Whenever an individual is released from incarceration – whether at the county jail or through the state or federal prison system – they find themselves with a new set of challenges as they re-enter the world.

While being confined for past convictions and serving their time, the world has moved on without them. Jobs have been lost, families separated, bank accounts emptied. What is left for those who are coming home?

Just before the Easter holiday on Thursday evening, April 17, officials from around the area gathered inside of the HON Room to get a small sampling of the experience of those looking to piece their lives back together after being released from behind bars, and the challenges thrown in their way through both legal requirements and personal choices made once they get home.

It was the second year that Lydia Goodson, who acts as coordinator for the Re-Entry Program under the leadership of Sheriff Johnny Moats, brought together a group of officials to pretend for an hour or so how hectic life can be when returning to freedom. Volunteers lined each wall of the HON Room, acting in various roles that every individual on probation or parole must undertake to find themselves successful.

After week 1 of the simulation, some were already back behind bars and very few accomplished much of what they had to do in a seven-day span crunched down to around 10 minutes. Throughout the forty minutes, youth ran around acting as agents of chaos, taking social security cards or “cash” while participants were unaware. Additional choices – skipping the probation office, failing to pay child support for the week, or just plain bad luck via chance cards at one table – saw additional participants thrown back into the simulated jail where in a corner they sat until they could get bail, or until the “judge” might determine to give them a break and let them back out to try again.

It is this kind of cycle that Goodson is trying to break, but also trying to get local officials to experience through just brief exposure to the court and parole/probation system that many in Polk and the surrounding counties face daily.

The hope is that empathy will be developed through the process, so that those in positions locally to help exact change can see for themselves how people fall through the cracks and end up in a life lived in a loop between being released, getting in trouble again, and back behind bars.

On the other side of the work that Goodson has been doing is finding ways to help those being held in the jail to be better prepared when they are released. She helps them with a variety of areas: finding resources, getting paperwork in order for obtaining identification, working with employers to find work for those who will need jobs to pay for fines and fees they’ll face when released.

That work recently yielded positive results with a new partnership announced in recent weeks (just before the simulation) with the Georgia Manufacturing
Extension Partnership through Georgia Tech, bringing a pilot program to Polk County in cooperation with the Sheriff’s Office, the Development Authority and iWORKS Northwest Georgia.

Project Purpose is the result of the work, bringing to life a “Justice-Impacted to Manufacturing Pathway, a new program that prepares non-violent offenders for positions in manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing” per a press release about the new program from April.

“After the pilot training in Polk County, GaMEP and iWORKS Northwest Georgia plan to expand the program to several additional counties, continuing to engage local manufacturers and train incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals for essential manufacturing, transportation and warehousing positions,” the release also noted.

There is much work yet to be done for Goodson, the new Project Purpose and in connecting those in authority with the experience of those who are paying their debt to society.

But the current work is a start, one that Goodson plans to build on for the years to come. She will be holding additional simulations, but will likely take a year off to evaluate what officials learned from the process and tailor the experience further for those yet to take part.