Cypress House at St. Luke’s is an affiliated nonprofit organization of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania. St. Luke’s has a long history of reaching out to the community and living into its historic motto, “In the heart of things.” Cypress House was incorporated in 2018 because of the skyrocketing incarceration rates in Scranton’s Lackawanna County, which has one of the highest jail incarceration rates in the state. St. Luke’s carries on its history of reaching out in service to those in need, today seeking to offer services to those coming out of incarceration.

There are staggering disparities among Black and Latino/a people imprisoned in the US given their overall representation in the general population. And women have become the fastest-growing segment of the incarcerated population. After their release, they become permanent second-class citizens and carry the stigma of a criminal background – making it unimaginably difficult to find a job. In 2021, the newly released were unemployed at a rate of 27%. The general US unemployment rate that same year was less than 6%, and today it’s under 4%.