Every year, Tennessee penitentiaries release nearly 15,000 people – nearly 300 a week – after they have served their sentences.
Many of the former inmates struggle to find work and readjust to life outside of prison and end up committing crimes that put them back in the prison system.
Nearly half of those released from jail in Tennessee are back behind bars within three years, according to the Tennessee Governor’s Task Force on Sentencing and Recidivism.
A nonprofit group that recently expanded into Chattanooga is trying to limit such recidivism and, in the process, help local employers find needed workers and limit state and local incarceration expenses.
Project Return, started in 1979 by a pair of Nashville ministers eager to help those coming out of prison, expanded to Chattanooga this fall with its support services, skills training and job placement for former inmates.