JACKSON, Miss.—Pauline Rogers doesn’t just talk about the realities of life in prison. She knows those realities intimately.
Rogers is frank about the trauma she suffered as a child, including watching her mother shoot her father in Vancleave, Mississippi.
“I don’t think my dad had to die. She had to drive 40 minutes just to get him to the hospital. He died en route. Had there been somewhere for her to get him to that night, he might still be alive,” she told the Mississippi Free Press in 2022.
The circumstances of her upbringing led her to commit crimes, she said. Ultimately, Rogers spent six years in prison on a shoplifting charge. While in prison, she met Frederick Rogers, who was serving time for armed robbery.
He was working as a camp support worker at the facility where she was imprisoned, she told the Mississippi Free Press.
Pauline Rogers left prison in 1988, and Frederick was released three years later. The pair got closer upon their releases, married and started the Reaching and Educating for Community Hope Foundation; she is the CEO and he handles operations and logistics for the organization.
The organization offers transitional housing at its Wendy Hatcher S.A.F.E. Home in Jackson, holiday toy drives for families with an incarcerated loved one and re-entry programs—all in an effort to help formerly incarcerated people readjust to life outside of prison walls.
Such supports help reduce recidivism, the likelihood that a former incarcerated person is rearrested or returns to prison.
Rogers told supporters gathered inside Union Station in Jackson on Sept. 26 that her faith motivated her to make positive changes in life and today it fuels her mission.
“What you’re seeing in this room, it ain’t court ordered. A court couldn’t order my heart to change. A gavel didn’t do that,” she said on Sept. 25.
It was there that she celebrated a new chapter of that mission as the Foundation moved into the offices.
“I came in this building with Jackson Redevelopment Authority for their open house. And the more I walked, the more I was feeling this strong sense of place. And I understood why,” she said as supporters looked on.
Rogers said that the location is strategically positioned in an area that allows the foundation to facilitate community outreach on the street, targeting unhoused people whom she says “we walk by every day.”
The Foundation supports people not only after they are released from prison. It also advocates on behalf of those still inside prison walls—calling for early releases for prisoners suffering from illnesses like cancer.
House Rep. Justis Gibbs, D-Jackson, who authored House Bill 658, attended the open house ceremony on Wednesday. The bill would require prisons to provide incarcerated individuals with protective gear, such as gloves and face masks, while they work. The bill passed through the House but died on the calendar in this year’s legislative session.
Gibbs’ proposal came about a year after Susie Balfour filed a lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections and several healthcare providers contracted with the agency, alleging that while incarcerated, she was exposed to toxic chemicals that caused her to develop cancer. Her attorneys said delays in health-care treatment allowed her cancer to progress undetected.
At a Feb. 5, 2025, press conference about the bill, Rogers said Balfour’s “voice has sparked a movement.” She died of cancer earlier this year, Mississippi Today reported on Aug. 4.
The Mississippi Free Press reached out to the Mississippi Department of Corrections for comment on this story, but the department declined to comment.
As Gibbs stepped past a gallery of images showing incarcerated individuals with injuries, he commended RECH Foundation for their advocacy.
“We are talking about human life here,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 25. “And I’m so glad that they are explicit with the reality of what has gone on in these facilities. Everyone should come in here and understand what we are putting our citizens through.”