By Keelin Fisher

Brenda Stringfellow, 38, sat at the front of a classroom at Returning Home, leading a weekly leadership class where men work through accountability, decision-making and the practical steps of rebuilding life after incarceration. Ten men leaned forward, their attention fixed on her next words.

A whiteboard on wheels leaned against the wall, filled with handwritten prompts and responses. One part read, “What are we doing today? Moving forward!”

Since 2024, Stringfellow has served as the director of operations at Returning Home, a non-profit transitional living and reentry program for men in Huntsville, Arkansas, where she works daily to ensure post-incarceration recovery is not just words on a whiteboard. Through structured housing, life-skills courses and mentorship, she supports the participants as they rebuild their lives in a state where 46% of those released from prison return within three years.

Unresolved fines, fees and warrants, paired with limited reentry services, make it harder to secure housing, find work and stay on track—all of which raise the risk of returning to prison, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center. The parole process itself often fails to account for job continuity, while statewide shortages in housing, behavioral healthcare, substance use treatment and workforce training compound the problem further.

Stringfellow leads the class as someone who once lived through what the men are living through in that room—recovery from substance addiction. At that time in her life, she built her own routines and accountability, which is exactly what she now weaves into the program for them.

The need for that structure is especially important for the men in the program, as approximately 90% of them have a history of substance abuse, Stringfellow said. That percentage reflects a larger issue. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the U.S. criminal legal system punishes substance use far more often than it provides treatment. Notably, roughly 41-49% of those arrested or incarcerated have a substance use disorder, compared to 8% of the general population.

As a group, Stringfellow prompted the men in the classroom to discuss the definition of triumph. “To encourage, to rally, to find inner strength, to be hardened,” one of the men read aloud.

“That’s huge,” Stringfellow said about the text, as the men’s eyes looked steadily at her, waiting for the next words that she would utter.

“When people talk about our stories as addicts, those are the words that they use — ‘They prevailed over addiction,” Stringfellow said. “They triumphed after incarceration.”

Seated near the front, 55-year-old Jonathan McDowell murmured a quiet “Mmm” in agreement.

“That’s y’all,” Stringfellow said, followed by a pause. “That’s us!”

Through its Community Alternative Program, the program aims to reduce recidivism by offering housing, addiction recovery support and life skills for roughly 30 men transitioning from incarceration. Entry into the 120-day program is referral-based, requiring a submission from a probation officer, attorney or public defender before a man can be considered.

Before Stringfellow ran the program, she had walked a similar path to those in the facility. She grew up splitting time between separated parents—one in Orlando and the other in Westfork—in households where addiction was a constant. Both of her parents were, in her words, “functioning alcoholics,” and substance abuse was present in both households.

When Stringfellow did not have community support or healthy relationships, school stopped mattering, and she was eventually kicked out for truancy. After smoking marijuana for the first time with a group that she described as “the wrong types of people,” she turned to opioids at 19 while in Orlando. What followed was a decade of substance abuse, petty possession and disorderly conduct. Eventually, she was convicted of residential burglary, receipt of a firearm and violating probation. Soon after, she landed in prison.

Forty days after her first release in 2017, she relapsed. It was only when her own support system advocated for her to return for treatment that the horizon of her life started to brighten. This was exactly what she needed.

“Rebuilding my life, learning how to give and receive love, was one of the hardest pieces,” she said. “It was something I had to learn that was taught to me in a very unhealthy way growing up.”

That second jail stint, roughly 30 days, was the first time anyone had offered her treatment instead of punishment, she said. When she was released, she cut ties with everyone she had known before prison and threw herself into what she called “ultra accountability.” She enrolled in Goodwill’s Traditional Employment Opportunity program, which places formerly incarcerated individuals in temporary jobs while providing job training and mentorship.

Because of a firearm charge on her record, she could not work inside a Goodwill store. However, by chance, the program placed her as a receptionist at Returning Home, which had just launched a reentry hub for released prisoners.

She has since been sober for nearly a decade and has never left Returning Home.

In 2021, she became director of the CAP program. Today, she is also a wife, mother, homeowner and the person standing at the front of the room, giving back what was once given to her.

The facility sits tucked away on a country road in Huntsville, where two-lane roads wind through open land and cows graze along the roadside as cars pass. The brick building is enclosed by tall trees, their scent carrying the quiet coolness of a forest.

Inside, the setting is cozy and modest. The walls in the house are plain, sometimes decorated with words of encouragement, and natural light fills the rooms.

