Tiyana Scarlett carried the weight of her incarceration in silence for years. Released in 2017, she buried her guilt until 2024, when she joined Ritual4Return, a New Jersey program that uses art to help formerly incarcerated people heal.

“It wasn’t until I started the classes at Ritual4Return, that I realized my story actually needed to be heard,” she recalls.

The brainchild of Kevin Bott, a Rutgers University alumnus and NYU-trained theater educator, Ritual4Return’s 14-week program, which alternates between men’s and women’s cohorts, uses drumming, storytelling, and ritual to help participants reclaim their lives — and stories — after incarceration.

[Kevin] Bott says, “The problem is on the other side, when 95% of people are going to come home, there is nothing to re-elevate them.” Tha

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