TAMPA, Fla. — Thousands of people are released from prison every year with $50, a bus pass, and limited options for housing or work.
According to the Florida Policy Project (FPP), the state has about 85,000 prisoners, and that population is growing.
"Largely, people are just warehoused. They're not corrected," said FPP president Jeff Brandes.
A lack of options or guidance can lead to recidivism, a relapse into criminal behavior followed by another arrest and a return to prison. It's the cycle of incarceration.
Robert Blount has dedicated his career to breaking that cycle. Blount has spent the last 23 years at Abe Brown Ministries. He runs the organization.
"We just tend to hold this population of people in contempt,” said Blount.
Instead, Blount holds those people, and the system, accountable, preaching faith while pushing works.
"We take people in this country who have made poor decisions, we put them in a place where they make no decisions and send them home and expect them to make good decisions," said Blount.
Blount walks people through any steps they need to take in order to find and hold a job, or to fill out applications for housing or work. Many applications contain one of the biggest barriers: the question about the applicant's criminal history.
“It’s almost as if you never finish paying for what you did, because of that box,” said Derrick Baldwin, a veteran who faced the same obstacles after he was released from prison one year ago.
Baldwin says that it was Blount and his staff at Abe Brown Ministries that helped get him together.
"They gave me the tools, the skills that I needed to succeed. They even placed me at a job. One of the biggest corporations in the world. I’ve been employed for the past 8 months," said Baldwin, "I feel like I'm making progress for the first time in my life."
Abe Brown Ministries is also building more housing on its campus for people who were recently released. And instructors on campus remind those people who they are.
History shows that roughly 2 out of 3 people will end up back in prison within 3 years of their release, as people released from lockup or locked out of opportunity.
But for people like Baldwin, there's a sense of personal redemption and hope for the future.
"I feel a sense of peace," said Baldwin.