Policy and Advocacy at CEO
Author: Bill Heiser, Senior Director, State Policy
Over the past year CEO has created a new Policy Department that will build upon the strength of our program and push for structural reforms to improve the lives of people coming home from incarceration. Working across all 10 States where CEO operates, our policy and advocacy efforts seek to diminish the impact that mass incarceration, mass supervision, and justice involvement generally, has on the economic opportunities available to a person after being released. Our policy team will be focused on creating more opportunities for individuals to secure employment and reducing the barriers they face in trying to achieve a more stable economic future.
Through this work CEO’s policy team will call attention to what happens when our communities are invested in the success of people coming home from prison, rather than the monitoring and control of our fellow residents. Just yesterday, Governor Stitt in Oklahoma highlighted CEO’s work in the State and Tara, one of CEO’s participants who has successfully come home and gotten a job. As the Governor said, “the State and our community partners want to help you keep a tight hold of hope and the future you and your family deserve.” It is a future where people coming home see hope and opportunity that CEO’s policy work seeks to achieve.