A former parole official shines a bright light on an enormous yet hidden part of our justice program through the intertwining stories of seven parolees striving to survive the chaos that awaits them after jail in this illuminating and dramatic publication.

Prompted with a dead-end retail job and a vague desire to improve the quantity of justice in his hometown, Jason Hardy became a parole officer in New Orleans on the worst possible moment. Louisiana’s incarceration rates were the best in america and his about THE NEXT Chance Golf club: Hardship and Wish After Prison department’s caseload experienced just been increased to 220 “offenders” per parole officer, whereas the national average is around 100. Almost instantly, he found that the biggest problem with our prison system is what we do—and don’t do—when people get out of prison.

Deprived of social support and jobs, these former convicts are often worse off than if they first joined prison and Hardy dramatizes their dilemmas with empathy and grace. He’s provided unique access to their lives and an evergrowing identification of their challenges and assumes his job with the hope that he can transform people’s fates—but he quickly learns otherwise. The very best Hardy and his colleagues can do is definitely look out for impending catastrophe and help tidy up the clutter left behind. But he discovers that a few of his fees can muster the miraculous power to save themselves. By pursuing these heroes, he both stokes our wish and fuels our outrage by displaying us how most offenders, also those with the very best intentions, turn out back in prison—or dead—because the system systematically fails them. Our concentrate ought to be, he argues, to give offenders the various tools they have to re-enter culture which is not only humane but also greatly cheaper for taxpayers.

As immersive and dramatic as Evicted so that as revelatory as The New Jim Crow, THE NEXT Chance Club displays us how exactly to solve the cruelest problems prisons create for offenders and society most importantly.