Photo by Tom Jenz
Shannon Ross
Shannon Ross
Shannon Ross was born to biracial parents and raised on Milwaukee’s North Side. When he was 19, he committed a violent crime and received a 17-year prison sentence. Inside prison, he used those years productively. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration, co-designed and co-managed a mental health program in the prison for two years, and authored several articles published locally and nationally. In 2014, while still incarcerated, he founded his organization, The Community. The Community works to foster personal development and post-release preparation for incarcerated people primarily in Wisconsin.
Since his release in 2020, Ross has become an Education Trust fellow, a Marquette University EPP fellow, a graduate of UWM’s Sustainable Peacebuilding program and a founding partner of Paradigm Shyft, a Multidimensional Justice Solutions firm. But he spends the bulk of his time overseeing The Community.
I linked up with Ross in his office on the second floor of the Encore Building on 11th and Mitchell Street. The office is dim and worked-in, but we pulled up a couch and a chair, and we talked. Ross speaks through an accent that seems to have an east coast edge. His knowledge regarding the prison and justice system is vast. Smart and articulate, he is a writer, a speaker and a moderator. He comes across naturally confident. If you were looking for a leader, Ross might be your choice.
You are the founder and executive director of The Community. Tell me about The Community, the goals and purpose.
The Community tries to bring together society and the system-impacted community—the incarcerated. We do pre-entry work in prison, which helps people inside prison prepare for the outside world prior to being released.
If I am recently released from incarceration, do I reach out to you for help?
You could, but we would refer you to someone else. All of our work is focused on those still in prison. When you get out of prison, we align you with other organizations that help you adjust. We also try to connect you with successful people who have made the transition from prison to life on the outside.
Tell me more about your work through The Community.
We make presentations across the country and in our online video series. We have a podcast. We have our annual celebration, a day-long event this year. We also have a merchandise lifestyle brand. All our efforts are designed to overcome the prejudice that many regular citizens have acquired about people coming home from prison. We hope that companies, governments, and communities would be more open to accepting people who had served time.
To quote your website, “Our mission is to foster the full potential of people with criminal records through Pre-entry and showcasing their successes and humanity through Correcting the Narrative.” What is “Correcting the Narrative”?
We say “correcting” instead of “changing” the narrative because changing has a connotation of something temporary like changing your diet or changing your clothes. It also has a connotation of changing your mind for something that benefits you. But correcting is math and just like one plus one is two anywhere you go, anytime of day, people who have criminal records are not seen accurately by society. Even the very people with a criminal record do not see themselves accurately, meaning that we who have been incarcerated limit our opportunities. Correcting the Narrative is meant to address that lack of understanding from society.
You are the editor of The Community Newsletter, published online, and with a group of writers and news correspondents. Tell me about the origin and purpose of the newsletter. I believe many of your readers are incarcerated.
When I was in prison in 2014, I started the The Community Newsletter. We now have our own editor, but I oversee the newsletter. The bimonthly newsletter is printed and distributed inside the prisons to our approximately 8,000 readers. It’s the most widely read publication in the Wisconsin prison system. Every issue is available on our website, but because incarcerated people do not have the Internet, we mail it to them.
If I am in prison, can I send a submission to the newsletter or write a comment?
You can, but we rarely take submissions from people. We try to do our stories on resources, new bills in the legislature, interesting things from across the country relating to criminal justice. We also profile successful people who have made it on the outside. But we are guided by our readers, who tend to ask us different things.
You are connecting with organizations and employers who are sometimes stereotypically indifferent and even antagonistic. Through your contact and meetings with them, they have become more supportive of or at least less opposed to reform and reentry into the job market.
That is our Correcting the Narrative work. Companies or organizations working with me have opened up to hiring more people with criminal records. We try to meet with representatives of businesses and nonprofits to correct the narrative and be more open to provide job opportunities to people with criminal records.
You say you’ve talked with people from companies and organizations who are willing to hire more people with criminal records. Who are these organizations?
There are so many actually. Many of them I know about, but don’t necessarily deal with directly. In fact, there is the Second Chance Business Coalition devoted specifically to this topic where you can find companies online that hire people who have criminal records. This is known as “second chance employment,” and you can find Human Resources materials to support companies trying to hire folks. There’s a great book called Untapped Talent that breaks down why this is actually beneficial to companies and how it has been happening successfully across the country. Companies that I have dealt with are Harrigan Solutions and Colectivo Coffee, who has become a key supporter and partner on this topic. Also, The Way Out and Project RETURN have a list of employers they work with who help find jobs for people with criminal records across the county. We’ve also been into schools, encouraging them to hire people who have been in prison and educating students who might someday be leaders. But you can see that Correcting the Narrative is still a long game.
