When Ashlee Liberty left prison in 2023, she returned to a world that had changed considerably since her incarceration began a decade prior.
Amazon Alexa was released in 2014, a year after Liberty went to prison in Arizona. Windows 10 dropped the next year in 2015. Apple AirPods came out in 2016, her third year in prison. By the time she returned home, artificial intelligence was becoming part of everyday life.
“I was taken for a loop by it when I first came home,” Liberty said. “I knew that it was available, but I’d never really thought about using it when I first came home because I didn’t know much about it.”
Today, the Whitestown resident works as a project engineer at construction sites, including some for AI data centers. She uses artificial intelligence to research topics and brainstorm ideas.
Liberty adapted to the technology, but the adjustment wasn’t always easy. She faced challenges using it in a college class and said she wished she had known how to use it to research before buying her first car after release.
For women serving longer sentences, the adjustment period could be more difficult. Some may have entered prison when flip phones were all the rage, or before cellphones were part of everyday life.
A new program hopes to change that.
The Televerde Foundation, which provides personal and professional development opportunities to incarcerated women in Indiana, Arizona and Florida through its PATHS program, recently received a $200,000 grant from the OpenAI Foundation to add an AI literacy course to the program.
Liberty, who participated in the foundation’s PATHS program while incarcerated, said access to those opportunities could make a significant difference.
“For the girls to have that chance to actually know how to use AI correctly, I think that that’s going to be an amazing tool for them,” Liberty said. “Just for them to not be shocked by what AI is when they come home is going to be huge.”
The challenges of reentry
For the first several years of her 10-year sentence, Liberty wasn’t thinking about what her future would look like after prison; she was focused on getting through each day.
“I had kind of gotten lost in survival mode on how I would get through my sentence,” Liberty said. “I never really stopped to think it wasn’t a life sentence, and eventually I would have to reintegrate back into society.”
Reentry is the most difficult transition for many women leaving prison, according to Shannon Barton, a professor in Indiana State University’s School of Criminology and Security Studies.
“When people are released from prison, they run into a significant number of barriers,” Barton said. “Not only employment, but housing, transportation.”
Finding a job can be particularly difficult for women who spent years incarcerated, she said. Many leave prison without recent work experience, a resume or professional and technical skills expected by employers. She said most lack a high school diploma or GED.
Without stable employment, it can be harder to find housing and insurance, Barton said, and people are more likely to get in trouble again.
Unemployment rates in Indiana for women after incarceration are 22%, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst report.
A 2024 Indiana Department of Corrections study found that 24% of female offenders released in 2021 were arrested again within three years, and 85% of them were unemployed when arrested, according to the IDOC.
“Once you’ve got a job, you have access to benefits, you have access to resources, and you’re better positioned to be able to address challenges that may come up in your life,” said Michelle Cirocco, Televerde Foundation CEO.
Preparing women for life after prison
The Televerde Foundation’s PATHS program started in Arizona in 2021 and expanded to Indiana in 2023. It is a six-month program for incarcerated women in the last two years of their sentence.
In Indiana, it is offered at Rockville Correctional Facility, Madison Correctional Facility and the Indiana Women’s Prison.
“We provide people with more than just the job skills,” Cirocco said. “Giving them the chance to learn … and then supporting them post-release with coaching and mentoring and access to job opportunities and much-needed supplies — this makes a difference.”
Once someone is released, the program connects her with a life coach within 24 hours. Within a week, she starts working with an employment coach, Cirocco said.
Liberty said the program gave her the opportunity to think about her future while incarcerated.
“I quickly learned to learn again,” Liberty said. “I didn’t realize that I liked learning, or even that I knew how to learn new things.”
According to the UMass Amherst study, Indiana PATHS program graduates are arrested again at a 3% rate, which is one-eighth the statewide average. They face unemployment at one-third the rate of other formerly incarcerated women in the state.
The graduates earned twice the median income of other formerly incarcerated women on average, according to the study.
Preparing for an AI future
With the OpenAI Foundation grant, Cirocco said the foundation will be able to expand the PATHS program to address another challenge incarcerated women face — keeping up with technology.
The foundation plans to use part of the grant to create an AI literacy course for PATHS participants and an AI-powered resource center for graduates.
The literacy course would teach women how to use AI tools responsibly and understand how the technology can be used in everyday life and at work, Cirocco said. The resource center would help women find information about housing, employment and community resources.
To Liberty, an AI literacy course provides an increasingly important professional skill.
“If you’re not in the know with it, I think that you can really be held back,” Liberty said.
Barton acknowledged that technology is changing quickly, but said the more immediate challenge for incarcerated women is a lack of programs.
“The biggest barrier is just not having enough access to programs while you’re behind bars,” Barton said. “Even if we have the best program there, you may be on a list for a long time to get access to that program.”
The PATHS program graduates approximately 110 incarcerated women per year, Cirocco said. More than 1,800 were released in 2025, according to the IDOC.
“We don’t have a shortage of talented women in our prisons,” Cirocco said. “What we have is a shortage of opportunities for them to demonstrate what they’re capable of.”
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FPI News reporter Elyse Perry covers issues relating to women and girls across the state. Reach her at 574-870-3950 or elyse.perry@fpinews.org.
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