Project FLEX brings sports with a purpose to teens in Illinois juvenile justice system

As a part of the National Bail Out effort in the United States, the Free Black Mamas DMV campaign bails incarcerated women out of jails in the Washington D.C. area in time for Mother’s Day.

California is taking a new approach to reducing recidivism, known as The California Model, by providing people who are incarcerated with rehabilitative and educational programming.

The Prisoner Correspondence Project connects LGBTQ2S+ people who are incarcerated in the United States and Canada with pen pals who are not incarcerated. The consistent communication helps combat isolation and improve mental health and rehabilitation outcomes.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund is a nonprofit that covers bail payments for people who are jailed and cannot afford bail while awaiting trial.

In Kansas, Douglas County jail reduced the number of incarcerated people with serious mental illness with a suite of practices including connecting them to mental health workers, providing rides, and helping them prepare for life outside of jail.

The Sanganer open prison serves as an important alternative to traditional incarceration in India by remaining open for 12 hours a day and allowing inmates to go out. It is one of 88 open prisons in India that works on a model of reform and helps inmates to keep their connection with work, family, and society. In doing so, it enables the development of trust as well as skills that can help them not just during incarceration but also after release.

Philadelphia’s Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project (YASP) offers support for youth experiencing incarceration. Funded by personal donations and grants, they offer art workshops and classes on how to navigate the justice system, manage funds to bail individuals out, and advocate for criminal justice reform. Their advocacy also helped end the practice of sentencing juveniles to life without parole.

Across the United States, the use of administrative segregation is being rethought and reduced, as study after study shows it’s link to higher rates of violence and recidivism. At Maine State Prison, over the course of six years, the number of people in solitary went from 100 to 8, while also seeing a decline in fights, use of weapons, and emergency room transportation in the prison’s general population. The prison has instead started implementing individualized mental health programming and structured living units – opting to implement rehabilitation over punitive measures.

Many years of work to improve juvenile-detention centers in Mississippi may curb recidivism rates by increasing the quality of life in detention. Despite those efforts, however, centers might still be unable to give detained students what they need the most—a quality education.

Disciplining schoolchildren has led many students down the “school-to-prison-pipeline” because teachers have focused on controlling students rather than instilling problem solving skills. Ross Greene has developed Collaborative Proactive Solutions (CPS), which is a method that trains staff at schools to develop relationships with disruptive kids and help them problem solve. With the CPS method in practice in 2012, Central School has reported fewer students sent to the principal’s office and no suspensions.