You are showing that most people coming out of prison are employable. For example, if a formerly incarcerated person can get a job, maybe as a computer coder, that gives them motivation to not reoffend.
That makes sense.
Here is a statistic that astounded me. There are an estimated 70 million adults in the U.S. with a criminal record.
I am aware of this statistic, but I do not know how this motivates the normal citizen, who probably would say, “That’s interesting, but what’s for breakfast?” Remember that the 70 million includes arrest records, and many of those have never been in prison or even in jail other than to get booked and have a mug shot. The people with felony records is closer to about 16 million.
Do you visit prisons and talk to incarcerated people?
Yes, on several occasions. I was in the South Carolina prison complex, and I spoke to several groups of incarcerated people including youth and men in segregation. I’ve been inside Sing Sing prison in New York. I’ve also been in several Wisconsin Department of Corrections facilities.
Is there a common question from prisoners you talk with?
There are simple questions like “Does it look very different out there?” or “How do you operate phones?” or “How do I get a job?” The key question folks inside need to ask themselves is how prepared are they to deal with setbacks and disappointments? The thing that decides if you stay out of prison or go back will be how you navigate those inevitable disappointments. In prison, you get behind in society, and when you’re released, you will need to rebuild yourself. It’s like recovering from a knee injury where you get frustrated with the rehab.
You currently are the host of a podcast series called All In All Out. It promotes greater collaboration in the reentry/reform/decarceration ecosystem in Wisconsin. It also showcases the successes and humanity of people with criminal records. What are some of the topics and generally who are the guests?
We just finished our second season, generally ten or so podcasts, each about 50 minutes. We discuss topics that are current to the justice space. A recent guest was Cecelia Klingele, professor at Wisconsin Law School in Madison. Very knowledgeable in areas of justice. She explained the details of the Truth in Sentencing law, and also our parole system and why it’s different. We had guests from the Ostara Star Initiative, who do prison birth work. A lot of people don’t realize that women in prison are giving birth and that they have to be shackled when giving birth in some states, like Wisconsin.
Are there general topics that you cover on the podcast?
Mostly, the topics are about things not very well known. Uncommon stories in the justice space.
Tell me about your annual Correcting the Narrative event, the features and benefits.
Our Correcting the Narrative took place in late August, and this is our fourth year. What happens in American society is that we too often elevate the charming, the telegenic, the influencers that everyone is supposed to follow. Most humans just have a job, a family, children, maybe a hobby, and just enough money to make a living and retire. The majority of released currently incarcerated people coming home will probably be living ordinary lives. We view that as success, and we highlight those stories at our Correcting the Narrative event. We honor formerly incarcerated people ex-criminals who have made it, but we also honor crime survivors or “strivers,” as our current honorees prefer to be called. The idea is to blend people who caused harm with people who were harmed. That is how people will heal.
This year, you also showed a film, I believe.
Yes, we featured a 35-minute film about romantic relationships with people who are currently or formerly incarcerated. Understand that with people coming home from prison, a key element to their success or failure depends on who they partner with.
You will be receiving a funding grant to help you train incarcerated individuals in Wisconsin as community health workers (CHWs) in order to build health-related skills and improve their employability when released.
We just started this project. There is a community healthcare worker-training that healthcare institutions provide across the nation. You must have an arrest record to get that job. They want people who are formerly incarcerated to be going out and dealing with the people returning to society to talk about healthcare and their options and resources. We are training people who are getting out of prison so that they will have a certification when they are released and can get a job right away. With the help of a partner, we will also be training incarcerated people on how to use Medicaid funding to fund reentry and preventative programs.
I thought back to what Ross told me three years ago: “I think the way the legal system operates is destructive to everyone who does not profit from it. Our prison system does not provide protection, does not rehabilitate people inside.”
Since then, Shannon Ross has been trying to change that.
For more information and ways to get involved, consult the website https://link.edgepilot.com/s/0223bf21/jPxQtFEJs0mXLIcJn8ov9w?u=https://the-community.org/
