Founded in Idaho. Working across the Pacific Northwest.

Vision

A Pacific Northwest that uses evidence, not fear, to decide public policy on public safety and the criminal legal system, and that welcomes people home when they return from incarceration.

Our work has three parts: research on sentencing, prisons, and jails; policy work with legislatures and agencies in all three states; and community convenings and reentry resources that keep us grounded in the people these systems affect.

BarNone began in Boise, Idaho, to host a welcome home dinner and celebration for people released from a jail or prison in the past year. We believe a welcoming community full of open hearts and minds makes a world of difference for people working to rebuild their lives, and that getting them on their feet is in the best interest of everyone.

That dinner became our signature tradition: an annual release party with dinner, motivational speakers, community resources, and prizes. Speakers came from all walks of life: people who had come home and thrived, public officials, corrections professionals, and authors.

What started at the Vineyard Church quickly grew into advocacy and coalition building. It also spawned a startup nonprofit, Reentry Idaho, which provided reentry services for people with substance use disorders in the Idaho Panhandle's five northern counties.

From there we launched the Idaho Reentry Summit series, bringing lawmakers, the Idaho Department of Correction, the ACLU of Idaho, and people with lived experience together to talk about fair chance hiring and the future of Idaho's criminal legal system. We also published an Advocacy Toolkit for people working on reform.

Those years taught us that the hardest problems in reentry start long before release, in the laws that decide who goes to prison and for how long. Today BarNone is growing into a research and policy organization for the whole Northwest, studying those decisions across Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. We still keep our reentry directory, because research should never lose sight of the people it is about.