Making transitional housing Halal in Texas

Illinois has implemented mental health courts across 31 counties as an alternative to incarceration for people with mental illness. These specialized courts divert defendants into community-based treatment programs lasting 1-2 years, featuring regular court appearances, counseling and drug testing. Since 2017, approximately 50% of participants have successfully graduated from mental health court programs statewide, with 11,000+ diverted from prison through the broader Adult Redeploy Illinois initiative.

Women in Recovery is a diversion program for women who would otherwise face prison time for drug-related offenses. The comprehensive program lasts 18 months and helps participants restore their mental health, reunite with their children, develop skills that help them get jobs, secure housing and reenter the community. Women in Recovery helps reduce recidivism rates and 70% of women who start the program complete it and graduate.

Impact Justice’s Homecoming Project helps formerly incarcerated individuals secure housing by pairing them with homeowners renting out a spare bedroom or studio space in their homes. Impact Justice pays the homeowner for six months, providing the formerly incarcerated participant with enough time to rebuild and acclimate to life outside of prison without the burden of paying rent. The Homecoming Project is meant to be an alternative to transitional housing that can sabotage the formerly incarcerated person’s independence.

A growing number of programs are working to interrupt cycles of trauma and harm with currently and formerly incarcerated individuals. Beyond Violence uses curriculum co-designed by women currently incarcerated and uses peer co-facilitation to address the aggression and violence women have experienced personally, as well as been perpetrators of. The curriculum, which also highlights the impact of individuals’ communities, relationships, and social structures, improves mental health and facilitates long-term healing.

Chicago's Cook County Jail seeks to short-circuit the cycle of violence by involving young men from the city's most violent zip codes in a program that includes counseling, conflict resolution and anger management. The Sheriff's Anti-Violence Effort, or SAVE, then connects them with services once they're released to find housing and employment. Results are preliminary, but so far more than 80 have gone through the program and 20 were released, with just two ending up back in jail.

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.

The state of Connecticut is partnering with the Vera Institute of Justice to creating a new model of incarceration for young people ages 18 to 25. That state has created four integration centers to help inmates transition back to the community and opened a unit for young male prisoners who are mentored by those serving life sentences. They engage in circle-based conversations daily to promote communication and curtail conflict within the correctional center.

In Seattle, the over-policing of drug users has been extensive and frequently racially biased. Looking for a new solution, the LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) program, driven by a harm reduction philosophy, is connecting users with key social services rather than punishment.

For many offenders, prison can be a tense, divisive, and anger-inducing environment, fueling the negative influences that landed them there in the first place and leading to high recidivism rates. Actor Tim Robbins - who once famously portrayed a prisoner himself - started a program called The Actors Gang to bring theater to inmates as an outlet for emotion and expression, breaking down barriers between former gang members and helping individuals to process their troubles.

A Rotary club in Topeka, Kansas, has transformed reentry support for incarcerated women at the Shawnee County Jail through Intersection to Care, a program that pairs immediate-release support with mentorship, skills classes, and subsidized housing. The program, led by women with lived experience of incarceration, meets women at the jail exit to prevent trafficking, connects them to recovery housing through Oxford House of Kansas, and offers technology, health, art, and movement classes inside the facility. Since launching in 2022, the initiative has assisted more than 1,000 women.