When a man released from prison just one day earlier was handed a basic smartphone, the first question he asked was, “What is email?”
That moment stopped Jodi Anderson Jr. in his tracks.
Anderson, director of technological innovation for the Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative in Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, had met the man while recruiting participants for a National Science Foundation-funded study on the stressors people face when searching for work after incarceration.
The man had served 20 years in prison. He had never used a smartphone or new technology. He had never sent an email. Yet, he was expected to apply for jobs, housing and benefits entirely online.
“That was a visceral moment,” Anderson said. “We expect returning citizens to navigate a digital world without ever being taught how.”
To address these barriers, Anderson co-founded Rézme, a platform designed to help job seekers navigate automated hiring systems, background checks and fair-chance hiring protections. The platform aims to support individuals whose applications are often filtered out by algorithms before reaching a human reviewer.
“Technology created many of these barriers,” Anderson said. “So technology has to be part of the solution.”
Across the United States, digital platforms now mediate access to employment, housing, education and social services. For people returning home after incarceration, reentry means navigating systems they may never have used before. Anderson said that technology, if intentionally designed, can either expand access to opportunity or deepen inequality for the approximately 77 million Americans who have a criminal record.
To understand the roots of this digital divide, Anderson pointed to the technological reality of incarceration. In most U.S. prisons, incarcerated people are completely prohibited or restricted in some capacity from accessing the open web, a barrier that is commonly rooted in security concerns.
The lack of technology available to incarcerated individuals limits their ability to engage in average communication or educational activities that many people take part in on an everyday basis.
As a result, many individuals return home after incarceration with little experience using email, job portals, mobile banking or app-based navigation. Smartphones are frequently required for probation or parole check-ins, yet little guidance is provided on how to use them.
“We live in a mobile-first world,” Anderson said. “But if you’ve been away for years, even basic symbols, like the paper airplane icon used to send an email, don’t mean anything.”
Securing stable employment after release from prison is already an uphill battle, especially for people with criminal records. This challenge is compounded by the fact that many formerly incarcerated individuals lack basic digital and technological skills that are now expected in most workplaces.
When people leave prison without the tools needed to compete in today’s job market, they face a much higher risk of long-term unemployment, which can push some back toward illegal activity as a means of survival.
At Cornell, Anderson’s work with Rézme is housed within the Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative, which is part of the ILR School’s Center for Applied Research on Work. The initiative partners with employers, reentry organizations and public agencies to expand access to employment for people impacted by the criminal legal system.
An integral part of CJEI is the training program, which provides employer training, community partner training and justice-involved training, which refers to education for previously incarcerated individuals.
Through employer training, CJEI educates organizations and HR professionals on laws that affect the hiring of people with criminal records, including Ban the Box policies, human rights protections, Title VII and the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The organization also works with community groups and reentry organizations to build partnerships, host job and resource fairs and expand employment opportunities for people who have been incarcerated or have criminal records. Partners include organizations such as The Fortune Society and the Women’s Prison Association.
In addition, CJEI provides training directly to job seekers with criminal records, helping them understand their legal rights, how background checks are used in hiring and how to navigate the job search process. Another part of CJEI is the Criminal Record Online Toolkit, which helps individuals understand and check their criminal record..
Anderson said Cornell’s role as a research institution positions it to test how technological tools can either widen or narrow access to opportunity.
“Universities are where invention happens,” he said.
For Anderson, the potential of technology goes beyond efficiency to equity. He believes that technology, when deployed intentionally, can help reshape what justice and mobility look like in the digital age.
“The tools exist now,” Anderson said. “What we need is the will to use them for the people who need them most.”
