BOSTON REENTRY INITIATIVE (MA)

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Program Description
In the summer of 2000, the Boston Police Department, in partnership with the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department, developed the Boston Reentry Initiative (BRI) to focus its reentry resources on inmates who pose a public safety risk to the communities that they will reenter. This community-wide project involves the collaborative efforts of social service providers, faith-based organizations, and other law enforcement agencies. Using a public safety and social service strategy, the BRI seeks to prevent high-risk former prisoners from reoffending through comprehensive and effective transitional resources as well as through increased vigilance in monitoring their reentry process. The BRI communicates to offenders that there are resources and services in the community available to them and that they will be held accountable for their own actions. Central to the strategy is direct communication with high-risk prisoners soon after their commitment to the House of Corrections, when they are given the message that there are institutional programs and community resources that can aid their successful reintegration, but that they will also be held accountable for staying away from further criminal activity. The Initiative is modeled after a noteworthy program begun in the early 1990s by the police department called Operation Ceasefire, which targets high-risk and gang-affiliated individuals in Boston.

The BRI specifically targets inmates who are between the ages of 17 and 34 and are considered high risk for continuing their involvement in crime. The Boston Police Department's Gang Intelligence Unit identifies offenders entering the Suffolk County House of Corrections whom they feel are high-risk offenders and makes recommendations about who should be enrolled in the program. These individuals typically have an extensive criminal background, a history of violence, affiliation with firearms and gangs, and will return to communities that are designated as high-crime areas. A final list of 15-20 inmates is vetted each month with other law enforcement partners, particularly the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office and the U.S. Attorney's Office. Inmates who are actively being prosecuted on other cases, which may be unrelated to the convicted offenses for which they are serving time, who have immigration issues that will likely lead to their deportation, or who will be transferred to another correctional facility to serve additional time after they complete their current sentence at the House of Corrections are excluded from the program. In January 2003, the BRI also began including similarly identified inmates incarcerated with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections who are close to parole or sentence completion and who are returning to the Greater Boston area. Through a cooperative agreement, these state DOC inmates are transferred to the Suffolk County House of Corrections and participate in the Initiative.

Within 45 days of entering the facility, program participants begin working on a transition accountability plan and attend one of the Initiative's monthly community panel sessions. During the panels, representatives from law enforcement agencies, social service providers, and faith-based organizations form a semi-circle and sit across from 10-20 inmate participants. Each of the panel members addresses the inmates from the unique perspective of his/ her own organization: social service and faith-based organization representatives discuss the resources and support that they can provide to help them transition, both while they are in the prison and post-release; and prosecutors, police, probation, and parole officers discuss the consequences that await them if they are caught recommitting crimes upontheir return to their neighborhoods. Collectively, the panel members convey a unified message that the inmates have the power to choose their own destiny. Also, the panel serves to remind the inmates that they are not doing their time anonymously, and that information on their criminal histories, current incarceration, and planned release dates are shared among law enforcement agencies and with some community agencies.

Following the panel, inmates are assigned caseworkers and faith-based mentors from the community, who begin working with them immediately in the prison setting. Enrollments in education, substance abuse, and other institutional programs are coordinated as part of their transitional accountability plans. On the day of release, the institution arranges for either a family member or a mentor to meet them at the door. The returning prisoners are encouraged to continue to work with their caseworkers, mentors, and social service providers during their reentry periods. For those inmates who leave the prison on conditional supervision, the supervising agency is asked to incorporate participation in the BRI as part of their conditions of release.

Program Goals
The Boston Reentry Initiative's overall goal is to enhance public safety for the Greater Boston area by targeting limited reentry resources on the most serious and potentially dangerous offenders. Success is defined both in assisting these high-risk former offenders to transition successfully into their communities as well as in apprehending those offenders who do commit criminal actions sooner and, hopefully, at less serious offense levels. Objectives to support these goals include: developing a coordinated and continuum of treatment and transitional assistance that begins at the House of Corrections and continues post-release, which involves community-based providers, and coordinating law enforcement and public safety resources to knit together the most effective post-release supervision plans.

Networking, Partnering & Collaboration
The Boston Reentry Initiative builds on the foundation of interagency and community partnerships that have contributed to a decrease in crime and improvement in the quality of life in Boston for the past decade. The founding partners of this Initiative – the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department – have reached out and developed partnerships with other law enforcement agencies to help identify the most serious offenders, collaborate to provide effective and coordinated post-release supervision whenever possible, and to prosecute vigorously BRI-identified inmates who commit new offenses. Partners include the state Department of Probation, the state Department of Corrections, the Parole Board, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, and the U. S. Attorney General's Office. BRI also collaborates with community-based and government agency partners, faith-based organizations, local one-stop career centers, health commissions, community colleges, half-way house operators, and, in the case of child support, the state Department of Revenue.

Outcomes
The Boston Police and Suffolk County Sheriff's Departments monitor progress toward specific program-related performance measures. In the summer of 2002, the Boston Police evaluated the records of the 152 inmates who had participated in the 12 panels scheduled between April 2001 and May 2002. At the time of the study, 114 of these individuals had actually left the House of Corrections. Of this number, 42 percent had been rearrested. (Note that these re-arrest figures should not be compared to general recidivism rates, but to rearrest rates for other high-risk groups.) Ninety-two of the 114 offenders remained actively involved in the program; 37 percent of this group had been rearrested. By contrast, 22 of the 114 released offenders dropped out of the program and 64 percent of this group were rearrested. Further, in comparing the types of crimes committed, those BRI-identified offenders who remained active with the program committed crimes with few incidences of gun involvement and drug distribution activity. The Boston Police Department has updated statistics and reported that out of those BRI-identified offenders who have been released from the House of Corrections, and are considered active in the program (89) 58 percent had no arrests and 18 percent had a violent/ serious arrest. For BRI participants identified as non-compliant, meaning no active participation in the program (36), 39 percent had no arrests and 36 percent of this group had violent/serious arrests. Finally, of those identified as less active or inactive in the program (59), 51 percent had no arrests and 25 percent had violent/serious arrests.

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