Surrounding the table during the leadership class are plastic chairs filled with men who traded one kind of life for the chance at another. One of those individuals is 41-year-old Cody Scott, who arrived at the program in 2023 and went through the 120-day program. When it ended, the staff reviewed his case and gave him the option to stay for work. He volunteered doing case work for six months before being hired full time as the facility’s caseworker and manager, where his office shares a wall with Stringfellow’s.

He carries a caseload of 14 men, helping them sort through legal obligations, court dates and fines—the same work Stringfellow once did for him. “I had never been sober in my adult life,” he said of his past. He said he found his way back to his daughter, now 14, whose life he had not been a part of for nearly a decade, adding that Stringfellow was one of the first people who made him feel like this was possible.

“She’s got a way with bringing out the best in someone, and that kind of support was something I was not used to having,” Scott said about Stringfellow. “I was used to doing everything on my own.”

The residence’s community pantry stocked with cereal boxes hints at one of the small rituals the men had come to value—breakfast on Fridays, a time to sit together and debrief the week. At the end of every week following 50 hours of work and case management, the men go back to the facility to pay down their fines and share a meal. Stringfellow said that, on average, they enter the facility with $6,000 in fines each, and Friday is the day they make their way to the bank to pay some of it off.

That same day, a volunteer typically comes in to make biscuits and gravy, but that person never arrived that particular morning. So, Stringfellow drove down the street to the local donut shop and came back with enough for everyone. She laughed while telling the story, adding that there was something slightly humorous about watching men with face tattoos eat Valentine’s Day-themed donuts with heart designs.

Some of them probably would not care if they skipped breakfast altogether, she said. But some of them would. For her, it has never just been about the food.

“It’s a big piece of fellowship, it’s a big piece of our community,” she said. “You find out so much over a meal.”

She has noticed that during family meals around holidays the men open up in ways that they rarely do day to day.

“That’s when they talk the most, really,” Stringfellow said. “That is when they are more transparent.”

That, she said, is why breakfast matters to her and why she went out of her way to get the donuts that morning upon realizing the volunteer cook did not show.

Beyond the building, a pool surrounded by a gate sat, still and waiting. Once a month on a Saturday, the facility holds a family day, which includes three hours of meals, games and a bouncy house. It is one of the few times the men are allowed visitors on site, and for fathers, it is a chance to let their families see how far they have come.

On a nearby bench, a resident sat smoking a cigarette, his face buried in his phone. No one called him back inside. Stringfellow pointed out that quitting smoking does not need to be a focus right now, especially given everything they have walked away from. Whenever they feel they need one, they can have one.

What does get monitored is substance use. The men are regularly and randomly tested as part of the program’s structure, with a minimum of one test per week and several over the weekend. Stringfellow added that although none of the residents have fought a drug test, scheduling is always difficult. And when they go on pass, a time when a resident is authorized to leave the supervised facility for a designated amount of time to engage in community activities, they are immediately tested upon their return.

Back inside on the kitchen counter, the box of donuts sat beside the bulletin board where that week’s results were posted.

For Stringfellow, the tests carry personal weight. “When I was finally able to pass drug tests, it was a very proud moment for me,” she said. She remembered avoiding her probation officer and the courts during active addiction, knowing the result would be a disappointment. Now, watching the men in the program apply for jobs and fight to see their children—doing it because they know they can pass—is one of the more rewarding parts of the work, she said.

During the week, those same men clock in at places like Tyson and Butterball, which partner with the facility to help provide the men a work foundation. Through this, they build routines and paychecks one shift at a time, learning what it means to show up.

“Man, I gotta get up. On time. I gotta set an alarm,” McDowell said during the class, as he reflected on the transition into routine that many of the men described about their early days in the program.

Another individual who has learned to ease back into work is 56-year-old Christopher Benko, though everyone at the facility calls him by his last name. He speaks slowly and deliberately, with a faded tattoo on his right hand and a warmth that makes him easy to talk to. He arrived at Returning Home with a broken femur still healing, the clothes on his back and a severe drinking habit, sleeping on the streets.

As Benko described it, he was going downhill until he waved the white flag at his probation officer and asked about programs that could set him on the right path. Since arriving at Returning Home, he has found employment at Butterball, opened a checking and savings account, recently got his license back and bought a car. His fines are paid, and he is almost off probation. He continues to add money to his savings with the intention of purchasing a house, although he said he is “still new to the house-buying thing.”

The National Low Income Housing Coalition states that a conviction record, layered on top of a national shortage of 7.3 million affordable rental units, leaves many formerly incarcerated people with nowhere stable to land upon release. Without stable housing, the path to recidivism is short. Benko knows this reality. But through his own hard work and mentorship from leaders like Stringfellow, he is working toward a place to call his own.

“I still to this day am just like, I don’t know how I got to where I am at,” he said, “but I know I am in a great place.”

