There is a 60 percent recidivism rate in our state’s prisons. That means more than half of the people who serve time in Arizona’s prisons end up going back.
But, according to Sue Ellen Allen, that is mostly to do with the many, often insurmountable challenges that former inmates face when they try to re-enter society. How will they find a place to live? Pay for rent? Get a job?
Those are the kinds of questions participants will be asking themselves tonight at a simulation called Life After Incarceration. It’s a collaboration between ASU’s Project Humanities and the advocacy group Reinventing Reentry that aims to give people a better idea of what it’s like to try to restart your life after prison.
I spoke with Allen more about this. She’s the founder and CEO of Reinventing Reentry. She served time in an Arizona prison until 2009 and she says she was completely unprepared for what she encountered there.
Now, she works to educate people about the truth about life after prison, and, when I spoke with her, I started by asking her about the challenges she faced when she got out. The simulation, Life After Incarceration, is tonight at ASU.
