Resource Documents

By Michelle Tolbert for the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, who supported the development of a correctional education reentry model illustrating an education continuum to bridge the gap between prison and community-based education and training programs. The goal of this model is to ensure that offenders can gain the knowledge and skills needed to obtain long-term, living-wage employment, and transition successfully out of the corrections system.

 

This report makes a number of data-driven findings and issues recommendations for reform.

 

The University of Missouri Extension 4-H LIFE is a positive youth development program created to address the needs of children with incarcerated parents.

 

The guide is meant for officials at probation departments already committed to recidivism reduction, as well as the county and state leaders prompting change.  The 10 steps outlined in the guide help probation officials refocus the agency toward reducing crime and re-offense rates among probationers.

 

This report, prepared by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, was released on September 27, 2012.  The report is written for policymakers, administrators, and service providers committed to improving outcomes for the large number of adults with mental health and substance use disorders that cycle through the criminal justice system.

 

In an effort to lower recidivism, MCORP was designed to increase offender access to critical reentry services in the community such as employment, housing, educational and vocational programming, chemical dependency (CD) treatment, income support, and community support programming (i.e., mentoring, resortative justice circles, and faith-based support).

 

The Children's Program Kit was developed by SAMHSA childhood mental health professionals and covers a wide variety of topics and practical teaching strategies for elementary, middle, and high school children. For a copy of the Children's Program Kit, contact SAMHSA's National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, at P.O. Box 2345, Rockville, MD 20847-2345. Telephone: 1 (800) 729-6686 (English and Spanish) or 1 (800) 487-4889 (TDD). Or, visit SAMHSA's Web site at www.samhsa.gov

 

To gauge the effectiveness of family-support strategies for people in jail, the Close to Home project of the Vera Institute of Justice provided training and technical assistance to staff at three jails in Maryland and Wisconsin. Specifically, Vera piloted facility staff’s use of the Relational Inquiry Tool (RIT)—a series of questions designed to stimulate incarcerated individuals’ thinking about supportive family members as a resource—along with complementary communication techniques intended to help people living in these jails plan for their return to the community. These activities were accompanied by qualitative and quantitative research aimed at gauging participant and staff attitudes toward the work.

 

This glossary is a handbook that contains definitions of terms that cross the domains of criminal justice, health care, and information technology.

 

The CAIS, developed by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), combines: (a) Case Management Classification (CMC); (b) a risk assessment system validated and revalidated in many jurisdictions over the last two decades; (c) a needs assessment that, when combined with CMC and the risk assessment, forms the basis for effective case planning and maximizes the use of available resources; and, (d) a web-based data system that supports the model and provides timely quality control data to supervisors and managers.

 

The purpose of this guidebook is to build consensus around common language for organizing and reporting correctional data.  The guidebook is based on input from correctional education administrators in 12 states - CA, FL, MD, MO, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, PA, TX & VT - February 2006.

 

The US Supreme Court's decision of June 28, 2012, on the Affordable Care Act will affect all Americans, including those in correctional facilities.  In March 2012, the Community Services Division of the National Association of Counties (NACo) completed and produced this issue brief through support of the Public Welfare Foundation. Specifically the brief assesses some of the potential issues and challenges county jail and human services staff may face in terms of enrollment procedures.  The brief also highlights examples of existing county-based enrollment strategies that may be able to serve as models for developing processes to enroll individuals in county jails who become newly eligible for health insurance coverage in 2014.

 

This directory consists of a comprehensive 40 page listing of resources in the Bozeman, Montana community.

 

Today, in Houston, Texas, many factors channel large segments of our population away from productive lives and toward prison. They include illiteracy, poverty, poor health care, domestic violence, mental health issues, teen pregnancy, unemployment, lack of positive role models, truancy and more. The Children’s Defense Fund calls this the Cradle to Prison Pipeline® crisis. The more risk factors young people have, the greater the likelihood they will enter the Pipeline. Once in it, kids are caught in a downward spiral that makes it almost impossible to get out. This report tells the stories of people trying to help them.

 

United States Commission on Civil Rights, Sept 2008 This report focuses on the government’s efforts to enforce federal civil rights laws prohibiting religious discrimination in the administration and management of federal and state prisons.

 

A publication of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the National Academies Press (2007). The resulting analysis contained in this book, emphasizes five broad actions to provide prisoners involved in research with critically important protections: (1) expand the definition of "prisoner"; (2) ensure universally and consistently applied standards of protection; (3) shift from a category-based to a risk-benefit approach to research review; (4) update the ethical framework to include collaborative responsibility; and (5) enhance systematic oversight of research involving prisoners.

 

Under the leadership of the Montana Head Start Collaboration, Montana citizens representing a variety of private and public interests met in 2006 to address the negative impact of parental incarceration on children in Montana. The partnership led to formation of the Montana Alliance for Families Touched by ncarceration (MAFTI).  MAFTI developed this manual to help children and families affected by incarceration navigate through this difficult time in their lives.

 

This monograph surveys the current landscape of correctional education, discussing both the educational needs of people involved in the criminal justice system and the programs being provided to meet those needs. It then reviews research on the effectiveness of correctional education and guiding principles for effective programming, as well as gaps in the research literature.

 

Department of Corrections, North Carolina, Division of Prisons 2010   Every offender is a part of a family. Incarceration is often a difficult time not only for the offenders, but also for their family and friends. Separation from a loved one due to incarceration can be emotionally, spiritually, and economically overwhelming.  This handbook has been developed for you as a guide in understanding the rules and regulations that govern the North Carolina prison facilities.

 

Department of Corrections, State of Washington, Revision Date: 12/22/2011. This desk manual has been prepared for use by chaplains, administrators and other staff of the Washington State Department of Corrections.

 

The Annie Casey Foundation 2010   Healing Communities is an innovative approach to prison ministry and prisoner reentry that begins with the caring resources of the local congregation. Since its development by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 2006, the Healing Communities has been adopted by congregations across the country, with implementation by such groups as the Christian Association for Prisoner Aftercare, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and the current host- the Philadelphia Leadership Foundation. This report tells how faith communities can play a unique role in healing individuals, families and communities devastated by crime and cycles of incarceration.

 

This booklet, a publication of Inside-Out Connections: Supporting Children of Incarcerated Parents, Initiative Foundation, Little Falls, Minnesota, was written as a resource to encourage open and honest communication between children and adults.

 

(Public/Private Ventures, June 2012)   Illuminating Solutions shares new analysis from a comparison group study, which examined violent crime among the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP) participants and a similar group of young people who did not participate in YVRP, over an 18-month period.

 

Since the mid-1970s the U.S. imprisonment rate has increased roughly fivefold. As Christopher Wildeman and Bruce Western explain, the effects of this sea change in the imprisonment rate —commonly called mass imprisonment or the prison boom—have been concentrated among those most likely to form fragile families: poor and minority men with little schooling.

 

Between midyear 2009 and midyear 2010, the confined inmate population in county and city jails (748,728) declined by 2.4% (18,706 inmates). This is the second decline in the jail population since the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) began the Annual Survey of Jails in 1982. The first occurred between 2008 and 2009. The jail incarceration rate declined in 2010 to 242 jail inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, the lowest rate since 2003.

 

The Council of State Governments Justice Center (CSG Justice Center) joined with the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) on a national project to learn in detail how agencies create a reentry strategy or enhance an existing effort. The project team selected four “learning sites” to receive technical assistance from national experts. In addition to receiving assistance, the sites would in turn inform project staff and other jurisdictions about elements of reentry for which they found solutions to common challenges. The lessons learned from that work and subsequent information-gathering efforts formed the foundation for this report. The rich information gleaned from practitioners’ experiences at the learning sites (and beyond) is summarized in this report. The major challenges the agencies face can be grouped into three categories: collaboration, program terms, and data collection and analysis.

 

The LS/CMI is an assessment that measures the risk and need factors of late adolescent and adult offenders. The LS/CMI is also a fully functioning case management tool. This single application provides all the essential tools needed to aid professionals in the treatment planning and management of offenders in justice, forensic, correctional, prevention and related agencies.

 

The LSI-R is a quantitative assessment of offender attributes and offender situations relevant for making decisions about levels of supervision and treatment.  The 54 LSI-R survey items are based on legal requirements and include relevant factors for making decisions about risk level and treatment.

 

A report by A.L. Solomon, J.W.L. Osborne, S.F. LoBuglio, J. Mellow & D.A. Mukamal.  In an effort to build knowledge on the topic of offender reentry, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance invested in the Jail Reentry Roundtable Initiative, a joint project of the Urban Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the Montgomery County (Maryland) Department of Correction and Rehabilitation. Over the past two years, we have commissioned seven papers, convened a Jail Reentry Roundtable and two national advisory meetings, conducted a “scan of practice,” and interviewed dozens of practitioners around the country. This report aims to synthesize what we have learned through these efforts.

 

A 4-month program offered twice a year in Delaware's four State prisons by the Delaware Department of Corrections.  The core of the Life Skills Program is Moral Recognation Therapy (MRT).

 

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Montana, Februrary 9, 2015. The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview that identifies conditions of confinement in county detention centers throughout Montana and provide recommendations regarding how we might improve those conditions.

 

FRONTLINE 2014. For decades, the United States has been fixated on incarceration, building prisons and locking up more and more people. But at what cost, and has it really made a difference? FRONTLINE goes to the epicenter of the raging debate about incarceration in America, focusing on the controversial practice of solitary confinement and on new efforts to reduce the prison population, as officals are rethinking what to do with criminals.

 

Maximizing Medicaid: An Innovative Approach to Finance Health Care for Criminal Justice Populations  

Webinar PPT Council of State Governments Justice Center - June 24, 2014

 

A Working Paper designed to (a) explore the role of rural jails in the mental health systems in rural communities; (b) investigate how rural jails manage mental health and substance abuse problems among inmates; (c) ascertain barriers to providing mental health services in rural jails; and identify promising practices for service delivery - Maine Rural Health Research Center, August 2010

 

Under the Second Chance Act Adult Mentoring Grant Program to Nonprofit Organizations, "mentoring" refers to a developmental relationship in which a more experienced person helps a less experienced person develop an enhanced sense of self-worth and specific knowledge and skills to increase the chance of successful reentry. Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional and personal development with the primary goal of preparing an offender (pre-release) for reentry and supporting him/her during the reentry process to enhance success.

 

a report on the country’s overfunding of prisons and underfunding of education. It is a sobering account of how we as a nation are wasting our financial resources on over incarceration while depriving our schools of resources that would help children in some of our most distressed communities—children who, without an adequate education, are at the greatest risk of becoming the next generation of prisoners.

 

The narrative of this report reflects activities and conditions during fiscal years 2009-11.  The Montana Department of Corrections enhances public safety, promotes positive change in offender behavior, reintegrates offenders into the community and supports victims of crime.

 

a state-by-state report card and analysis of federal policies on conditions of confinement for pregnant and parenting women and the effect on their children. The Rebecca Project and the National Women’s Law Center collaborated on this Report Card, which analyzes federal and state policies on prenatal care, shackling, and alternative sentencing programs and grades states on whether their policies help or harm incarcerated women in these key areas.

 

The NIJ Journal, published several times a year, features articles to help criminal justice policymakers and practitioners stay informed about new developments. The NIJ Journalpresents research-based information that can help inform policy decisions and improve understanding of the criminal justice system.

 

A five year Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2010-2014

Ohio Risk Assessment System
The Ohio Risk Assessment System (ORAS) was created by Edward Latessa P.D. and the University of Cincinnati (UC), Center for Criminal Justice Research under a contract with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections to provide assessments at multiple points in the criminal justice system. The tools are in the public domain and are also available, in non-automated paper-only format, from UC at no charge upon request.

 

Human Rights Watch presents in this report new statistics that testify unequivocally to the aging of the US prison population.

 

The millions of people who cycle through the nation’s courts, jails, and prisons experience chronic health conditions, infectious diseases, substance use, and mental illness at much higher rates than the general population. This report describes the public health implications of mass incarceration.

 

Correctional education programs are intended to break the cycle of catch-and-release by providing inmates with more opportunities to develop the skills required to succeed in their workplaces and communities. These programs range from adult basic education and secondary instruction that enable high school dropouts to earn: (1) high school credentials; (2) career and technical education credentials to equip inmates with the occupational skills needed to find and maintain employment; and (3) postsecondary education credentials to provide inmates with the necessary skills to keep pace with today’s changing labor market. Other programs are designed to provide special instruction for inmates with disabilities and limited English proficiency.

 

This issue of The Christian Citizen, a publication of American Baptist Home Mission Societies, ABCUSA, is dedicated to providing resources, models, and education for persons, communities, and churches seeking to become stations of hope for returning offenders and their families.

