Project 180 

presents the

2023 Strong Voices Lecture Season

In partnership with The Boxser Diversity Initiative

A Look Behind the Scenes:

The Realities of Prisoner Reentry

Our 2023 season explores the daily realities of the reentry experience. When returning to the community after incarceration, life starts over since one can easily lose housing, employment, material belongings, and pro-social support systems during time spent in jail or prison.

Thursday, March 16. Reentry at Project 180. Current and former Project 180 residents will describe the everyday life of a returning citizen: the context of life prior to release, the hurdles they’ve overcome, what surprised them most, and what the future holds. Told sequentially by several residents, a multi-layered reentry story emerges.

Thursday, October 19. Criminal Justice Debt on the Road to Reentry. Professor Laura I. Appleman, PhD, discusses the myriad ways in which criminal justice costs–fees, fines, court costs, probation payments, mandatory classes, and non-payment penalties–overwhelmingly affect the reentering citizens and can lead to years of indebtedness.

Click here to secure tickets.

Strong Voices is held annually and features national, regional and local experts. Over the past ten years, the series has explored

• Barriers to Successful Reentry (2014)
• The Implications of Disadvantage for Crime and Punishment (2015)
• Addiction, Reentry and Recidivism (2016)
• The Prison Experience (2017)
• The Effects of Incarceration and Reentry on the Family (2018)
• Models for the Future at Work Today: Successful Strategies in Incarceration and Reentry (2019)
• Celebrating Second Chance Employers (2020)
• The Intersection of Trauma, Addiction, & Incarceration: Implications for Mental Health and Well-Being (2021)
• The Disease of Addiction: Filling Our Prisons and Jails (2022)

In 2013, Project 180’s national media audit reflected that prisoner reentry was not a topic of public discourse. In order to bring the issue of prisoner reentry out of the halls of justice and academia and into the public domain, Project 180 began the Strong Voices/Strong Subjects lecture series.

Since its inception, the series has drawn over 2,100 attendees.