A New Pipeline For Incarcerated People – It’s Not What You Think

Grilled cheese?

Pipelines are a popular image these days where people get directed to a specific outcome, regardless of what they might want. There’s the public-housing-to-prison pipeline and the prison-to-homelessness pipeline. And now there’s a prison-to-grilled-cheese pipeline.

Yes folks. In Minnesota the people in this pipeline are ex-prisoners. And yes, they are making grilled cheese sandwiches that are sold at a restaurant called All Square in Minneapolis. And that’s just the start.

The brains behind this social enterprise is Emily Hunt Turner. She trained as a lawyer. When working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, she became intimately familiar with the barriers facing people released from prison and was determined that life after prison didn’t have to lead to homelessness. Rather than fighting the system from within, she launched All Square with the intention to build an integrated set of supports so people who have done time can thrive, rather than finding themselves part of the pipeline that leads to homelessness.

Read more at reasons to be cheerful: Minnesota’s Prison-to-Grilled-Cheese Pipeline Is Changing Lives