 

 Now that the term “evidence-based practice” (EBP) has become part of the professional dialogue about corrections across the country, it seems that many jurisdictions have gone beyond merely disseminating knowledge about EBP to actually applying evidence-based principles in the field. The National Institute of Corrections hopes this manual will serve both as a checklist of key management concepts and as a reminder of important organizational issues that need to be addressed to achieve positive public safety outcomes in an evidence-based environment.

 

Reducing Homeless Populations' Involvement in the Criminal Justice System  

This resource guide is intended to generate greater awareness in the field among law enforcement, courts, prosecutors, defenders, state and local legislators, advocates, social service providers, and the homeless about U.S. Department of Justice resources available to serve homeless people, and those at risk of homelessness, who are involved in the criminal justice system.

The Resource Guide is being released in conjunction with the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness report, Searching out Solutions: Constructive Alternatives to the Criminalization of Homelessness, available at www.usich.gov/issue/alternatives_to_criminalization/

 

A 16 page manual prepared by the Center for Behavioral Health Services & Criminal Justice Research, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

 

This report was produced by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life. The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, launched in 2001, seeks to promote a deeper understanding of issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. The Pew Forum conducts surveys, demographic analyses and other social science research on important aspects of religion and public life in the U.S. and around the world.

 

This publication (Urban Institute, 2004) presents the final technical report for a pilot study of Returning Home:Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry. The purpose of this pilot study was both to examine the process of prisoner reintegration in Baltimore through the experiences of released prisoners in our sample, as well as to test our survey instruments and research design in preparation for implementation of the study in the three full-study sites.

 

The purpose of this manual is to provide administrators of direct supervision jails with the necessary information, instruction, and tools to conduct self-audits that will indicate how well the concepts and principles of direct supervision are being implemented in their facility. The self-audit process can be conducted as a one-time assessment, or can be conducted at regular intervals as part of an ongoing monitoring effort.

 

Research shows that incarcerated youth and adults who have contact with supportive family members have better outcomes after their release. The Vera Institute of Justice brought together national experts from a range of fields to talk about the next steps for family-focused justice reform.

 

This seminal report on criminal justice reform is one of the most comprehensive reports ever published to address the problems confronting America's criminal justice system.  The report, drafted by a diverse coalition of over 40 criminal justice organizations, contains nearly 100 detailed policy recommendations across 16 criminal justice areas.

 

This report highlights six traditionally "tough on crime" states — Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio — that recently passed significant bipartisan reforms to reduce their prison populations and budgets. These states experienced declines in their crime rates while these new policies were in place. The report also highlights national trends in criminal justice legislation and offers a number of recommended ways that lawmakers in other states can reform their pre-trial, sentencing, parole, and probation systems. Smart Reform is Possible serves as an exciting and essential blueprint for states on the cusp of considering the reform of their corrections systems.

 

More than four in ten offenders nationwide return to state prison within three years of their release despite a massive increase in state spending on prisons, according to a Pew report.  States today spend more than $50 billion a year on corrections, yet recidivism rates remain stubbornly high. As the slumping economy forces states to do more with less, policy makers are looking for a better public safety return on their corrections dollars.

 

A handbook for families and friends of those incarcerated in Minnesota State Correctional Facilities - June 2010

 

Take Charge of Your Future - Get the Education and Training you Need  U.S. Department of Education, July 2012.  This Guide is designed for people who are incarcerated and for those on community supervision (probation and parole). It will help you get started—or continue—on the path to further education and training.

 

The Hamilton Project, May 2014. A founding principle of The Hamilton Project’s economic strategy is that long-term prosperity is best achieved by fostering economic growth and broad participation in that growth. Elevated rates of crime and incarceration directly work against these principles, marginalizing individuals, devastating affected communities, and perpetuating inequality. In this spirit, we offer “Ten Economic Facts about Crime and Incarceration in the United States” to bring attention to recent trends in crime and incarceration, the characteristics of those who commit crimes and those who are incarcerated, and the social and economic costs of current policy.

The Effects of Prison Visitation on Offender Recidivism
The Minnesota Department of Corrections, November 2011. This study examines the effects of prison visitation on recidivism among 16,420 offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 2003 and 2007.  The study found that visitation significantly decreased the risk of recidivism.

 

A report by J. Schmitt, K. Warner & S. Gupta, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC - June 2010  

 

This paper by Gerald G. Gaes, Florida State University, reviews the evidence of the impact of correctional education programs on post-release outcomes.  The author believes the takeaway message is that correctional education does promote successful prisoner reentry.

