FreeWorld

FreeWorld’s solution seeks to solve the intertwined problems of recidivism and generational poverty that are perpetuated by a criminal justice system that places myriad obstacles in front of returning citizens.

1 out of 3 American adults -- more than 70 million people -- have some type of criminal record. To put this in perspective, about the same number of Americans have college degrees. 5 million Americans are formerly incarcerated, with many locked in the cycle of recidivism. 3 million of those remain in poverty—despite being willing and able to work—because they cannot secure a living-wage job and establish financial stability.

Every year, 600,000 individuals are released from prison across the United States. 68% of returning citizens are rearrested within 3 years, and 62% return to prison within 10 years. (BJS, 2018) 89% of ex-offenders who are rearrested are unemployed or under-employed (National Institute of Corrections). Formerly incarcerated individuals face hundreds of barriers upon reentry, including that 60% are released without the vital records they need to legally work. Nearly half of formerly incarcerated people are unemployed one year after leaving prison; among those who do find work, half earn less than $10,090 a year (Brookings and Looney, 2018). Poverty is the most critical risk factor for recidivism.

FreeWorld’s solution relates to this problem by equipping returning citizens with the tangible tools they need to quickly get into a well-paying career in the trucking industry and remain out of prison. The recidivism rate for our graduates is less than five percent.

FreeWorld has pioneered a full-stack, automated, online solution addressing most major roadblocks of the reentry experience. Our innovative technology assists formerly incarcerated individuals with CDL-A permitting, licensing, and job placement. Our Student Portal can be accessed via any computer or smart mobile device. Upon application, participants receive immediate assistance to get vital documents such as identification and birth certificates. We’ve built partnerships and backend automation to ensure participants receive swift, no-cost access to their vital records. 

Next, participants attend virtual CDL-A permit classes taught by FreeWorld instructors to learn the basics of truck driving. Once a participant gets a passing score on our gamified in-app permit quizzes, we provide funding for their DOT physical and DMV CDL-A permit test. With permits in hand, we send our participants to a local partner trucking school to get behind-the-wheel experience, and FreeWorld provides them with a stipend to attend school full-time. Through a partnership with Uber, students without reliable transportation can book rides to and from school, and FreeWorld covers the costs. 

Upon graduation, we immediately place them in a job and provide three years of supportive services to help them build wealth, get off parole, and acquire assets. As part of the program, participants are required to sign a pay-it-forward agreement, allowing graduates to give back to other returning citizens. Once a graduate is successfully employed (defined as $3,000 or more net income per month), we require them to allocate $150/month towards new students. Pay-it-forward payments are made for 36 months and only if the graduate maintains the minimum monthly net income.

FreeWorld’s core service population is the 3 million formerly incarcerated Americans between the ages of 21-65 who remain in poverty—despite being willing and able to work—because they cannot secure a living wage job and establish financial stability. However, this is a small subset of the over 70 million people with criminal records nationally, and our program is also available to this broader segment of the population. 

The majority of the people we serve are BIPOC and living below the federal poverty guidelines. Nationally, more than 60 percent of those in prison come from African American and Latino communities (The Sentencing Project, Racial Disparity, 2010), and FreeWorld’s service demographics are similar at 62% African American and 12% Latinx. In addition to racial demographics, people who enter the criminal justice system are overwhelmingly poor. Two-thirds detained in jails report annual incomes under $12,000 prior to arrest. (Alexander, M; The New Jim Crow, 2012). The people we serve are often homeless, face substance abuse issues, have experienced extreme trauma (sexual, physical, mental, and emotional), and come from backgrounds of poverty and violence.

The average FreeWorld applicant has served 9 years in prison and is re-entering society facing employment discrimination. Also contributing to their financial insecurity, FreeWorld applicants have an average of three children to support and owe over $15,000 in child support, restitution, and student loans. 

