‘People helping people': North Dakota's addiction fix

An array of services in Pima County, Arizona, greets hundreds of people getting released early from jail or helps keep them out of jail in the first place. By providing drug treatment, housing, job assistance, and other help that people need instead of incarceration, the county's Criminal Justice Reform Unit and Jail Population Review Committee saved the county $2 million in jail costs over just part of 2020. Drug use also declined and officials hope to see longer-range benefits in lower recidivism.

Led by peers and providing everything from group therapy to tips on how to build credit, the Timelist program works with the recently paroled as well as the presently incarcerated to reduce recidivism. Seven years after it started, Timelist’s comprehensive approach has a perfect record of it’s graduates staying out of prison.

Hope for Prisoners helps more than 500 people per year adjust to living and working productively after serving sentences in jail or prison, thanks in large part to a team of mentors – many of whom are police officers. In an exercise in developing two-way empathy – formerly incarcerated see police willing to help them, and the police see people with criminal records working to improve themselves – the program tailors its services to people's needs and skills. Since 2010, the program has graduated more than 2,600 people, nearly two-thirds of whom found work and nearly all of whom avoided new arrests.

Officials around Pennsylvania who want to reduce recidivism are studying a re-entry program in Lancaster that gives former inmates intensive case management to help them return to society. That includes transitional housing, job interview clothing and workshops on things like personal finance and interviewing skills. It also addresses the small slips that often send someone back to jail by putting the fees many former prisoners owe on hold for six months and helping them tackle bureaucratic challenges that can seem daunting.

Alcohol has claimed more lives in Rio Arriba County in the past five years than other drugs. SMART, a secular alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, provides one path toward recovery, increasingly incorporating scientific findings into treatment as well as support for family members of addicts, helping them change the environment.

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.

Therapeutic courts like the Anchorage Wellness Court were born out of a desire to reduce recidivism rates and deflate ballooning prison populations. For many, they have become the answer to breaking the cycle of criminal behavior while treating people with substance abuse issues.

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.

The Stable Recovery program provides housing and recovery support for people suffering from addiction, as well as job training to prepare participants to work in the equine industry. The program offers a sense of therapeutic community to those in recovery, as well as newly trained workers to address the labor shortage in the equine industry.

A New Way of Life Reentry Project creates homes for women as they leave prison, providing a refuge and programs to help ensure a more successful transition into life on the outside. The network of small group homes, started in Los Angeles and expanded to 16 houses in multiple states, boast a 90% success rate. New Way’s approach prizes ordinary homes in residential neighborhoods, unlike jail-like settings common in transitional housing, which generally caters to men. Classes include careers, therapy, and family reunification.