OFFENDER REENTRY PROGRAM (MA)

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Program Description

The Suffolk County and Hampden County Sheriffs' Departments have collaborated to develop and implement an Offender Reentry Program (ORP) under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Correctional Education. The Departments administer two of the largest correctional centers in New England, accounting for more than 25 percent of the total number of prisoners released in Massachusetts. The Suffolk County House of Correction is a 2,000-bed facility located in Boston; the Hampden County House of Correction is a 1,600-bed facility located in the western part of the state in the town of Ludlow. In addition to these facilities, the Departments also run county jails and community correction centers.

The Hampden and Suffolk County Sheriff’s Departments’ Offender Reentry Programs consist of five major elements:

• A program located in a community setting that enrolls carefully selected inmates who have nearly completed their sentences;
• A 30-hour four to six week life skills program incorporating cognitive skills, workforce readiness, and basic education skills instruction that is supplemented by substance abuse and other treatment programming;
• Extensive pre- and post-release case management services to address the multiple issues that serve as reentry barriers, including identification cards, housing, transportation, child support, and health that begins pre-release;
• Integration with the local workforce development system and its primary service providers, including one-stop career centers, community colleges, and nonprofit social service providers for workforce readiness, job placement, and job retention support; and
• Mentoring services provided by faith-based organizations and retirees to help returning prisoners make the cultural and social adjustment between confinement and community settings.

Program Goals
The Offender Reentry Program aims to provide academic, vocational, and transitional support and services to inmates before and upon release.

Networking, Partnering & Collaboration
The Offender Reentry Program was created as a collaborative between Massachusetts’ two largest sheriff’s departments. While each department runs its own extensive community correction programs, they chose to partner with one another in order to glean lessons from comparing programs, which serve geographically and ethnically different inmate populations. In developing the program in each site, the
departments also chose to partner with a variety of local community-based social service providers. The Hampden County Sheriff’s Department’s lead collaborator is the Corporation for Public Management, which provides job readiness and job placement programs for special needs populations such as welfare recipients and migrant farm workers.

As part of the program, they introduce participants to the one-stop career centers in Holyoke and Springfield. They also contract with local retirees—many
who come from public safety careers such as fire fighting—to serve as mentors. Finally, they place interested and qualified program participants in a community-service oriented construction-training program run by the Sheriff’s Department. In Boston, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department’s lead partner agency is Bunker Hill Community College, which runs the program out of the Sheriff’s Department’s new community correction center. Administratively, the college provides the program director, information technology support, and fiscal operations for the grant.

Programmatically, instructors from the college provide life skills, computer skills, and basic education preparation. The Workplace, a one-stop career center in Boston, provides job readiness, placement, and support for the inmates in the ORP. Community Resources for Justice, a nonprofit social service agency, manages several pre-release centers and provides a case manager for the ORP. Finally, The Ella J. Baker House, a faith-based nonprofit organization, provides mentoring services to the inmates in the program. Often, the mentors from Baker House were formerly incarcerated themselves. Their role is to provide a model of success to the ORP inmates as well as provide support and encouragement to them.

Outcomes

Both sheriff's departments are collaborating with the Harvard based National Center for Study of Adult Learning and Literacy to evaluate the program.

Early findings from the Suffolk Offender Reentry Program:

•  Program graduates recidivated 20 percentage points less than a constructed comparison group.

•  Inmates enrolled in the ORP who did not graduate (e.g., disciplinary problem, parole violation) recidivated ten percentage points less.

(Similar analysis is soon to be conducted for the Hampden program.)

Early findings from the Hampden Offender Reentry Program:

•  The average wage earned by participants in the program was $8.27 per hour.

•  85 percent of the participants remained working for 30 days after the program, 65 percent remained working for 60 days after the program, and 45 percent remained working for 90 days after the program.

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