Reentry Mythbusters are fact sheets, designed to clarify existing federal policies that affect formerly incarcerated people (FIP) and their families.
The resources below cover areas such as public housing, access to benefits, parental rights, employer incentives, Medicaid suspension/termination, and more. As you will see, some federal laws and policies are less restrictive than is commonly perceived, as is the case with public housing and food assistance benefits. In several policy areas, states and localities have flexibility in determining how policies are applied and/or have various exceptions for states (TANF and child support are examples here).
In some cases, barriers in the law do not exist at all or are very limited, as is the case with federal hiring and some federal policies and practices contain incentives for assisting the formerly incarcerated population (i.e., federal bonding and tax incentives for employers hiring justice-involved individuals). To learn more about resources in the federal government, please explore the resource library below: