Statements
Mission
Project Return's mission is to provide services and connect people with resources needed to return successfully to work and community after incarceration. Our vision is a full and free life after incarceration.
Background
Project Return was founded by Reverend Bill Barnes and Reverend Don Beisswenger, local visionaries who agonized over the nearly insurmountable odds faced by people coming back from prison. Now in its 43rd year of service to Tennessee and the Nashville community, Project Return provides wrap-around reentry assistance to hundreds of men and women each year who are returning to our community from incarceration. Through our social enterprises, we staff the worksites of hundreds of local and regional employers with great new employees. We are excited and grateful to have opened our second office location in downtown Chattanooga in September 2021, allowing us to better serve those in Southeast Tennessee. We welcome any adult returning from incarceration, who was either convicted of a felony or a serious misdemeanor. All adults, regardless of gender, age, education, skill level, or type or number of convictions, are eligible for our free-of-charge services. By design, Project Return is not a mandated program; all of our participants come to us of their own volition, fueled by their desire to leave prison behind and lead new, productive lives. People arrive at our doors with little more than the shirts on their backs. We meet that need with opportunity, and a judgment-free, welcoming approach.
Impact
Our participants are not mandated by the criminal justice system to utilize our reentry services. They come to our offices of their own volition, motivated by their desire to begin productive lives, with a total of over 800 new participants enrolling at Project Return's Nashville and Chattanooga locations each year. We meet their aspirations with opportunity and a judgment-free, welcoming approach. Upon enrollment, Project Return provides food, transportation, and housing assistance to address immediate, basic needs. After an orientation, focused on obtaining the information needed to best understand and begin a relationship with them, our participants complete a readiness curriculum. Throughout this period, participants are provided with a warm lunch and bagged, nonperishable food, as well as bus passes to ensure they have access to transportation to the Project Return office.
Our focus on workforce reentry is bolstered by two employment-generating social enterprises: Project Return Opportunity for Employment (PROe) and Project Return Opportunity Property Services (PROPS) in which we hire participants and provide real-world work experience, bridging the gap between prison and regular employment. Maintaining employment is a key to long-term success after incarceration. Participants who gain employment, through our transitional job opportunities or independently, also have access to a year of job retention services. We also operate Project Return Opportunity for Housing (PROh), our affordable housing social enterprise, creating rental opportunities for eligible participants.
Project Return's two primary metrics of success are high employment and low recidivism. We strive for a greater than 75% job acquisition rate and less than 15% re-incarcerate rate. We calculate these at the end of each month and cumulatively to reach our annual goals and evaluate our success. In 2022, we achieved a job acquisition rate of 72%, coupled with a re-incarceration rate of 12.5%
Needs
About 15,000 individuals are released from Tennessee penitentiaries each year. For most, reentry is a series of nearly insurmountable odds. Often they are released with no ID, a few dollars in their pockets, and only the clothes they're wearing. Many have no home, and no family or stable friends to rely on. They face thousands of dollars in debt due to fines and fees accumulated during the conviction and incarceration process. This, combined with a lack of employment prospects creates a recipe for failure, for the individual and the community at large. Upon release, individuals are routinely barred from employment and statistically fated to go back to prison: nationally, 60-75% of people released from prison remain unemployed for their first 12 months, and two-thirds are re-incarcerated in their first three years. Project Return has a clear and equitable threshold for enrollment into our program: an individual must have been released from incarceration, with either a felony or serious misdemeanor conviction, within the last year. No one is denied on the basis of type of criminal conviction, length of sentence, number of convictions or sentences, or any other characteristic.
CEO Statement
When our participants walk through the doors, there are a myriad of unique challenges and needs that they may have. However, there's one common thing that everyone is looking for when they come to us, an opportunity. An opportunity to grow. An opportunity to reimagine the possibilities of their lives. An opportunity to display their skills and experience. And of course an opportunity at a full and free life after incarceration. This opportunity can be difficult to obtain, as there are so many barriers that our participants experience. At Project Return, we provide a yes in a world full of no's. Our array of wrap-around services help participants not only navigate through and around the challenges they face, but also puts them in the best position possible to take hold of the opportunities before them.
Service Categories |
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Primary Category: | Crime & Legal - Related - Rehabilitation Services for Offenders |
Secondary Category: | Employment - Job Training |
Tertiary Category: | Human Services - Personal Social Services |
Areas Served
Project Return primarily serves Davidson and Hamilton Counties surrounding areas, with an office location in both Nashville and Chattanooga. We conduct in-reach at incarceration facilities, and provide referral assistance services statewide.
TN - Bedford |
TN - Cannon |
TN - Cheatham |
TN - Clay |
TN - Coffee |
TN - Davidson |
TN - DeKalb |
TN - Dickson |
TN - Franklin |
TN - Giles |
TN - Hickman |
TN - Houston |
TN - Humphreys |
TN - Jackson |
TN - Lawrence |
TN - Lewis |
TN - Lincoln |
TN - Macon |
TN - Marshall |
TN - Maury |
TN - Montgomery |
TN - Moore |
TN - Overton |
TN - Perry |
TN - Putnam |
TN - Robertson |
TN - Rutherford |
TN - Smith |
TN - Stewart |
TN - Sumner |
TN - Trousdale |
TN - Warren |
TN - Wayne |
TN - White |
TN - Williamson |
TN - Wilson |