FreeWorld’s solution is unique in the speed and impact of our interventions. Using a smartphone's simple technology, we can place a new applicant into a local job paying $55k-$120k in as little as 45 days. Participants don't pay anything upfront; we pay for all fees, tuition, and transportation costs. The average FreeWorld graduate doubles their hourly age upon graduation and our graduate recidivism rate is <5%. Our graduates are able to purchase homes for the first time, establish savings, support their families, and build generational wealth.

FreeWorld was developed by formerly incarcerated people, for formerly incarcerated people. Half of the people who work at FreeWorld have been directly impacted by the prison system. The organization was founded by Jason Wang, an Asian American proximate leader with lived experience. At the age of 15, Jason was given a 12-year sentence at a maximum security prison in Texas for aggravated robbery. Upon release, he earned two master’s degrees and was still unable to find a job due to his criminal history. At his darkest moments, Jason considered committing crimes just to put food on the table. Instead, he became an agent for change working to create a more just justice system. 

FreeWorld is guided by our population's input through the robust online community that we built in Slack. Both current participants and alums interact, share feedback, and mentor one another. Our Slack is a real-time source of learning and improvement for our team at every level. We receive dozens of unique feedback points and requests daily from the individuals we serve - our participants are central to our program design, and their feedback has guided our approach to wraparound services. For example, via Slack, our students shared that transportation was a significant barrier to program completion, and using their feedback, we built our transportation assistance program. Another example is our cash stipends; responding to the input of our community, we introduced this wraparound support to help our students go to trucking school full-time without the stress of maintaining another job. FreeWorld also regularly engages our students and graduates in our program design process through surveys, interviews, and test groups.

The population we serve often has either limited or outdated digital literacy due to the exponential advancements in technology that occur while they are incarcerated. With that in mind, our Engineering team makes sure that our curriculum is delivered through an interface that is optimized for their needs. We solicit input from program participants to guide us in updating the technology we use to deliver our solution.

Since 2020, FreeWorld has accomplished the following:

• Graduated 1,280 formerly incarcerated individuals with their CDL-A credentials

• Placed 959 graduates into living-wage jobs in the trucking industry

• Helped 8,463 returning citizens secure vital identification documents at no cost to them

• Created an estimated $54.1M in first-year earnings

• Saved an estimated $37.4M in marginal recidivism cost-savings

• Maintained a <5% recidivism rate for graduates

Our operating leverage has increased dramatically. We are on track to graduate 1,000 CDL-A holders in 2024 alone, nearly matching what took us 3 years to accomplish. 

We currently serve individuals in 8 states and 17 cities:

Arizona - Phoenix

California - Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose, Stockton

Colorado - Denver

Kansas - Topeka, Kansas City

New Jersey - Newark, Trenton

Oklahoma - Tulsa

Pennsylvania - Philadelphia

Texas - Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio

FreeWorld is at an inflection point in unlocking scale and developing sustainability for the future. Right now, our main priority is to refine our core program model while demonstrating our ability to ensure the economic sustainability of this work at scale. By becoming a Solver team, our solution will be exposed to a network of social innovators who can help us to fine tune our program model and offer guidance during this critical point for the organization.

In particular, the tailored capacity workshop provided to Solver teams will be extremely beneficial to FreeWorld. Today, funding is the primary limiting factor of our growth, with demand for FreeWorld’s program outpacing our capacity and resourcing. Achieving financial sustainability for our core program model will be key to unlocking scale. As we explore a feasible path toward securing sustainable non-philanthropic funding, a workshop featuring likeminded leaders in similar situations would provide valuable direction as we head into uncharted territory. 

FreeWorld would greatly benefit from the virtual support program's emphasis on building a stronger impact measurement practice. Using inputs from automated data collection, we can currently track each program participant’s progress from application to graduation to job placement. We have 150 unique data for each student. While the data we want is there, we are still figuring out the best way to use it. We are actively working to refine our methodology around metrics for job placements, accurate median wage data for graduates, and getting a better handle on the retention rate of our students from application to graduation. Solve's monitoring and evaluation support would be a vital resource as we tackle the issue of properly measuring impact.