After their release, returning citizens face an uphill battle on their reintegration into society.
After 21 years incarcerated, Maurice Jackson was released from federal prison hours after former President Donald Trump signed the First Step Act. Regrettably, he experienced the nightmare of trying to make it back to his home in the District of Columbia from southern Alabama.
On his journey home, Jackson encountered a completely unfamiliar world. There were no pay phones for him to call his loved ones. A bus delay in Atlanta left him stranded without enough money or access to funds for a hotel stay. An under-resourced re-entry system filled his return to the District with twists and turns in accessing housing, technology and other vital resources.
"We come home with a mental deficiency that we don't always look at," said Jackson, 60. "Every day since I have been home, I think about my incarceration, and while I'm free now, I understand that I will never truly be free because I will always be a part of their system.”
Jackson counts among 600,000 American residents that are released from state and federal prison, and millions more released from local jails each year in the United States. These "returning citizens," often at the fringes of our society, struggle daily to meet their basic needs, find employment, secure housing, and excel in the community after already paying their debt to society.
Stuart Anderson, a returning citizen and executive director of Family & Friends of Incarcerated People (FFOIP), said there is far too much focus on returning citizen recidivism instead of programs and policies that keep these community members from offending in the first place.
"Collectively, if a returning citizen has access to education, avails him or herself of spirituality, and has access to a social safety net, family or otherwise, they probably will never go back to prison," Anderson said.
For organizations like FFOIP, their work with returning citizens goes far beyond ensuring that they avoid re-incarceration. They provide a social safety net and a convening space for returning citizens to get the resources they need to thrive and piece together a life spent apart from society.
To better understand these citizens' plight, Anderson, Jackson, Ernest Joyner, 48, and Robert Ferebee, 60 explained some of the barriers they face as returning citizens.
The Lack of Technological Education:
Like Maurice Jackson, most returning citizens lack access to modern technology while incarcerated. While a logical and probably necessary punitive step, no technology access during multi-decade periods results in fundamental deficiencies that impact one’s ability to operate in modern society.
"Rejoining society and trying to use a phone and fill out the applications online [is] difficult," said Ferebee, who was incarcerated for 21 years. "I have been out for a couple of years, and I still need people to help me get online applications filled out."
With housing applications, employment opportunities, and public transit payments now all being attached to smartphones, not having access to these devices or understanding how to utilize them present a significant inherent barrier for returning citizens.
"I've been locked up for 30 years and back then it was pagers and car phones. And now it is computers in your hand," said Ernest Joyner. "In prison, I had no access to cellphones, the internet, or even a computer. Now I'm being forced to apply for jobs on a device I'm still learning how to work."
Housing is Extremely Complicated:
Whether someone resides in Washington, D.C. or Richmond, Va., the reality is the same. The cost of rent has outpaced wages, and affordable housing is hard to come by. The housing problem is exacerbated if you are a returning citizen without a social safety net–or in some cases, with a social safety net depending on the location.
Maurice Jackson’s life partner resided in a federal government affordable housing complex, which forbade the formerly incarcerated from living in their housing units. That’s why Jackson had to live with his brother in southern Maryland for several months, a move that limited his access to public transportation and D.C.'s job market, further complicating his return home.
Anderson designates access to affordable housing a top issue for returning citizens. He said it directly impacts their ability to secure employment and meet the demands of supervised release, and often leads to homelessness.
Returning to an Unfamiliar Home
With gentrification at an all-time high in most major cities, many of America's returning citizens return to utterly unfamiliar communities.
That’s why Jackson, Joyner, Anderson, and Ferebee urged the federal and state prison system to make some well-needed reforms. They also pushed for the creation of a mentoring program that connects returning citizens with those preparing for release, so they can impart knowledge and provide tips on how to utilize technology.
"We need government funding to get us into these prisons a couple of years before these people get out so we can help prepare them for life on the outside, so they won't face the same challenges we faced," Maurice Jackson said.
