The Fortune Society

The Fortune Society provides resources to formerly incarcerated individuals to help them reintegrate with their community. The organization provides emergency, transitional, and permanent housing, classes and support to reach education goals, employment readiness and retention services, counseling to re-build family relationships, substance abuse treatment, HIV/AIDS case management, and assistance in connecting with various support services. Additionally, The Fortune Society has several Alternative to Incarceration programs that help convicted felons avoid incarceration and focus on developing skills and living a constructive, self-sufficient life.

As a demonstration of their belief in peer support, about 70% of the staff of The Fortune Society are formerly incarcerated and/or have histories of substance abuse or homelessness. The programs are supported through government and foundation grants as well as corporate and private donations.

The mission of The Fortune Society is to support successful reentry form prison and promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities.

The Fortune Society serves approximately 3,000-3,500 ex-prisoners each year at an average cost of $3,265 per client. A quasi-experimental evaluation of the programs reentry services found that clients of The Fortune Society are less likely than non-clients to become homeless within three months of leaving jail. This evaluation did not find statistically significant improvements on recidivism for participants, but notes that this may be due to immeasurable factors that make clients of The Fortune Society more likely to commit crime than the formerly incarcerated who do not receive their services.