Our story
Ameelio is a team of technologists, engineers, designers, lawyers, and advocates who are committed to fundamentally transforming the criminal justice system for the better. At the core of our work is an understanding that poverty is key driver of mass incarceration. 50% of prisoners have no earnings in the eight years leading up to their incarceration. In the year immediately preceding imprisonment, that percentage jumps to 80%.
Ameelio is one of the boldest and most innovative approaches to criminal justice reform not only because of our ability to build powerful technology to tackle the most challenging problems in the space, but also beacuse our tools are informed by the profund understanding that sustainable decarceration is only possible if we provide the incarcerated with the vital resources and pathways (educational equity, economic mobility, societal support, and more) that they lacked prior to incarceration.
Software is rapidly tranforming the world around us, we intend to use it solve one of society’s greatest social crises — mass incarceration.
Problem
Nearly 1 in 2 Americans has an immediate family member who is currently or has previously been incarcerated. 1 in 4 American adults has had a sibling incarcerated. 1 in 5 has had a parent sent to jail or prison, and 1 in 8 has had a child incarcerated.
The footprint of mass incarceartion is staggering. And worse yet, predatory prison companies backed by private equity and hedge funds have been exploiting this crisis and millions of Americans for decades.