COLORADO SPRINGS — Close to 600,000 people a year are released from state and federal prisons according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
“The objective once you come back is to get out and to do the right thing moving forward,” said Darrius Taylor who spent 22 years in a Colorado prison.
Only there are many barriers to the transition.
“When folks are coming out of incarceration, they're given typically, maybe $200 max in their pocket and told kind of like, okay, now go,” said Casey Bush who work with Center for Employment Opportunities, a non-profit group that counsels and coaches former inmates.
Many end up homeless because the have little or no money and jobs are hard to get when you have prison time on your record.
Taylor was able to find some stability because of people who supported him the entirety of his prison sentence.
He said, “It was my family that was there to help me push forward when the environment of prison was trying to have a different type of gravitational pull….you're here now, you might as well accept this is what you're about.”
The support continued when he was released.
Even with the assistance he still faces barriers.
He explained, it’s even more difficult for other former prisoners who do not have the same kind of support
“I just hope by showing up, I give people the awareness that it's takes time to rebuild confidence to come back into society and start over.”
Taylor will be part of panel at a forum in Colorado Springs title Beyond Barrs?—The Reality of Reentry.
The discussion will look at laws, along with misconceptions and prejudices about former prisoners and consider possible changes to the system.
Event details are shown below.
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