Return.
"Did a stretch in prison to be released to a cell."
- House of Unending by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Return is a multimedia project highlighting housing insecurity and other critical support gaps faced by recently released prisoners. Shot in and around Wilmington, Delaware, this project aims to expose the human toll of a system that stigmatizes, subjugates, and criminalizes predominantly poor Black and Brown Americans across the nation.
These portraits and interviews aim to individualize those impacted by the criminal justice system while revealing common themes of poverty, trauma, and a lack of support. Each individual featured was separated from their community and held for years, sometimes decades, in conditions never designed to address the circumstances that led to their imprisonment. While incarcerated, they were denied the tools and resources needed to heal and prepare for reentry. The portraits capture them as they are in their return—often optimistic, rarely bitter, stoically facing the odds stacked against them.
Viewers are invited to see each participant and to consider the systems that have shaped their lives: the social forces that breed inequality, the inhumane prisons that exacerbate poverty and trauma, and the endless barriers returning citizens face upon their release to a changed world.
Project Return is a collaboration with the featured returned citizens and currently incarcerated contributors who have lent their vision and talent to this project. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.
Jesse Simmons
Wilmington, Delaware
2024
Rashaan
“I just want a job, and a place to rest my head out of the elements”. In a recent interview at the Woodlawn library, Rashaan shared his reentry experiences following his release two weeks prior from Howard R. Young Correctional Center in Wilmington Delaware. Held for 7 months on a violation stemming from a drug possession charge that upended his life five years ago, Rashaan was released without any identification, making it difficult to access services or find a job. His housing situation is unstable, his mother lives in subsidized housing where family members with criminal records are barred from staying. "We need support when we come home, point blank, period," Rashaan emphasized, highlighting the critical need for reentry programs. Many, like Rashaan, end up using shelters as temporary addresses and struggle for months or years to eek some measure of stability, the majority crumble under the stressors and return to addiction and ultimately prison. Rashaan’s story underscores the uphill battle faced by returning citizens and the support needed to assist them piece their lives back together following incarceration.
RB
35 years served
Wilmington, DE
2024
"It's a good neighborhood, working class" RB said as his calloused hands swept leaves into a trash bag, a gig he does to make a few bucks throughout the neighborhood. "I live in an 'abando' around the corner". He leaned on his broom as the camera flash captured him during a break from his work.
John Flamer
John was released from jail in the morning. He sold hand drawn envelopes while he was incarcerated to help pay for hygiene items but was released without enough money to purchase a train ticket to get home to Philly. While incarcerated untreated health complications cost him the sight in his right eye. Shot as part of Project Return, John's story echoes thousands that go untold everyday of a system that cages and incapacitates but fails to prepare us for our return.
Mr. Kenneth Hunter
37 years served
Wilmington, DE
2024
"You want to be famous", Mr. Hunter called to me from the van he called home. We spoke about reentry and measured our years in the weird flex we do when we get together. 37 years. He couldn't do the Mission, the mold in the showers, the thefts. He used his SSI check to buy the van when the Y, and every other landlord I could think of denied him a place inside to rest his head.
"Show the world Mr. Hunter" I didn't have to say anything else. Unbowed, still smiling, returned.
Potters Field
New Castle County
Delaware
2024
Part of Project Return, this darkroom original captures a monument that gives names to the unclaimed. New Castle Counties Potter's Field, located behind Baylor's women's prison and along the Markell Trial. A place for contemplation, this cemetery is the last resting place for those New Castle County residents whose remains go unclaimed or whose families could not afford to claim them. The frame was made by incarcerated collaborator Darryll Bifano in his prison woodshop.