In the facility’s TV room, hooks lined the wall with positive character awards, a form of peer recognition the men give each other to acknowledge integrity in action. They do this publicly during every house meeting on Monday. Sometimes the awards follow a write-up, nodding at the way someone handled a sanction. Other times, it is celebrating the day someone got their driver’s license back.

As Stringfellow invests in the men and recognizes their accomplishments, she also works on her own self-improvement. For a year and a half, she has been enrolled in the Christian Leaders Institute, an online program that seeks to empower individuals with Biblical knowledge and leadership skills. The same way she pushes the men to keep growing is the same way she approaches her own growth.

“I think it’s really important to always invest in how to be better at what you’re passionate about,” she said.

She also learns from the men themselves. Working in her position, she said, has made her a better leader. She has grown to learn how to support others, handle difficult situations and hold boundaries. “It’s definitely a learning experience every day,” she said.

“I 100% know that I experienced those things to be better equipped to help my guys—not to tell them what to do, but just to come from a level of empathy of, ‘Hey, this is what worked for me, and this may not be best for you, but I’m gonna grind this out with you and we are gonna figure it out,’” she said.

Stringfellow said she ended up working with men largely by chance, but she has come to believe that men sometimes resonate with female figures better. She said she does not cast herself as a mother figure to these men, but she recognizes the weight of being a consistent female presence in their lives.

When working with the men in the program, she leads with honesty. “Your kids weren’t enough for you to be sober before, they’re not enough now,” she tells them. “It’s got to be about you and a bigger purpose in life.” For Stringfellow, that conviction is the foundation of everything Returning Home offers: structure, accountability, a community that does not give up on them and a path toward finding that purpose.

Every week, she conducts a leadership class intertwined with verse-mapping, which is a structured, in-depth Bible study method that analyzes a single verse by diving into its historical context, keyword meanings, alternate translations and cross-references. While the organization identifies as a ministry, participants are not required to be Christian to enroll, and all faith-based activities are voluntary.

The same Friday that she picked up heart-decorated donuts, the class centered on the story of David and Goliath, one of the most well-known stories in the Bible that highlights the underdog.

David is a young shepherd boy who defeats a giant warrior against all odds and would later become king. Goliath is described as a giant soldier standing around nine feet tall, clad in heavy armor and carrying a massive spear. The text indicates that Goliath was so intimidating that the opposing army would not face him, until David, carrying only a sling and a few stones, stepped forward.

“Sometimes we wait for better tools, and David didn’t wait for better tools,” Stringfellow said.

Upon reading the verse where David released the stone from the slingshot, Stringfellow asked the men what their Goliath was, encouraging conversation about their recovery journey and how their story relates to David’s triumph over what stood against him.

Several men pointed out multiple incarcerations, substance abuse, as well as relationships and choices they described as “poor.” At a separate time, Stringfellow mentioned how she spent her early years socializing through drinking and substance abuse. Together, the group acknowledged that hardships such as those in their past are only some of the challenges they will face throughout their lives.

For the men, including Stringfellow, the work happening around that rectangle of tables is not just spiritual. According to research by Brian and Melissa Grim, faith may be one of the most effective tools they have toward ongoing triumph in recovery. But Stringfellow is careful NOT to frame it that way. Rather than relying on faith passively, she said it is something that should walk alongside the work. Saying “God’s got this” only goes so far, she believes, without the actions to match it.

The men, whose faces were still but nodded in agreement, were the same ones who teased each other between moments of reflection, the kind of ribbing that only exists between people who trust one another. Benko, in particular, seemed to be a recurring subject, with his name prompting easy laughter around the room. He was quick to laugh along.

Throughout his time at the facility, he said he has watched other men leave permanently without saying a word, whatever their reason may be. But he said he would never go out that way. When his time comes to graduate from the program, he plans to move somewhere close and keep returning for visits.

“Fines paid, everything good,” Benko said, grinning as he talked about his recovery. For men in the facility like him, triumph is a busy kitchen on a Friday morning and the unfamiliar feeling that this time, they have a community worth staying for.

“She’s my sister,” he said of Stringfellow, “and they’re my brothers.”

The tight-knit community Benko described—the one worth staying for—is the same one Stringfellow once rebuilt herself following years of addiction. As she continues showing up for the men in the program, even if that means driving down the street at dawn and coming back with a box of Valentine’s Day-designed donuts so they can have their morning ritual, she does not let the weight of her past hold her back. After all, that same history is what gives her credibility in rooms that matter most to her.

“My past is really what skyrocketed me into the position I’m in now,” she said. “It’s done nothing but helped me today.”