‘It's like a sisterhood'

Crossroads for Women, a New Mexico nonprofit, is helping formerly incarcerated women find community, support, and recovery. Using trauma-informed care practices, the program offers a comprehensive list of services like housing, mental health treatment, employment counseling, and substance abuse treatment. Underlying all services is the understanding that no individual is trauma free and that community and relationships are crucial to sustainable recovery.

For 20 years, the Center for Young Women’s Development has been a safe space for thousands of young women ages 16 to 24 who have been incarcerated or are homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area. The center is most recognized for its strategies to give these women opportunities for personal and professional growth.

The Fulton Community Supervision Center in Missouri provides trauma-informed, gender-specific care and services to women who face the risk of recidivism. Participants live at the center, where they receive services like cognitive behavioral therapy and classes that teach coping mechanisms and personal and professional development. Core to much of the programming is helping women find their self worth.

In New Haven, a two-decades long experiment in giving community to and promoting empowerment for people who have been in the criminal justice system or mental health treatment services has shown a decrease in drug use and an increase in general quality of life. The idea - that people who have isolated/alienated by a system need to be empowered as citizens to successfully re-integrate - is taking hold in other cities, including Philadelphia.

Connecticut is attempting to reduce prison recidivism by changing parole practices. Changes to the system are allowing parole officers to foster relationships with parolees and counsel them as people, not as cases.

Homelessness is a serious issue in any state, but outlined in this article are 3 unique approaches in 3 different states that have proven successful. Albuquerque, New Mexico, Orlando, Florida, and Detroit, Michigan have all figured out effective plans to get people off the streets. Solutions range from actually giving homeless people permanent housing to designing a 90 day action plan with them to get them back on their feet to offering a quick and easy way to make some money for food or a night at a hotel.

Residents of Alaska's St. Paul Island live through a legacy of generational trauma that includes high rates of domestic violence, child abuse, and alcoholism. However, the Island's political leadership have accomplished financial control and are using the funds for a comprehensive system of services to help their community break the cycle.

Mississippians who receive earned probation for crimes that do not carry a death sentence or involve deadly weapons will now have access to high-school equivalency education, alcohol and drug counseling, re-entry and employment services—and perhaps, most importantly, "Thinking for a Change," an evidence-based cognitive behavioral-therapy program.

Victims of violence that end up in the emergency room can return within two years with more injuries because of retaliation efforts. Philadelphia’s Healing Hurt People is a hospital-based violence intervention program that assists individuals who need medical care and mental health services. The hospital and social work collaboration helps reduce emergency room costs.

A Department of Justice study reported that about 75 percent of those released in 2005 were rearrested, and women prisoners often have a harder time re-entering society after release. A New Way of Life (ANWOL) is a Los Angeles transitional living facility that has helped more than 750 women stay out of prison by offering housing, case management, mental health and substance treatment, and job training.