Studies show that around 70-80% of emerging adults released from prison are rearrested within three years. That’s a much higher rate than any other age group. Poverty, limited life skills, unstable housing, adolescent brain development, and peer pressure make it incredibly difficult for this vulnerable group of young people to stay out of legal trouble.
The Deer Residential Workforce Development Center was created to solve these problems, a place where emerging adults could experience 24/7 safety, community, and care - some of them for the very first time – while serving a sentence of probation as an alternative to incarceration.
This live-in, holistic solution to the social and environmental forces that drive young adults 18-25 years old to remain caught in a lifelong cycle of arrest/incarceration/release/repeat is an innovative and scalable alternative to incarceration designed to reduce crime, eliminate violence, and increase public safety.
The North Lawndale neighborhood in Chicago is often described as “under-resourced.” What that means is that young people are growing up here without safe housing, without enough food, without access to good schools and mental health support. Forget thriving, most of our youth are just trying to survive. And sometimes they end up taking whatever options are available to them, even if that means breaking the law.
Here, over 1,500 young people (between the ages of 10 and 25) are arrested every year. For them, incarceration is not the solution. It compounds the problems our young people already face.
The Deer Center is a restorative justice-based alternative to incarceration.
20 dormitory-style housing units for emerging adult men guarantee stability and safety, without the crushing financial pressure that so many of our young people are facing.
On-site partners provide mental health care, job training, employment, culinary training, financial education, and more - everything our young men need to develop the tools and habits that will help them build a successful future.
Mentorship from community and church members, along with peer-to-peer accountability, fills the need for familial-like support and provides these young men with friends who truly believe in who they can become.
The Deer Center also houses our specialized youth defense team, providing residents with safe, easy access to their attorney and social advocate team as they complete their probation.
If you believe we need an alternative to incarceration for young people…
If you believe all young people deserve the same kind of access to food, shelter, safety, community, and education you’d give your own kids…
If you believe in the kind of justice that repairs, restores, and heals…
Help give the Deer Center's residents the support they deserve. And help open more centers like this in Chicago and around the country.
