Unloop

We are applying to the Elevate Prize to invest in our social venture - Unloop Studio. Unloop Studio is a software development agency that also serves as an employment vehicle for formerly incarcerated software engineers starting their careers. Since founding our social venture a year and a half ago, our Studio has demonstrated a powerful proof of concept and is fully sustained by earned revenue. We are applying to Elevate to scale our Studio, as well as to begin to build products that we are uniquely positioned to create. 

With this additional funding, we would grow our team to take on additional projects and junior engineers. While we would continue to take on client projects, we would also start our "product shop,"  where we would tackle problems that our formerly incarcerated staff have intimate knowledge of, including policing, prosecution, and community re-entry. Based on this knowledge, we believe we can identify and build software solutions to address problems that impact our community. Not only would the Elevate Prize transform the lives of individuals through employment in our Studio, but it would kickstart our product shop that has the opportunity to impact millions of Americans.

A career in tech transformed my life. It provided me purpose, a sense of value, and as a trans person it allowed me to support myself and my family. I believe deeply in building a community where everyone has access to the economic opportunity offered by the tech industry. 

I founded Unloop in 2015. The early direction for Unloop was provided by an inspiring and talented group of men incarcerated in Washington State who had been learning to code.  Since then we have anchored ourselves in our mission to enable people who have been in prison to be successful in tech, prioritizing our resources to serve women of color. 

My vision is to build a world in which anyone coming out of prison can have the opportunity to learn to code, and that there is an ecosystem of employers who are not only open to, but excited to hire formerly incarcerated tech talent.  

My goal for the future is to build an organization that exists and thrives without me because we have invested deeply in the capacity of our staff who are formerly incarcerated and have become a truly "by and for" organization.

Unloop exists in response to the over incarceration of people in the United States. The U.S. holds 5% of the world’s population but more than 20% of the  incarceration population. Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated, those of historically marginalized communities are disproportionately imprisoned. This is due to how marginalized communities experience the criminal justice system. For example, people experiencing homelessness are often unable to pay bail and are therefore, more likely to face pretrial detention. Similarly people of color, who face greater rates of poverty, are overrepresented in prison. Black Americans make up 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of U.S. residents. 

Employment is a determining factor in whether or not a person returns to prison, however formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27% higher than the general population. Subsequently, the majority of those released from prison return. Every year 650,000 people are released from prison across the country, and two in three are rearrested within three years.

In order to reduce our country’s high rates of recidivism while simultaneously providing skilled talent to tech companies in need, we provide pathways to careers in tech for people marginalized by a criminal record.

Unloop Studio is the first software development agency and social enterprise staffed by and serving formerly incarcerated tech talent. While this is unique, the more unique aspect of our work is our path to becoming a 'product shop' addressing the problems faced by our staff and participants. While the tech industry is not a monolith, it is a disproportionately white, male, and upper class labor force. Subsequently the products that are created in the tech industry are built to address the "problems" this labor force experiences and has intimate knowledge of. 

Our Studio is staffed by individuals whose life experiences have exposed them to problems that are not fully understood or experienced by tech's current labor force. This offers the unique opportunity to ideate, design and build software solutions that address a different and generally under-addressed set of problems in our community.

Our goal is to provide an end-to-end pathway to a career in tech, which we believe will prevent recidivism through the transformation of education and the economic opportunity of a tech career. 

Initially Unloop partnered with local state community colleges to offer web development certificates inside multiple Washington State prisons. As students released from prison we have expanded to focus on re-entry; building out basic support services, continued education programs, Unloop Studio and job placement services. 

While the majority of students who have graduated the year long college certificates inside prison have yet to release, we have seen that our pathway is incredibly effective in preventing recidivism. To date 0% of students who have graduated one of our continued-education programs have recidivated, and 0% of students who have achieved a thriving wage job have recidivated (compared to national averages of >60%). 

Unloop is not a silver bullet and anti-recidivism work requires transformation in many corners of our society. We think that besides the impact on our individual students, some of the most impactful work we undertake is with employers. We work to open doors companies for formerly incarcerated talent that will remain open for future job seekers.