About Us

Mission Statement:

Restore INK is a community founded on kinship and support for formerly incarcerated and gang impacted individuals, and their families. We seek to empower these individuals through a process of healing and rehabilitation, so that they may make a positive impact in society.

Vision Statement:

To restore Hope for all people.

Our Three Restorative Breakthroughs:

Identity: Restore Identity – A person is not defined by their past but by who they were created to be. We seek to walk with individuals and help them to realize that they were given gifts, purpose, and identity. We help them realize this and live into it.
Narrative: Restore Narrative – We all have a story and our story doesn’t end with incarceration or affiliation but begins with the new life we choose to live into. We make the next chapter in a person’s story possible.
Kinship: Restore Kinship – We are all human, we all matter, we all have value, and we all are a gift to the communities around us.

The Problem:

There is currently very limited programming in the city of Long Beach that specifically targets the gang-impacted and re-entry communities. The City of Long Beach is the 2nd largest of Los Angeles County’s 88 incorporated cities. Los Angeles County Probation is currently Supervising 12,000 state parolees and 60,000 adult probationers. The State Board of Parole currently takes up to 400 parole hearings a month including those for older and youth offenders, and prisoners are now more likely granted recommendations for release. Nearly 820 inmates, or 16% of prisoners who had hearings in 2016, were seen as fit for parole that year, compared with 119, or less than 2%, in 2007. Just 16 prisoners, or less than 1% of those who had hearings, were deemed fit for parole two decades ago. According to the FBI’s National Gang Threat Assessment, LA County has more gang members than any other county in America. The FBI estimates 48% of all violent crime in the nation is gang-related; in some urban neighborhoods as much as 90% of all violent crime is gang-related.

The Solution:

After meeting with formerly incarcerated and gang-impacted individuals, elected officials, law enforcement, school officials, leaders of faith, community groups, and cultural and nonprofit organizations, the founders of Restore INK felt that something new was needed for the city of Long Beach. Restore INK is that something new.