Redemption Project celebrates milestone

About 50 people gathered at a venue in Minneapolis on Oct. 27 to celebrate one year of “symposiums,” monthly gatherings where participants in the Redemption Project come together  to hear from experts on helpful topics, network, and celebrate their individual successes as they take on the challenges of reintegrating themselves back into society.

 

Keynote speaker for the evening was former Minnesota Supreme Court Judge G. Barry Anderson, who retired from the court in May of 2024. Among a range of other observations, Anderson spoke of former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, who has been a persistent supporter of the Redemption Project and the stability it helps provide released inmates as they work to rejoin society.

 

As has been previously reported in the Pioneer, The Redemption Project is a statewide initiative now in its eighth year co-founded by Waseca resident Dwight Tostenson.

 

Tostenson decided to devote his time to the non-profit organization after a friend was incarcerated, served his time, and came out of prison with a new perspective on inmates.

 “Seventy to eighty percent of them want to do the right thing,” Tostenson summarized. “They leave prison ready to be good citizens…they get a job and start to earn some honest money. Then the results of their background check come back, and they’re fired.” According to research Tostenson sometimes cites, the national “recidivism” rate, that is, the number of inmates who end up returning to prison, is about eighty percent within six years of being released. Redemption Project graduates have a recidivism rate of under 10 percent.

 

The Redemption Project has three steps beginning with a 16-week class, complete with a workbook and homework assignments, which inmates take part in shortly before they are due to be released. The material, as described by one person at the symposium, “is pretty heady stuff. Not the kind of subjects people in prison are used to talking about.” 

 

The course centers on four main virtues: wisdom, courage, self-control and justice. Sessions encourage participants to consider the importance of personal integrity.

 

Another participant present at the Oct. 27 symposium commented, “People think we can just walk out of prison and start new lives, but there are so many hurdles that make it difficult.”

 

Participant Mike McHaney told of how, as an inmate, he had taken great pleasure in helping raise and train puppies destined to become service dogs. When he left prison, he decided he would like to pay back that opportunity by rescuing a dog, a 73-pound American bulldog named Houdini, from a shelter, only to find out a city law required anyone with a felony conviction to pay a $250 application fee to have a dog larger than 20 pounds.

 

McHaney went to the city council to protest the fee; soon after, the law was changed so that individuals whose crimes were nonviolent no longer had to pay to apply.

 

One participant described the “A, B, C” rule of being employed. “First, you get ‘Any’ job,” he explained. “You build a good reputation there, so you can get a ‘Better’ job.

 

“After a while, you can start working toward building a ‘Career.’”

 

One speaker who provided a brief testimonial during the symposium thanked the Redemption Project for teaching him about values, and went on to say that the people attending the meeting had the responsibility to represent themselves well for the sake of others who will be leaving incarceration and working to rebuild their lives in the future.