Philip Cooper Gives Former Inmates the Tools to Start Over

Philip Cooper does some outreach, but what he really prefers to do is inreach. Cooper, founder of the Asheville, N.C.-based nonprofit Operation Gateway, says the best time to help men who are finding their way after incarceration is while they are still inside. His organization uses the prison communication system to contact people before they are released, to assess their situation and offer assistance. “If you wait to serve them when they get out, you fail them,” says Cooper, whose title is chief change agent. “Because they’re scrambling, trying to figure it all out.” 

Cooper, 40, a native of western North Carolina, has developed a small but intensive program that connects men who are leaving prison with a suite of services and groups that enable them to get back on their feet. Operation Gateway can help them secure a place to live, obtain a copy of their Social Security card and birth certificate, get food, or even do the deeper work of dealing with mental-health challenges, including addictions. And it connects them to job training and potential employers. “It's kind of like being a quarterback,” says Cooper, of the complexity of moves he makes to help people stay out of prison. “You can get a job, but if you don't take care of your mental health, you won’t keep the job. You can get housing, but if you can't get a job, you can't pay for your house.”

While the rate of incarceration among Black men in America has been dropping since the early 2000s, it’s one of the most stubborn and troubling characteristics of American society. A 2023 study found that if current trends continue, one in five Black men born in 2001 will be imprisoned at some point in their lives (as opposed to one in 25 white men). The vast majority of them will be released, many with no skills or preparation for a post-prison life. Studies find that about 45% of men released from prison will be arrested again within a year. While Cooper’s program has been around for only two years, it seems to be working. He estimates that just three of the 103 men he’s working with have re-offended. 

Part of Cooper’s secret sauce is that he and much of his team have been through the process. “I was a person that started doing the drugs and selling drugs,” he says. He served three years and four months. “One of the things that we do is recover out loud, so that people don't have to suffer in silence,” says Cooper, who often wears a black Make America Godly Again baseball cap, about sharing his story publicly. “People don't take advantage of the resources that they can get, because they're not open about their mental-health condition.” He hopes his team’s openness will destigmatize seeking mental-health assistance. “We talk about how we struggle with mental health, and we talk about how we struggle with substance use disorder and what it took for us to get to the other side.” 

Cooper believes that with enough cross-agency cooperation, his model is scalable and sustainable. He’s attracting grants to train more recovery workers, as he calls them, with specific therapeutic skills around addiction and the brutality of a prison stint, but feels there’s a lot more that a combined network of government agencies, faith partners, and nonprofits can do. It would be worth the spend, he says, “because of how much it costs to incarcerate them, as opposed to them putting back into the economy.” Ultimately, says Cooper, “it don't matter if we're talking left or right, it would behoove us to be able to figure out ways to keep people out of prison.”

Correction, February 6

The original version of this story misstated Cooper's age. He is 40, not 50.