All Square is a restaurant adorned with purple lights and a dinner style bar. It offers a menu featuring a variety of grilled cheese sandwiches. The motto of this Minneapolis-based restaurant is: “Don’t judge, just eat.”
The restaurant’s motto highlights its mission as more than a typical eatery. Launched in 2018, All Square is a social enterprise focused on giving formerly incarcerated individuals a second chance. All the restaurant’s workers are part of the fellowship program, which provides employment, free therapy and civil legal services, to help participants rebuild their lives after serving their sentences.
This is needed because many former prisoners struggle to get a second chance after serving time. The major barrier is the public nature of criminal records, which affects decisions by employers and landlords, Director of All Square’s legal firm The Legal Revolution and Attorney John Geffen told us while we visited the restaurant.
“We’ve created this second-class citizen group that can’t live with their partners or kids because they can’t get on the lease,” he said. “They can’t find employment and are often forced into making bad decisions.”
The larger goal of All Square is to address the systemic injustices of mass incarceration, which disproportionately impact people of color from low-income communities. The organization wants to address the systematic ills resulting from racism and oppression — including disparate sentencing regimes, unconstitutional arrest practices, the criminalization of drugs and drug-related crime.
“A lot of these crimes are crimes of poverty,” Geffen said. “So why are we perpetually punishing these people?”
He shared an example of a woman who, at age 19, made a “terrible decision” by using a credit card that wasn’t hers to buy Christmas presents for her children.
All Square’s fellowship program is open to individuals with a range of criminal histories, though not everyone is automatically accepted.
“You have to be ready for this program too,” Geffen said, noting that safety considerations are always a priority.
“If someone has returned from serving time for a serious offense and still appears unstable, we will not bring them into the program. I believe you have to be ready for this program as well.”
According to Geffen, the local community has been very positive and supportive of the restaurant. The challenge for the organization is that it gets its funding mostly from outside donors.
“When George Floyd was murdered, we saw huge amounts of money coming in internationally to Minnesota,” Geffen said. “Now, it’s started to wear off.
“What’s hard about a nonprofit in the United States, we rely on philanthropy. We rely on the nation”
While not every fellow has a happy ending and some face setbacks, the organization has helped several people successfully to has helped several people successfully reintegrate into civilian life after incarceration. According to the organization’s social impact report, for every dollar donated to All Square there is a projected $3.03 in social value generated through improved earnings, health and agency.
Two years ago, the organization even launched a program that allows inmates to receive legal degrees upon re-entry into society.
“Our organization has the first four currently incarcerated law students in the United States,” Geffen said. “They’re in prison and they zoom into law school every day.
“We started with two, two years ago, and they’re halfway through their studies. They did great.”
