ROCHESTER, N.Y. — What happens after those incarcerated in New York are released from prison?

Their ability to step back into society in the healthiest of ways can come down to what they learn while they serve their time. A Rochester-area company educates the incarcerated by delivering educational content to women and men preparing for the next step in their journey.

“Years past, we were never correcting anything," said Tony Lowden, vice president of reintegration and community engagement at ViaPath Technologies. "We were never correcting anybody's behavior. We were just warehousing folks. But by the same token, we should look at ways of giving our sons and our daughters another opportunity to get back on their feet.”

ViaPath Technologies officials say they understand how difficult it may be for those incarcerated to be educated while serving time.

“I grew up in a neighborhood in North Philadelphia, one of the worst ghettos in America," said Lowden. "And most of the men and women in my family have been in and out of prison. So I got involved and it beat me like a bug. And I realized that I was called to do something about it.”

ViaPath is providing tablets within correctional facilities with the goal of setting incarcerated persons on a different path when they are released.

“We're in 64 of the largest local facilities in the nation," Lowden said. "We're in all 50 states in the nation. We have over 32 State Department of Corrections contracts. We have over 250,000 tablets deployed. And that number is growing constantly across the nation.”

Lowden emphasizes that this can benefit society as a whole.

“You leave no man behind," he said. "And so we have to get to the point in our nation that we don't throw people away and no one is disposable.”

Partnering with the Rochester company CypherWorx, an educational learning course assists incarcerated individuals in receiving an education.

“Many of them didn't even finish high school, you know, dropped out in seventh or eighth grade," said Paul Cypher, CEO of CypherWorx. "And what we're trying to do is make sure with this new site that what's really important is you want to get people at the time they most need to help.”

They're offering a variety of lessons and life skills to help get people back on their feet when they reintegrate into society.

“It was really important to us that we focus on that first," Cypher said. "So we have almost 100 courses and in those kinds of basic skills to just be able to be prepared to be a functioning person in society.”

Each incarcerated individual is walked step-by-step through each course.

“A person who was in the Yorba Linda, California, jail system, who's just finished their GED and just got a job," said Cypher. "And they started the GED while they were in the prison system. They finished it afterward.”

There is excitement for the future of not only the students, but what's in store for the company.

“We're going to be launching a new site that has recorded lectures from multiple colleges, from Khan Academy and others," Cypher said. "And then we're working with a third party provider of online high school so that people who don't want to just get their GED, but want to actually get a high school diploma from their state, can do that while they're incarcerated.”

They're hoping to not only change the prison systems on the inside, but the outlook of others on the outside.

“We have some people that have done some really, really mean things and they're going to be in prison for life," said Lowden. "But the majority of the people, 95% of the people in our prisons and jails are going to come home one day. So we have to ask ourselves as a nation, how do we want them to come home?”