Although it is critical that corrections agencies focus on community-based strategies prior to an individual's release, they should not attempt to act alone on these principles by independently creating the services inside correctional facilities to prepare people for release. Similarly, they should not attempt to repair or build the supports that a community needs to receive people released from prison or jail.

Corrections administrators should not direct their limited resources, for example, toward the development of a better mental health treatment system that is based inside their institutions; nor should they undertake an independent endeavor to build new housing for people released from prison. Such attempts could in fact exacerbate existing problems: policymakers and communities would be forced to rely even more heavily on state and county departments of corrections to mend families, provide health and treatment services, and develop available housing. Furthermore, resources would likely be directed away from other providers of these services. Accordingly, corrections administrators should channel this commitment to improve people's re-entry into efforts to engage partners in the community.

Only by working with community-based organizations that historically have worked in the targeted neighborhoods and have expertise providing particular services-- such as job training or family counseling--can corrections administrators effectively enable communities to receive people released from prison or jail. By the same token, corrections administrators should seek ways to bring community-based service providers into their institutions--as opposed to creating new positions inside the facilities--to build capacity in communities, which typically are unequipped to meet the complex and extensive needs of returning prisoners.

Example: Community-Oriented Reentry, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections

The Community-Oriented Reentry (CORE) program seeks to provide continuity of treatment by systemically linking participants to services in the community that augment the services provided within the institution. Reentry Management Teams--comprising institutional staff, community agencies staff, treatment staff, family members, faith-based organizations, and volunteers--work with CORE Coordinators to assess participant needs and develop individual re-entry plans prior to release. The teams share information and coordinate service delivery. The program is overseen by a Reentry Steering Committee, which is made up of officials at both the state and local levels whose organizations have the highest stakes in offenders' success in the community.

Determining whether such community/corrections partnerships exist (and, if so, to what extent) should enable state and local government officials to gauge, in part, whether the culture in each of the agencies and organizations that they fund is conducive to safe and successful prisoner re-entry. Meaningful relationships in which points of contact and protocols are formally established are likely to demonstrate commitment to shared goals regarding re-entry.

Developing such partnerships can be a complex and risky endeavor for corrections and community organizations alike. Plunging into communities where there are complex and ever-shifting alliances among local elected officials and advocates, as well as various understaffed organizations competing fiercely for too few resources, can be extremely challenging. State government officials who have little experience working with community-based organizations may find it difficult to determine which groups are most likely to become effective, reliable partners. Indeed, corrections administrators frequently emerge from such experiences somewhat jaded or burned, feeling that they received little for their contract with a community-based organization.

To avoid such experiences, corrections administrators should ask at least these questions when evaluating a potential community-based partner:

What is the organization's ability to collect data and demonstrate the extent to which it has complied with performance indicators established in a contract?

During the course of the contract period and at the end of the contract period, corrections administrators should receive various reports from the community-based organization. These reports should explain the outputs generated pursuant to the contract, such as the number of people screened, the number of people referred for services, or the number of people who failed to appear for an appointment. Without such information, corrections administrators will be hard-pressed to ensure any accountability.

To what extent do the services and service delivery system provided by the community-based organization adhere to an existing evidence base?

Corrections administrators should confirm that the services provided by the community-based organization in question are evidence-based; that is, they are consistent with specific treatments and services shown to improve a person's ability to function in the community. (For more on evidence-based practices, see Policy Statement 4, Funding a Re-Entry Initiative, Recommendation a.) For example, if the potential partner is to serve people with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health disorders, are mental health and substance abuse treatment services appropriately integrated? (See Policy Statement 11, Mental Health Care, for more on coordinating or integrating mental health care and substance abuse treatment.) When no evidence base is present, policymakers or administrators should not invest significant resources in an initiative, as it may not achieve desired goals.

What is the financial health of the organization, and how diverse are its sources of revenue?

Corrections administrators should seek in potential partners a degree of financial stability and evidence that the organization is not overly dependent on one source of revenue in particular. When a corrections agency does partner with an organization that is particularly cash-starved or overwhelmingly focused on serving one funder, employees may be more likely to neglect their responsibilities to people released from prison or jail. Staff of such organizations may feel obligated to focus on their primary, or traditional, functions and clients, rather than the particularly hard to serve individuals or individuals in need of additional time and resources that typically comprise this population.

Does the organization demonstrate a willingness to serve people who are incarcerated or who have criminal records?

