2022

Document Tag: 2022

Building Second Chances: Tools for Local Reentry Coalitions

Building Second Chances: Tools for Local Reentry Coalitions is a comprehensive toolkit for reentry coalition leaders and local city, county, and community leaders who want to play an active role in improving reentry policy, practice, and outcomes. This toolkit will help you to take stock of how best to improve outcomes for people leaving prison and jail. It will help you evaluate your current reentry efforts and map out the future of reentry for your community. The toolkit has user-friendly references to seminal publications, research findings, and noteworthy examples to give you the knowledge and skills to design new and reinvigorate existing reentry strategies.

Theme: Community Integration

This web-based resource shares personal experiences and insights from returning individuals about their transition related to community reintegration, securing housing, mental health services, substance use disorder treatment, employment, healthcare, family reunification support. The conversations, a unique partnership between American Institutes for Research (AIR) and JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA), featured a series of facilitated group discussions with individuals returning to the community from across the United States that occurred between August and October 2022. In the final segment of the group discussions, the topic turned to each person’s experiences with integration into their community. This segment was an opportunity for the participants to reflect on the reasons they have been successful as well as to identify the kinds of supportive services they felt were missing that would have been helpful. We also invited the participants to share whether they experienced any barriers related to a sense of stigma associated with their convictions. Here we present a series of themes that emerged from the participants’ collective responses. Each theme (a bulleted statement in boldface) is supported by direct quotes from the participants.

Take Charge of Your Future: Get the Education and Training You Need

The updated version of the Take Charge of Your Future guide provides an overview of the current education and training landscape to help target audience make informed decisions about their next steps in a career pathway. It includes tips for finding community resources and profiles of and advice from formerly incarcerated individuals about the importance of education and training in their lives.

Building Effective Partnerships with Continuums of Care to Increase Housing Options for People Leaving Prisons and Jails

To connect people in reentry with housing, an essential first step for corrections agencies is to engage with their Continuum of Care, charged by HUD to prioritize people for HUD-funded homeless assistance on a community level.

This webinar provides strategies for corrections leaders and staff to build these relationships, with a focus on establishing buy-in to serve a shared population and implementing community-wide prioritization and referral processes.

The webinar also features presentations from communities that have successfully built partnerships across the criminal justice and housing/homeless assistance systems to increase housing opportunities for people reentering.

Theme: Housing

This web-based resource shares personal experiences and insights from returning individuals about their transition related to community reintegration, securing housing, mental health services, substance use disorder treatment, employment, healthcare, and family reunification support. The conversations, a unique partnership between American Institutes for Research (AIR) and JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA), featured a series of facilitated group discussions with individuals returning to the community from across the United States that occurred between August and October 2022.

The Hidden Costs of Reentry: Understanding the Barriers to Removing a Criminal Record

NIJ hosted a webinar to discuss under-researched aspects of reentry: expungement of criminal records and the impact of those records. This webinar includes a presentation of ongoing research projects examining the impact of legal aid for expungement and past research projects studying the accuracy and permanency of criminal records and the prevalence of collateral consequences of conviction. A Q&A session will conclude this webinar. Video Run Time: 1 hr., 29 mins.

Veterans Reentry Programming

They were veterans before they were incarcerated individuals. That is the sentiment and approach to veterans reentry of Sharon Kirkpatrick, member of the Washington Women Veterans Advisory Committee. Upon meeting with a veteran for the first time, she begins by acknowledging their military service, both because she honors their sacrifice and because the veterans need to hear and embrace these words for themselves. Helping veterans understand that they are more than their criminal charge is the first step to helping them see beyond their current circumstances and guiding them along the path of reentry.

Understanding the Intersection of Homelessness and Justice Involvement: Enhancing Veteran Suicide Prevention Through VA Programming

The VA currently has several programs focused on enhancing care for homeless and justice-involved veterans, many of which currently incorporate suicide prevention initiatives. Understanding of factors that may impact health service delivery of suicide risk assessment and intervention may be beneficial in order to enhance veteran suicide prevention efforts.

Jail-based reentry programming to support continued treatment with medications for opioid use disorder: Qualitative perspectives and experiences among jail staff in Massachusetts

Individuals with opioid use disorder released to communities after incarceration experience an elevated risk for overdose death. Massachusetts is the first state to mandate county jails to deliver all FDA approved medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). The present study considered perspectives around coordination of post-release care among jail staff engaged in MOUD programs focused on coordination of care to the community.

Current and Innovative Practices in Reducing Staff Trauma and Organizational Stress in Corrections for Correctional Officers

This webinar will present the findings from a two-year cooperative agreement with NIC and national correctional stakeholders. Presenters will share current and best practices and propose innovative solutions to reduce correctional staff trauma and organizational stress in U.S. jail and prison settings based on the findings from a scoping review and national survey.