Terence Jerome Wilson

Terence Jerome Wilson’s vision is to have Project Redemption assist other formerly incarcerated individuals in areas such as mentorship and guidance in establishing credit, as well as much needed supervision in where to rent or purchase property that will help them to become and remain assets to the community thereby preventing the necessity to return to criminal activity.

Terence has encountered and had to overcome both housing and disability income discrimination. These areas are vital in establishing stability and can be extremely stressful for the previously and recently released who require assistance but do not have the knowledge of who to turn to for assistance to render for themselves a successful outcome.

In 1988 at the age of 9 years old, he began breaking and entering freight trains for food for himself and those within his community who needed food. This activity advanced to including warehouses and factories where the items taken would be sold for income. Two years later he was recruited into the gang life, which led him into even more criminal activity including the selling of drugs and carrying concealed weapons.

His first encounter within the criminal justice system was the Juvenile Detention Center at the age of 12, due to a shooting that he initiated, but no one was injured. During that time, he was chained to his bunk, because of repeated altercations with other juveniles within the facility. After his release, when he was 16, he was placed into Cook County Jail for selling marijuana. Upon release from there, he was enrolled into a drug rehabilitation program as a part of the protocol. From that time, he had a revolving door relationship with jail confinement in Chicago and Georgia that were due to illegal gun concealment and cocaine possession.

In 1998 at the age of 40, he was sentenced to 33.5 years of confinement, where he served 22.4 years of his life for a crime committed in Minnesota while under the influence. It was this stint within prison that allowed him to face a rude awakening and take serious inventory of his life’s choices.

After being released in August of 2020 during COVID-19, he faced enormous complications that caused a lot of stagnation within the progress he had set out to make on the outside. The lack of a credential sheet resulted in him not being able to first receive a new Social Security Card or identification, which led to him not being able to become gainfully employed, secure residency or a vehicle. He was moved from halfway house to halfway house at a state paid rate of $963 per month, which unfortunately led to a discrepancy of funds being released from one agency to another so that he could move into his own residency causing him to remain housed within the halfway house system until September 2021. It was not until he applied and was approved for housing in Chicago that allowed him the ability to transfer his parole, paving the way for him to gain a stable residency of his own.