95% of everyone behind bars will be back. The question is: back to what?
The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any nation on earth. 2.5 million Americans are currently behind bars. That number is staggering. But it is not the number that defines this cluster's relationship to the Despair Economy. The defining number is this: 68% of released prisoners are re-arrested within three years. Nearly half return to prison within five years.
That is not a failure of the incarcerated. That is a failure of what they return to. People leave prison without housing, without employment, without a credential any employer will recognize, and without a community that knows what to do with them. The system punishes, releases, and then is surprised when the conditions that produced the original offense are exactly the same as the ones people return to.
The outdoor economy asks none of those questions. It doesn't run a background check on your ability to build a fire, lead a trail crew, or set up a camp kitchen. It asks what you can do — and it pays for it. The Tymmber Terrain Practitioner Certificate and the OREE Prosperity Program exist because the re-entry system should have always offered a pathway that didn't require institutional permission to walk.
"95% of those behind bars will be back in society. What they return to matters enormously."
Good News Global · Don Nicholson · Tymmber Advisory Group Seat FiveTymmber Outdoor Seat Five advisor Don Nicholson has walked into a jail every week for years. Not as a policy analyst. Not as a consultant. As a volunteer chaplain through Good News Global — operating in 21 U.S. states and 24 countries. He has sat across from the people this cluster describes, listened to them, and walked with them toward something different. His presence at this table is not advisory in the conventional sense. He is a witness to what the re-entry problem actually looks like — and to what actually changes people.
Don Nicholson built a satellite TV business from zero to 1.2 million subscribers and watched it sell for nearly $380 million. He spent nearly a decade at Viasat connecting farms and forgotten communities to the internet. And every week, he walks into a jail. Don understands both ends of the human spectrum — what it takes to build infrastructure that reaches the unreached, and what it takes to reach a person everyone else has written off. His ministry through Good News Global — operating in 21 states and 24 countries — is not policy work. It is presence. He sits across from the people this cluster page describes, and he walks with them toward something different. That combination belongs at this table.
Read Don's Full Profile →This is Don Nicholson's assessment — drawn not from research papers but from thirty years of building businesses that reach the unreached professionally, and weekends reaching the unreached personally. The people he meets in jail ministry are not statistics. They are people who, in most cases, made a single catastrophic decision in a context the system helped create — and who now face a re-entry landscape designed more for monitoring than for reintegration. The outdoor economy is one of the few sectors in America that genuinely evaluates people on what they can do. A former incarcerated person who earns a Tymmber Terrain Practitioner Certificate arrives at a guide apprenticeship, a conservation corps position, or a Marketplace listing with a documented credential that says nothing about their past and everything about their capability. That is not charity. That is economic justice through a different door.
The research on what actually reduces recidivism is consistent: meaningful employment, stable community, and a changed environment. The outdoor economy provides all three in a single pathway.
Incarcerated individuals who participate in educational or vocational programs are 43% less likely to return to prison within three years than those who don't. Every dollar invested in correctional education saves approximately five dollars in re-incarceration costs. The barrier is not capability — it is access to programs that connect to real economic opportunity on the outside.
RAND Corporation · Correctional Education Meta-Analysis · rand.org →
Conservation corps programs that specifically recruit formerly incarcerated individuals show measurably lower recidivism rates than the national baseline — with participants reporting that the combination of physical outdoor work, structured community, and genuine economic contribution was the single most significant factor in their transition. The outdoor environment itself produces the behavioral reset that institutional re-entry programs rarely achieve.
Conservation Legacy · AmeriCorps Impact Research · National Reentry Council
People leaving prison face unemployment rates of 27% — five times the national average — in the first year after release. The primary barrier is not skill deficiency but credential exclusion: background check requirements eliminate candidates before interviews occur. Skills-first hiring in sectors like outdoor recreation, conservation, and outdoor hospitality represents the most accessible labor market entry point for returning citizens.
