[This article has been published in Restoring America to consider how the criminal justice system might better rehabilitate convicts reentering society.]

Media coverage surrounding incarceration rates and costs, sentencing disparities, and recidivism rates regularly provides eye-catching statistics and arguments that drive prevailing narratives of crime and justice, not always accurately. But behind the policies, statistics, and legal rulings are people: human beings with lives that are often littered with trauma but are also remarkably resilient.