 

This document is a report of the first National Summit on Justice Reinvestment and Public Safety.  It examines how states and local governments are successfully changing crime and corrections policies to be more effective and fiscally responsible through evidence-based policies and practices.

 

which was authored by the Council of State Governments and ten project partners, reflects the results of a series of meetings among 100 of the most respected workforce, health, housing, public safety, family, community, and victim experts in the country.

 

A publication by S. Steurer, J. Linton, J. Nally & S. Lockwood in Corrections Today, Official Publication of the American Correctional Association, August 2010.

 

Thinking for a Change (T4C) is the innovative, evidence-based cognitive behavioral curriculum from the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) that has broadly influenced the correctional field and the way correctional facilitators work with offenders and inmates. The program can be delivered to correctional clients by facilitators who have been trained to do so. Studies have shown that, when implemented with integrity, it can reduce recidivism among offenders.

 

This study was conducted by the Correctional Education Association for the United States Department of Education Office of Correctional Education.  The study involved 3600 inmates who had been released more than three years in MD, MN and OH.  The major variable in the study was educational participation while incarcerated.  The results (reported Sept 30, 2001) showed that attending school behind bars reduces the likelihood of re-incarceration by 29%.

 

The prison population is driven by two factors: first, how many offenders are admitted to prison, and second, how long they stay. This report focuses on the second mechanism—time served, or length of stay (LOS), in prison. Understanding the length of time offenders are being held in prison, and how and why the time period has changed over time, is a critical first step toward helping state leaders factor LOS into their assessments of state crime and punishment policies.  Earlier research identified national trends in how long offenders stay in prison, but little is known about how LOS varies at the state level.

 

In 2010, private prisons held 128,195 of the 1.6 million state and federal prisoners in the United States, representing eight percent of the total population. For the period 1999-2010, the number of individuals held in private prisons grew by 80 percent, compared to 17 percent for the overall prison population. While both federal and state governments increasingly relied on privatization, the federal prison system’s commitment to privatization grew much more dramatically. The number of federal prisoners held in private prisons rose from 3,828 to 33,830, an increase of 784 percent, while the number of state prisoners incarcerated privately grew by 40 percent, from 67,380 to 94,365. Today, 30 states maintain some level of privatization, with seven states housing more than a quarter of their prison populations privately.

 

A publication of the National Research Council, The National Academies Press (2008). In April 2007, the National Research Council held a two-day workshop to address key substantive and methodological issues underlying the study of crime trends and to lay the groundwork for a proposed multiyear NRC panel study of these issues. Six papers were commissioned from leading researchers and discussed at the workshop by experts in sociology, criminology, law, economics, and statistics. The authors revised their papers based on the discussants' comments, and the papers were then reviewed again externally. The six final workshop papers are the basis of this volume, which represents some of the most serious thinking and research on crime trends currently available.

 

The incarcerated population differs from the general population in important ways. Incarcerated persons are disproportionally likely to come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds; to be members of a racial/ethnic minority group; to  have held a low-skill, low-paying job (if employed at all) at the time of arrest; and to be less educated than their counterparts in the general population (Harlow 2003). In short, the sizeable incarcerated population consists of people in critical need of education to improve their post-release opportunities for employment and participation in civil society.

 

The U.S. Dream Academy was founded by Grammy nominated gospel singer Wintley Phipps through his work with Prison Fellowship Ministries.  His work with incarcerated parents identified a struggling and overlooked population; children of incarcerated parents.  The vision for the Dream Academy emerged out of a desire to break the cycle of incarceration many families experience, particularly when living in high risk communities.

 

National Institute of Corrections, December 2014. The impetus for this document came from stakeholders who are keenly aware of the importance of visiting for incarcerated men and women. The benefits of visiting with family and other supportive individuals are welldocumented throughout the literature, research, and in the voices of the incarcerated and their families. Visiting creates bridges to community supports that promote productive reentry and contributes to improved outcomes, in particular, community safety and reduced recidivism rates

 

The goal of this publication is to provide relevant and practical information for public child welfare agencies and social workers when working with incarcerated parents and their children, including a chapter on immigration. This primer also outlines the many compelling reasons why child welfare agencies should develop programs and policies specifically to address the needs of this subset of children in the child welfare system.