Prison Policy Initiative · 2025 · prisonpolicy.org →
The Prosperity Program requires exactly one thing: the willingness to move. No background check. No institutional referral. No prior credential. Whether you are currently incarcerated and planning ahead, on work release, or recently out — the enrollment is free and the curriculum starts where you are. The program was built for people the system decided weren't worth the effort. That is its founding premise.
The Tymmber Terrain Practitioner Certificate documents what you can do in the outdoor economy — and it asks nothing about what you've been through to get here. Guide apprenticeship programs, conservation corps positions, outdoor hospitality operators, and BLM seasonal positions on the Terrain Network Job Board recognize the TTP as a skills credential. Your past is not on the certificate. Your capability is.
The outdoor economy is the largest skills-first labor market in America. Trail crews, guide services, conservation corps, outdoor hospitality, land stewardship — these positions evaluate performance, not history. The Terrain Network Job Board lists real positions with real organizations across New Mexico's $3.6B outdoor economy. The Tymmber Marketplace lets TTP graduates list services and sell directly. No intermediary required. No permission needed.
Founded 1961. Chaplains, counseling, and education programs operating inside jails and prisons across the United States and internationally. Don Nicholson — Tymmber Seat Five — serves as a weekly jail ministry volunteer through GNG. The organization that witnesses this cluster most directly in Tymmber's advisory circle.
goodnewsglobal.org →Entrepreneurship, employment, and character development training for people currently and formerly incarcerated. Trains incarcerated individuals as entrepreneurs — exactly the economic model the Prosperity Program and OREE Marketplace operationalize through the outdoor economy.
defyventures.org →One of the nation's largest conservation corps networks — with specific re-entry hiring tracks that employ formerly incarcerated individuals in meaningful land stewardship work. Skills-first. Background-informed but not background-blocked. Housing often included. The direct pipeline from re-entry to the outdoor economy.
conservationlegacy.org →Incarceration ends at the gate. The invisible sentence — the background check, the occupational licensing ban, the housing restriction, the employment barrier — never does. These are specific, achievable asks that would open the outdoor economy as a genuine re-entry pathway.
Adopt Ban the Box policies for outdoor economy positions in city and county parks departments. Removing automatic criminal background check disqualification from public land stewardship positions is achievable at the local level and immediately opens a category of meaningful employment to returning citizens.
Remove occupational licensing barriers in outdoor trades for formerly incarcerated people. New Mexico and most states automatically deny guide, outfitter, and outdoor instructor licenses to anyone with a felony record — regardless of offense type or time elapsed. Reform these statutes to case-by-case review for outdoor industry credentials.
Fund outdoor vocational programming inside state correctional facilities. Conservation corps skills, outdoor hospitality training, and OREE curriculum delivered pre-release — so that the TTP certificate pathway begins before the gate opens, not after. Connects directly to New Mexico's Outdoor Equity Fund infrastructure.
Expand Second Chance Act funding to include outdoor economy workforce development. The Second Chance Act funds re-entry programs but does not currently recognize outdoor trades as a priority sector. Amend to include conservation corps, outdoor guide training, and wilderness therapy as eligible programming — consistent with BEA data showing the outdoor economy as one of America's fastest-growing employment sectors.
The Prosperity Place AI Angel Program is being developed as a personal agent that builds your schedule, matches you to opportunities, logs your progress toward the $250K Prosperity Standard, and acts as a guide rather than a monitor. For formerly incarcerated people, this distinction is everything. The system you came from tracked every failure. The AI Angel tracks every step forward. The platform is in development. The belief behind it is that the only data that should define your economic future is the work you do today.
The Tymmber Marketplace is a skills-first economic platform. A TTP-certified guide, a land steward, a camp cook — these are products the market wants and will pay for. The Marketplace doesn't run a background check. It runs a skills check. Your TTP certificate is your credential. Your listing is your storefront. The outdoor economy is the pathway. No intermediary required.
Visit the Marketplace →