Project 180 tries to make up the difference for thousands of released inmates.
Sera Deniz
Original Air Date: March 5, 2025
Host: The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. That translates into millions of people who, after serving their sentence, are facing the challenges of reentry into society. One non-profit based in Sarasota is at the cutting edge of providing services to inmates and former inmates, and they have an event on in-prison education coming up this Friday. WSLR News reporter Sera Deniz talked to one of the organization’s leaders.
Sera Deniz: Project 180 is a non-profit helping individuals transition back into society after prison. CEO Theresa Cusimano, a graduate from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law, has years of experience addressing systemic challenges in the criminal justice system.
Theresa Cusimano.
Theresa Cusimano: We have three residences for men who are in recovery. So, as folks are returning to Sarasota from incarceration, we have the opportunity to work with them if they’re committed to recovery and able to follow through on the requirements of our program. We also do other things. We work with first-week-out clients, so folks who are returning to Sarasota from incarceration who may not have a support structure and may not have anywhere to go. We work with them by helping get them phones, food, housing. We serve as a bridge until they can get back on their feet.
You might not know that, when people leave prison, they’re given $50 and a bus pass, and for most people that won’t even get them one overnight. Particularly when clients are released on Friday afternoon, you can guarantee they’ll be homeless by Saturday without any infrastructure for support. One of the things that we would love to see change in the future with the Florida State Department of Corrections is that there would be no folks released in the evenings or on Friday afternoons or weekends because that precludes them from gaining access to some of the affordable housing opportunities like the Salvation Army that might be available to them.
Project 180 seeks out local second chance employers.
We also do programs inside the jails and prisons. There, we introduce them to CEOs who are second-chance employers. Many folks who have a felony on their record have great difficulty obtaining jobs because there’s quite a bias against folks with criminal records, although we’re seeing less and less of that, which is really encouraging. For example, Beneva Flowers; our board chair, David Schuell, is one of the largest second-chance employers in our area. He employs over 25 residents and graduates of our program, and they’ve been thriving and going off to be able to afford their own apartments and live on their own and become economically self-sufficient.
SD: Project 180 also provides financial education, and they’ve helped thousands through their programs.
Project 180 operates without government funding. Individual donors and local foundation grants are critical to sustaining their programs.
TC: We do not receive any federal, state, or county funding. We are completely funded by individual donors at this time. We are not a medically assisted treatment center. We have an abstinence model for folks who are in recovery, and that was decided by the founder back in 2008, so we do not have any resources coming in other than individual donors throughout Sarasota. We have a little over 400 donors, and we also are grateful for our community foundations in the area throughout the Sarasota region and Manatee.
SD: Project 180 has been highly effective in reducing recidivism rates among its graduates, which is something they’re particularly proud of.
TC: Among our graduates, only 23 percent have recidivated or returned back to prison, which is pretty exciting. We’re working with some of the most difficult cases—people who’ve been abandoned at birth or orphaned as a teenager, sent out into the woods. There’s a lot of stories that folks who we’re working with have been able to overcome through Project 180, and we’re incredibly proud of their accomplishments. We do that through small community living, through peer support, and clean, sober programs—90 meetings in 90 days—and employment within the first two weeks of coming into the house. All of our graduates have been able to meet those program requirements, and it’s led to great results by beating the recidivism rate among some of the most difficult-to-serve by over 40 percent.
This Friday, we have an expert whose name is Dr. Craig Miller, and he comes to us from the Pennsylvania College of Technology. Craig is getting grants at the national level from the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor to do work in terms of helping folks coming out of incarceration to learn various vocational trades if they’re interested. He’s been able to create these programs inside prisons, beginning the education inside prisons in the state of New York, and now he’s replicated it in Pennsylvania.
We’re so looking forward to the opportunity that the Florida State House and Senate have put forward in their legislation to open up access to Florida higher education for those who are incarcerated.
We’re sold out for this Friday, but we are able to accept waiting list applicants, so if some of your listeners want to join us, they can email stacey@project180reentry.org.
SD: You actually may get a chance to learn more about this local non-profit on the big screen! Project 180 has applied for the Sarasota Film Festival to enter their documentary “The Light They Cast.” The documentary shares the journeys of 11 of their clients.
TC: We’ve applied to the Sarasota Film Festival. We have a documentary entitled “The Light They Cast,” and this documentary is a beautiful piece of work that was put together by Miles Larsen and Janice Shelton as well as executive producer Barbara Richards, and it tells the story of 11 of our clients, where they came from, and where they are today. It’s incredibly inspirational, and we hope to be accepted at the Sarasota Film Festival. I believe the announcements go out on March 15, and we’re hoping to be one of their opening films on April 5 at about 3 p.m.
To learn more about Project 180, visit project180reentry.org.
Reporting for WSLR News, this has been Sera Deniz.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.