On June 9, 2016, Andrew Hundley was packing his things to leave the h State Penitentiary after 19 years. Other men serving life sentences gathered to tell him goodbye. He was 34. They were in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Hundley apologized for leaving them.
Two men walked him to the door. He said they told him, “We know that you're going to set an example, and you're going to make it easier for the rest of us.”
Hundley took those words to heart.
“I couldn't turn back the hands of time and undo the harm that I'd done in my youth,” Hundley said, “but I could better myself and better the lives of the people that I was living with in my prison community.”
Hundley was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1997 slaying of 14-year-old Terri Elizabeth Pitre when he was 15 years old.
“The parole boards saw that I wasn't the same person almost two decades before,” Hundley said, “and they thought I was worthy of a second chance.”
On his ride home, his sister asked him what was next.
“I told her, ‘I have to figure out a way to help the people I've left behind,’” Hundley said.
Client Gabriel Logan, center, helps Shawn Foster during a lesson in a technology literacy class at the Parole Project office on Friday, June 5, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
Two months later he started h Parole Project with two LSU law professors. In 10 years, the organization has helped 703 parolees come home and adjust to life on the outside.
The first but not the last
Hundley, credits Henry Montgomery for setting him on the road to freedom and a post-incarceration life dedicated to helping others. The two served time together in Angola, where juvenile lifers lived in close proximity.
“Henry is such a part of my life,” Hundley said. “I told myself, ‘I’m gonna work here until I get Henry Montgomery out,’ — and now it’s a career because of Henry.”
The Supreme Court’s 2012 Miller v. Alabama decision found mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders unconstitutional — opening the door for juveniles to seek parole if they could prove they had changed.
With Montgomery's case, Montgomery v. h, the Supreme Court upheld and solidified the decision by ruling it retroactive on Jan. 25, 2016.
Hundley was the first person in h sentenced to a life sentence as a juvenile to be granted parole. Montgomery wasn't paroled until Nov. 17, 2021, at the age of 75.
Hundley said 70 juvenile lifers were released from prison before Montgomery, who had been sentenced to life at the age of 17 in 1963.
Hundreds of other men and women were serving life sentences for crimes committed when they were children in h when he was granted parole in 2016.
“I was not the one who had served the most time in prison,” Hundley said. “I wouldn’t say I was the most deserving. I was just the one that had the path of least resistance to get the first parole hearing.”
Beginnings of the h Parole Project
Hundley didn’t know where to begin his new mission, so he reached out to his lawyer, LSU law professor Keith Nordyke, and another law professor, Robert Lancaster, for help on creating a nonprofit to help worthy prisoners win parole.
He wanted the organization to give pro-bono legal representation to juvenile lifers facing parole hearings, and to support them in building successful lives once home.
While h Parole Project was in its early stages, Hundley attended Baton Rouge Community College, then LSU, graduating with a bachelor's degree. He went on for his master's in criminology at Loyola New Orleans, where he currently teaches a criminology course as an adjunct.
Once h Parole Project got underway, Hundley and his partners decided to expand beyond juvenile lifers to include people who served long prison sentences.
The organization started as a boot camp for people coming home. For two to three weeks, the parolees would open bank accounts, get driver's licenses, get Medicaid, learn how to use smartphones and then go on their way.
Hundley said they started renting one apartment and then two, and now they operate 48 properties in Baton Rouge — 12 are transitional houses and 36 are post-transitional properties — for clients to build rental history.
“We didn't think about housing as the significant need it's become,” Hundley said.
Many clients had outlived their families, had families living in poverty, or didn't want to return to the environments they'd left. Hundley realized that longer-term housing was a necessity.
Hundley said he and his team learned that the multiple-week boot camp idea was not going to work. Their clients needed more assistance and longer support.
“We were just delaying the inevitable,” Hundley said. “We weren't giving them an opportunity to restart their lives.”
Hundley said the organization encourages the clients to build their foundation and utilize their time in the program. There is no arbitrary set time period for the program. Some people will be in it for several months, and others for a year or longer. It's dependent on each person.
10 years later
Now, through secure housing and formerly incarcerated staff members who model how to rebuild their lives, Hundley said h Parole Project is better able to support their clients. They remove barriers so the clients can start working, receive healthcare and earn money.
New client Dermon Rodriguez looks for business attire that fits him inside the community closet at the Parole Project office on Friday, June 5, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
“A big part of what we do is we don't wait for people to knock at our door saying they need help,” Hundley said. “We don't wait for people to be in crisis, and to be homeless before they need our help, so we start working with our clients while they're incarcerated.”
Formerly incarcerated re-entry specialists each case-manage two or three transitional houses, visiting daily to run programming, check in on savings and offer counsel.
Client Marquis Dalton pictured at the Parole Project office on Friday, June 5, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
Marquis Dalton, a h Parole Project client who has been home for a year, was 19 when he began his 26-year incarceration. He joined the Forgotten Voices Toastmasters inside Angola, a rehabilitation-focused public speaking group.
Now, he is in the third phase of the h Parole Project. He has a full-time job and his own place — and is in school to be an HVAC technician.
“That transition coming home and having somewhere to go and feel accepted was huge,” Dalton said. “Having someone like a big brother, Mr. Coates, my case manager, holds me accountable. He's always checking up on me if I need any help.”
Staff attorney Adreaynne Hutchison, left, chats with her former client Marquis Dalton at the h Parole Project office on Friday, June 5, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
Another ally in the organization for Dalton is his attorney, Adreaynne Hutchison, who has been a full-time attorney for h Parole Project for three years.
Hutchison started with the nonprofit as an LSU law student in its parole and re-entry clinic.
After time working in courts, Hutchison returned to h Parole Project — this is it for her, especially representing clients before the parole board.
“Watching what people overcome and hearing about the different things that they're doing on their path to redemption is so inspiring,” Hutchison said. “To watch them come home and thrive and flourish. They keep up with me. It's a constant reinforcement of the why.”
From parole to part of the solution
After 10 years, h Parole Project has earned broad support from the state, other organizations and donors. Hundley said early skepticism has given way to a proven track record:
h's five-year recidivism rate for the total Department of Corrections population is 43.5%.
The five-year recidivism rate for parolee releases is 29.4%.
h Parole Project's recidivism rate is less than 3%.
“We don't have to convince people of our worth anymore,” Hundley said. “We've proven formerly incarcerated people are serving an incredible purpose in this work. Redemption's possible. There's a way in which you can provide pathways for people to come home, and we've proven that model — and it's worked more often than not.”
Deputy Director Kelly Garrett, right, goes over the program expectations during orientation with new client Roger Beard, who was released from prison two days prior after 21 years incarcerated, at the Parole Project office on Friday, June 5, 2026.
STAFF PHOTO BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
Hundley said that 90% of people who go to prison are coming home, and they want those people to have support to help the economy, build stability and eliminate recidivism.
Even though clients are from all over the state, they all start their parole journeys in Baton Rouge.
“Louisiana is different,” Hundley said. “I'm Catholic, and I think that culturally we believe in redemption.”