, they learn more about themselves, and lean more deeply into their relationships and skills—preparing them for jobs after prison and other employment reentry programs. And our mission begins to emerge in behaviors, decisions, and life trajectories—showing that generational cycles of incarceration have been broken.[2]