As illustrated in this and subsequent sections of the Report, incarceration and criminal records present unique challenges to a person's recovery, employment, and housing, as well as to the general delivery of services. Two such examples include the complex processes governing the enrollment in federal benefit programs, such as Medicaid; and local, state, or federal laws and regulations prohibiting employment of people with criminal records in certain employment sectors. Issues particular to this population may also arise from a person's adjustment from living in a secure institution with a highly structured routine to the relatively unstructured independence of living in the community. Administrators of criminal justice agencies should include in Requests for Proposals that they issue questions about the applying organization's plans to overcome these and other obstacles that people released from prison will face.

Community-based organizations that meet the above criteria are not common or easily identifiable. As indicated earlier, corrections administrators may be inclined to address this problem by increasing the capacity of their own departments to serve this population, but such a response will further obligate corrections administrators to serve people who cannot get such supports from the community. Instead, state and local government organizations should encourage corrections administrators to pursue several strategies to enable existing community-based organizations to serve people who are incarcerated or released from prison or jail.

First, corrections administrators should develop relationships with leaders in the community. Getting to know local elected officials, ministers, advocates, and leaders of grassroots organizations may help to mitigate the distrust that many people living in the communities that are affected by prisoner re-entry feel toward corrections officials and criminal justice system representatives in general. These relationships, in turn, will provide corrections administrators with valuable intelligence about which potential partners have the most credibility with different constituency groups in the community. Such intelligence sometimes reveals that organizations led by people quoted most often in the media or who have been the most effective in courting policymakers do not necessarily speak for large segments of the community. It also provides valuable insights about which service-based organizations are most respected and effective in the community.

Example: Leadership Rhode Island and Rhode Island Department of Corrections

Leadership Rhode Island identifies neighborhood leaders--from government, service providers, and large and small businesses--and provides them with on-site, experiential exposure to community issues, including criminal justice and re-entry issues. Partnering with Leadership Rhode Island, the Department of Corrections (DOC) invites neighborhood leaders to tour the state's correctional facilities to help overcome common public assumptions and fear towards prisoners and the impact their release will have on the community. Simultaneously, these tours serve to demystify the operation of the correctional facilities and the motives of their administrators which, in turn, enables community leaders to start thinking about how they might play a role in the re-entry process. DOC administrators use this opportunity not only to increase awareness of corrections in the community, but also to develop relationships with viable community partners.

Second, corrections administrators should review their procurement policies to make sure that they do not inadvertently favor large organizations, many of which have already established a relationship with the department of corrections or another government agency. To do this, corrections administrators should seek references from other state agencies such as state departments of mental health, which are familiar with service providers in their particular fields and can reach them with Requests for Proposals, as well as help their corrections counterparts to evaluate applicants. Administrators should tap into multi-purpose community resources to aggressively seek proposals from community-based organizations, as opposed to posting Requests for Proposals in limited trade journals, which target a small circle of established organizations. This outreach should be conducted in partnership with community leaders with an invested stake in improving collaboration between service providers and corrections.

Example: Sheridan Correctional Center, Illinois Department of Corrections

In January 2004, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) held bidders' conferences in neighborhoods to which high numbers of prisoners return to inform community-based agencies of the opportunity to provide services in the newly opened Sheridan Correctional Center, a substance abuse treatment facility located 70 miles southwest of Chicago. Led by a DOC representative, meetings held in community centers, churches, and school gyms were intended to teach service providers about the proper contents of a proposal and the procedure for submission. A DOC contact person coordinated with directors of community-based agencies to publicize the bidders' conferences.

Third, corrections administrators should facilitate community-based organizations' access to prisons and jails without compromising the security of those institutions. Corrections is by nature an insular industry, and the need to maintain control, accountability, and security can be used to indiscriminately justify actions that make institutions, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible to people who do not work for the department of corrections.

The transparency and accessibility of institutions depends on the management of the department of corrections. Clear, concise, logical, and consistently applied policies should facilitate access to the institution by people such as volunteers or representatives of community-based groups or organizations interested in touring the correctional facilities. Corrections staff should be friendly, courteous, professional, and welcoming. Staff should also provide an orientation to civilians who will be coming to the institution regularly. Such an orientation should include the need for security measures, an overview of facility rules and evacuation procedures, and several potential scenarios visitors may encounter.

