SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — As the lawmakers and leaders of Project Prison Reset’s task force consider how to help guide the future of corrections in South Dakota, Steve Harrison of Harrisburg, S.D. and Ryan Vanden Hoek of Sioux Falls, S.D. have stepped up to the microphone at the group’s public meetings.

“Consider the success stories,” Harrison said at the April 3 meeting in Sioux Falls. “I’m here sitting today, two and a half years out of prison, and I just, not boasting but just saying, I would consider myself a success story.”

“I would just encourage and implore all of the members of this committee that if the decision is made to eventually build a new facility or to repurpose existing buildings, whatever the case may be, that vocational training and mentorship be towards the very top of the list of what is given priority to and what money is being allocated to,” Vanden Hoek said at the task force’s April 29 meeting in Springfield, S.D.

The two friends share a formative experience: significant time incarcerated that began in their teenage years. The now 43-year-old Vanden Hoek was behind bars from age 16 to 40, and the now 41-year-old Harrison was incarcerated from age 18 to 39.

“So much of my life was changed and formed inside a prison system,” Harrison said about speaking in front of the task force. “I gained maturity while there, so I felt like it was important. I felt like I was called to go and just speak up on behalf of those who are sometimes voiceless.”

“Was there a positive effect on me being in prison? There absolutely was,” Vanden Hoek said. “But were there many hard, hard lessons from being in there for so long and the things that my family had to endure and I had to endure, absolutely.”

They’re each now on active parole. They’re also launching a show which will soon appear on YouTube and Facebook called “Unconfined Conversations with Ryan & Steve.”

“Incarceration in one part, but also this transition to normal free life and just helping promote that conversation about resources about things that have helped us and really just kind of pointing people in the right direction,” Harrison said.

“The purpose of Unconfined Conversations is to be able to shed light on issues regarding incarceration and corrections, focusing mostly on the men and women who have experienced that in their lives and the things that go along with that such as PTSD, such as mental health issues, family dynamics that are affected through incarceration,” Vanden Hoek said.

For someone who hasn’t spent time behind bars, the days and weeks and months and years spent there can seem unimaginable. For Vanden Hoek and Harrison, that was life for more than two decades.

“We served our time, but now we’re out in the community, and we are neighbors and coworkers, and so we want people to just know kind of where it is that we’re coming from and what our life experience has been like within the correction system,” Vanden Hoek said.

“We live by this saying that says don’t just view me as the exception, but rather view me as the example of what it means potentially for a person coming out of the prison system to do things differently,” Harrison said.

Today, they spend time mentoring people who were recently incarcerated. It wasn’t so long ago at all that they were in the same position.

“At the end of the day, when somebody goes to incarceration, what’s your hope when they’re released?” Harrison said. “And that’s some of the help that I’m involved with, my brother Ryan’s involved with.”

And as Project Prison Reset looks at where to recommend construction, Harrison and Vanden Hoek want the task force to bear in mind how inmates are people with futures.

“Parents and friends and loved ones, and I think it’s worth the investment, worth the consideration to really not take that lightly, that this is a responsibility that’s upon this task force, the taxpayers, this administration,” Harrison said.

“Without job training and job experience within the walls, I would not be where I am today,” Vanden Hoek said.

There is life beyond a prison sentence; just ask them.

“Whether that’s job training, whether that’s skills training, whether that’s self-help classes, whether that’s therapy, whatever it may be, that absolutely has to be part of the decision-making process as well,” Vanden Hoek said.

In their professional careers, Vanden Hoek works with welding and truck accessory installation, while Harrison is a ministry coordinator.