Through the Gates: The Struggle to Rebuild After Prison in New Jersey

Every year, over 120,000 people are released from New Jersey's state prisons and local jails — into communities often unprepared to receive them and systems that too frequently set them up to fail. Nearly two-thirds will be rearrested within three years. But those numbers don't capture the full story: the near-impossibility of finding housing with a conviction on your record, the employer who won't call back, or the trauma a punishment-focused system was never built to address.In this episode of Jersey Gives a Damn, host Aaron Turner sits down with three people doing something about it. Chino Ortiz, who spent thirty years incarcerated before co-founding the Returning Citizens Support Group in Newark, talks about what that first day of freedom actually looks like. Aisha Babilonia of Habakkuk's Vision describes the wraparound support that meets people where they are — from inside prison walls to long after release. And Kevin Bott, Executive Director of Ritual4Return, shares how a 14-week theater-based program helps returning citizens heal through storytelling and public ceremony.This is what it actually takes to come home.Learn more about our guests' work: Habakkuk’s Vision: https://hbbkv.org/Returning Citizens Support Group: www.returningcitizensnj.orgRitual 4 Return: www.ritual4return.orgRelated articles: But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisonr Reentry by Jeremy TravisPerforming Emancipatory Rites of Passage, co-edited by Kevin Bott and Jan Cohen-Cruz (30% discount code: H6CZF7T9D)