Phoenix Rising Transitions

Support for people coming home from prison to reduce chances that they will return to crime and prison. We accomplish this through leadership training, life skills training, mentoring and transition housing. Specifically, we foster one-on-one conversation between ordinary community members (coming into our prison classes as visitors). These conversations are on specific topics in a classroom environment. The conversations are debriefed in the large group. These one-on-one interactions with community members are the bedrock of our work. Prisoners recognize that they can talk to "normal" people when they return to the community. It gives them confidence that they can make it.

We provide support for people coming home from prison to reduce chances that they will return. We accomplish this through leadership and communications training, as well as mentoring and life skills. But we have not been able to go into the prison since March 12, 2020 due to pandemic restrictions. Our community work with mentees continued on a limited basis, but contracts that supported that work sunsetted on 6/30. Overall, we were using the pandemic interruption to define new work areas: 1) using community organizing to address housing disparities for ex-cons; 2) opening a thrift shop. These two projects have, however, been on the back burner. We instead worked on a ballot measure that treated addiction as a health rather than criminal issue. We also were awarded a large grant from Oregon Health Authority to assist people who needed to quarantine or isolate after leaving prison. That has taken up most of our time, though it was mostly onboarding and planning during 2020-2021 year.