However thorough this orientation, culture clashes between staff protecting the security of the institutions and staff committed to serving inmates who are among their target populations should be expected. Accordingly, leaders of both the corrections agency and organization sending people into the institution should establish a relationship to work out problems that inevitably will arise in the future. It also may be wise to identify a liaison at each organization who can help to diffuse tensions or negotiate solutions when problems arise.

While corrections administrators should seek to make the walls of an institution more porous in these respects, basic security measures must remain the top priority and should govern all policies regarding people visiting the facility or working inside it, whether or not they are an employee of the corrections system. For example, anyone who provides services in a correctional facility (whether employed by corrections or a community-based provider) should be checked periodically for criminal history and personal relationships with inmates. Notably, however, volunteers or service providers seeking access to the institution may include some people who have criminal records. Having personal experience behind bars can make individuals especially effective in working with inmates; such a record should not automatically ban someone from the institution. In such cases, corrections staff should seek evidence that the person's return to the community has been successful, that they have abandoned prior criminal activity, and that they will conform to the security procedures established for the institution.

Fourth, corrections administrators should cultivate community-based organizations' commitment to serving people who are incarcerated or have been recently released from prison or jail by highlighting the rewards and compelling aspects of serving this population. Several important arguments could prompt a service provider who may have been focused only on the headaches and risks that come with serving prisoners or released individuals to rethink his or her position and appreciate how serving this population relates to his or her self-interest.

Community service providers may already be serving people with criminal records without realizing it.

Corrections administrators should highlight that an extraordinary overlap exists between people who are incarcerated and populations that abuse drugs, suffer from mental illness, and are unemployed or homeless.

Service providers may be able to deliver substantially the same services to the individuals who need them--including treating, training, or educating people--by making a few modifications to accommodate the corrections setting or (for people who have been released) supervision conditions. With so many people in jail or prison or on probation or parole--1 in 32 adults in the country at the end of 2002--returning to a few concentrated communities, providers in those communities are very likely to be serving significant numbers of releasees, whether they recognize them as such or not. ^[2]  

The corrections and community collaboration provides valuable leverage to promote compliance with treatment and engagement with services such as employment.

When delivering services within institutions, community-based organizations can take advantage of the structured environment to engage individuals who might otherwise be difficult to engage. Employers seeking ways to keep workers drug-free or ensure that they arrive at work on time will find valuable allies among probation or parole officers who can hold individuals accountable for their release conditions. Similarly, health providers trying to minimize the number of no-shows each week can report a probationer or parolee who has skipped an appointment to his or her supervising officer--action that is particularly likely to get a person's attention.

Contracts to community-based organizations for service to people who are incarcerated could be awarded on the condition that providers continue to serve people upon their release.

Corrections administrators should consider including continued service to individuals after release as a condition of contracts with community-based organizations for the provision of services within the correctional facility. Such a condition could not only help to attract contract organizations committed to serving people with criminal records, but also promote continuity of care for release. Awarding contracts to these organizations could also help to build capacity in the community and awareness among service providers of the issues facing people leaving prison and jail.

Technology may provide cost-effective solutions to connecting individuals in prison and jail to community-based services.

With teleconferencing and video technology, community-based service providers can play a part in serving prisoners without incurring the high costs and complications often associated with in-reach. Videoconferencing technology enables a community-based specialist to consult with a person who is incarcerated without either the specialist having to visit the institution, or the prisoner having to be transported and supervised off-site.

Example: Telemedicine Program, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) made a significant commitment to the use of videoconferencing technology in its operations during the 1990s. The Program links the Ohio State University Medical Center (OSUMC) with the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF), Ohio's maximum-security prison, and the Corrections Medical Center, a skilled nursing facility for Ohio's inmates. Since many of Ohio's prisons are located in sparsely populated areas, transporting inmates over considerable distances for evaluation by a medical specialist is both expensive and potentially dangerous. Given the geographic dispersion of facilities and the wide-ranging complexities of its mission, video technology was an obvious choice to enhance the overall efficiency and effectiveness of ODRC staff. Reports indicate that Ohio saves between $200 and $1,000 for each use of telemedicine. ^[3]  

While videoconferencing has been most commonly used in physical health care (see Policy Statement 10, Physical Health Care), some jurisdictions use this technology for parole hearings, particularly to engage victims in the process. Other jurisdictions have used videoconferencing to provide distance education programs in correctional facilities, or to link soon-to-be-released inmates with potential employers.