Blogs

Bobby Jones likes to look on the bright side. So much so, he named his roofing company Bright Side Roofing, with the slogan “No one likes replacing their roof, so look on the Bright Side.” In September 2025, Jones was even named a Delaware Achiever and Innovator Under 40 for his multimillion-dollar company.

However, Bobby Jones’s life started much differently

Like most of Chicago in the 90s, Yohance Lacour spent his teen years trying to find the most elusive gym shoes no one else had, going with his friends to “really obscure hole-in-walls, back-alley stores, that had that one or two pairs of shoes that we knew about.”

Kiauna (Kee) Nelson, was born in 1980 to parents who were both addicts; her father was addicted to crack, while her mother was addicted to opioids. By the time she was eight or nine years old, she was navigating life alone as her parents at home left her with little adult support.

On the day of Helen “Skip” Skipper’s final arrest, she had an out-of-body experience. She had been caught trying to smuggle some items out of a store that she’d already shoplifted from earlier in the day. She was 43 years old.

After sixteen years behind bars, often the greatest casualty is hope. After sixteen years of believing in your own innocence when no one else believes you, the expectation is despair. However, Jeffrey Deskovic never succumbed to this prediction. He never stopped fighting for himself, and now, he will never stop fighting for others.

Formerly incarcerated individuals are often unlikely to receive opportunities as they are disadvantaged by their time away, and not given the benefit of the doubt when they return. That’s why it takes people like Frantz Michel to make sure that those with natural talent, passion, intelligence, and ingenuity can pursue careers and have open paths to success.

Sharon Richardson walked down Jamaica Avenue in Queens with a pocketbook, a cell phone, a MetroCard, an umbrella, and a piece of paper with an address that no longer existed. Tears streamed down her face as she searched for a building that she would never find.

Running just one business takes an immense level of effort, commitment, and passion. Running two businesses takes an even greater level of innovation. And running three businesses is what happens when a person is not just committed, passionate, and innovative but also naturally driven and naturally talented.

For many formerly incarcerated individuals, it can feel like the entire system is stacked against success and freedom. When this is the case, it is easy to give up and much harder to keep fighting back. It takes a person unwilling to bend to the system in order to force the system to bend to the person.

Racism and socio-economic background are used in order to perpetuate mass incarceration and funnel people into prison. The world is waking up to this injustice, but far too few people are actually doing something about it. Jason Gibson is one exception.

It is easy to reduce formerly incarcerated individuals to their worst mistakes, however this paints an untrue portrait of a person. Marion is a creative soul, a loving mother and grandmother, and a woman of unparalleled altruism.

H.O.L.L.A, a New York based organization that helps young people challenge unfair norms in the prison system. The forces of racism and white supremacy manifest in mass incarceration. Without dismantling these driving forces behind injustice, black and brown people will continue to be disproportionately harmed.

Mental health is often the unsung trauma of incarceration. Any mental health problems before incarceration are exacerbated by prison and then further exacerbated by the hardships of reentry.

A broken system does not excuse mistakes, but it does ensure that the punishment does not fairly fit the crime, particularly for individuals of certain communities, classes, and races. Ivelisse Gilestra knows this better than anyone.