Curations takes part in incarceration campaign
[Serving 100,000 by 2025]
June 20th, 2022
Technology companies establish a new campaign to assist 100,000 former incarcerated individuals.
The mission of the campaign, ‘Justice-Impacted,’ is to help the over 100,000 individuals that have achieved judicial restoration through the means of basic digital knowledge. This mission also comes with a goal: to serve those 100,000 within three years, by 2025.
The campaign has curated partnerships with Silicon Valley Elites in that of Google, Code for America, National Urban League, and Columbia Universities’ Justice Through Code.
Each entity has top-tier digital knowledge and resources and provides free one-to-one trainings, group workshops, technology curriculums, and digital access: knowledge for what others would consider the ‘basic’ digital skillsets of our modern day.
What society might not take into consideration, however, are the daily and pro-longed challenges that people face upon re-entry into society: society awards judicial restoration with few opportunities to achieve the basics of what life can provide.
According to The White House, seventy million Americans have a criminal record that hinders employability, economic stability, and successful re-entry into American Society. This number accounts for the 640,000 individuals released from State or Federal prisons yearly. Most astonishing, roughly seventy-five percent, or roughly 480,000 annually, still find themselves unemployed for a year or more after release.
For Curations’ Founder, Wyatt Stephens, the issue is personal.
‘There is still an image of me online, a mugshot of a now exonerated arrest,’ Stephens said. ‘Though things are better, it is still painful.’
Stephens is one of the few, however.
Stephens owns a digital marketing agency for attorneys, legal brands, political campaigns and judicial branches.
‘I feel as if, given my background, I can serve in a manner to help those in need of a second chance, regardless of conviction or wrongdoings,’ Stephens said. ‘I lost everything, and I was not even convicted, no criminal background,’ Stephens added.
Stephens pointed out hope as the State of Louisiana recently passed a bill that withholds certain mugshots until after conviction.
For some, mugshots might not be an issue, but the lack of basic skillsets in this modern-day might not lead to employability, regardless of character.
‘It was hard as anything, I believe in my faith and continued to ask God, ‘why did this happen to me?’ Stephens said.
‘But now I know, I have purpose in life to be a digital steward. And given the circumstances, there is nothing that I want more, to serve, as it is so fulfilling.’
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