About Us

MISSION

To educate and reshape our society’s perception of former inmates so they may reintegrate and be given a fair chance for employment, housing, education and entrepreneurial opportunities.

REINVENTING ReEntry

Reinventing Reentry, an Arizona 501(c)(3)nonprofit, actively promotes education to both the community and to former inmates. The high rates of recidivism result in more cost to communities and a potential for higher crime rates. This is a bi-partisan public/private collaboration of business, academia, social work, justice and former inmates to assist newly released inmates to gain employment, seek higher education and find housing, thus building safer communities, reducing recidivism and freeing up millions of dollars for education budgets instead.

Board of Directors

Sue Ellen Allen
Founder & President

Rhonda Barnes
Vice-president

Carol Comito
Secretary

Deanna J. Durkee
Treasurer

Daria Brill

Sue Ellen Allen

Sue Ellen Allen is the founder and executive director of Reinventing Reentry. After leading a prison program for seven years and researching other programs nationwide, she realized that change on a large and effective scale would not happen until the general public realized how our current prison system fails both public safety and our children and families. A University of Texas grad, educator, community leader, former inmate at Arizona State Prison and current activist, she found her purpose from serving time in prison.

In 2016, Sue Ellen was honored to be one of twenty-three Americans invited to sit with the First Lady in her box at the State of the Union message, representing criminal justice reform. Later that year she was a guest speaker on criminal justice at the White House sponsored summit, The United State of Women. She was a guest at a White House Convening on Criminal Justice Reform bringing together both emerging and established leaders from the advocacy, philanthropic, business, and law enforcement sectors to lift up the progress and advancements that have been made and surfacing opportunities to tackle persistent problems.

She is the author of The Slumber Party from Hell, a memoir about prison life, and the recipient of the Dawson Prize in Memoir in the 2009 Prison Writing Contest for PEN American Center.

Speaking engagements available

Sue Ellen Allen is available for speaking engagements, keynotes, discussions and lectures at universities, businesses, schools and more.

Media

Honouring My Dead Cellmate
BBC World Service
January 21, 2016

Who Are the President's Guests at
the 2016 State of the Union?
US News & World Report
January 12, 2016

Prison advocate, 'dreamer' to get
spotlight at Obama speech
The Arizona Republic
January 10, 2016

Meet The Ex-Convict President Obama Will Host
At The State Of The Union
BuzzFeed

January 9, 2016

Former inmates still pay for crimes,
after they pay debt to society
Cronkite News/PBSaz
December 10, 2015

ASU interns help combat recidivism with
female leadership program in local prisons
The State Press
November 29, 2015

How a Woman Locked Up with
Breast Cancer Became a Prison Activist
VICE.COM
October 2, 2015

Breast Cancer Behind Bars:
One Woman’s Story
Reality Check
October 24, 2014

Sue Ellen Allen’s Prison Revolution
Huffington Post
July 9, 2012

Prison hosts speaker series to educate,
motivate female inmates
AZ Capital Times
March 30, 2011

People deserve a fair chance

"Certainly, by providing individuals coming out of institutions with ways to become productive citizens, we reduce recidivism. What that means is we reduce crime. There are fewer victims when individuals have options - when they have job skills, when they have life skills, we break the cycle of children following their parents into institutions." - Attorney General Loretta Lynch