DATA & OPPORTUNITY
What could society gain if more people left incarceration prepared to contribute?
ProtoMetanoia is examining a practical proposition: connect motivation to credible skills, connect those skills to real work, and measure the possible benefit to workers, employers, taxpayers, communities, and future victims.
This page does not predict what will happen. It asks what could happen under clearly stated assumptions—and gives you the numbers to examine for yourself.
Facts are sourced. Models show their assumptions. Evidence is separated from estimates.
FOUNDATION PHASE · RESEARCH & MODELING
ProtoMetanoia does not currently operate the workforce or training programs modeled on this page.
FACT
Start with the scale.
Prisons and local jails hold different populations under different circumstances. They should not be treated as interchangeable.
1,254,200
People under state or federal prison jurisdiction
Year-end 2023
Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
658,700
People held in local jails
Midyear 2024
Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
68%
of the local jail population was unconvicted
Midyear 2024
Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Why does our model use the prison figure?
The calculator below uses the state and federal prison population as its reference population. It does not add the jail population. Local jails include large numbers of people awaiting court action or held for other reasons, making them inappropriate to simply combine with the prison population and treat as one post-release workforce cohort.
These are official national figures with different reference dates. They are not real-time population counts.
FOUNDER OBSERVATION — NOT A NATIONAL STATISTIC
One opportunity led to a larger question.
While incarcerated, ProtoMetanoia co-founder Stanislav Osherov began looking for education and training that could realistically lead to productive work after release. Welding stood out because it connected a learnable skill to an identifiable occupation and real economic demand.
That produced a broader question:
How often are motivated people being connected to skills the outside economy actually needs?
A personal observation cannot answer that question nationally. It can identify a question worth investigating. The sections below begin with public labor-market data rather than assuming the answer.