Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Route 222 Corridor Anti-Gang Violence Initiative is comprised of three key components: Law Enforcement, Prevention and Re-entry. This paper focuses on the unique challenges faced by the project’s re-entry case managers – the human service professionals charged with identifying gang affiliated inmates preparing to be released from county prisons and coordinating their successful reintegration back into the community. Presenters will discuss the challenges faced as they work to establish a rapport with this inmate population and their families, while coordinating their efforts with law enforcement and prevention providers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper describes a unique intervention research project that involves designing, implementing, and evaluating a jail “inreach” strategy for improving access and utilization of substance use services by women who are in jail and as they transition back to community living. This project provides empirically based substance use screening, assessment, brief motivational feedback interventions, and targeted referral to women who are incarcerated in Milwaukee County facilities, either awaiting the disposition of their cases or serving sentences. The screening consists of demographic questions, a brief screening questionnaire (AUDIT-12), and feedback on the results. The assessment phase is open to all women who screened positive for substance use problems during the brief screening and who are randomized into the new intervention (versus control) group. It consists of the following measures: TCU Drug Screen II, Socrates A & D, Timeline Followback, and Allen Barriers to Treatment, followed by brief motivational feedback interventions. This paper explains the substance use patterns and perceived barriers to treatment collected during the screening and assessment, as well as from focus groups with incarcerated and previously incarcerated women. Implications of the findings for substance use treatment services and jail reintegration policy and practice for women will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper reports on findings from a four-site evaluation of the TARGETED RE-ENTRY Initiative developed by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The approach is based on the Intensive Aftercare Program (IAP) developed by Altschuler and Armstrong. This initiative involves the integration of a Boys and Girls Club within state juvenile correctional facilities, along with a community-wide strategy to help incarcerated juvenile offenders make a successful transition back to the community. Boys and Girls Club staff provide the youths inside the correctional facility with needs- and interest-based programming. Once they are released, the youths continue to be served by Boys and Girls Club staff who provide case management, advocacy and service brokerage.
The evaluation, containing both process and outcome components, began in January 2004. In the fourth year of the evaluation, we now have follow-up criminal record data on those youths participating in the program and a comparison group.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This project employs a convict perspective to challenge the fundamental premise of offender "re-entry." It is noble that we campaign against the many barriers that hinder post-incarceration success, but these processes and programs are based on a false reality. Re-entry advocacy suggests that these individuals were at one time "entered" into society. It is this distorted perception that is created, manipulated, and sold as real. In addition to the information garnered from the prison literature, this paper utilizes personal accounts of the author (an ex-convict) and her interactions with incarcerated females and the system that plays an extraordinary role in creating and maintaining a permanent underclass in this country. A significant number of women being filtered thfouth the criminal justice machinery are marginalized members of society -- they are uneducated, un-under-employed, unskilled, and often without family support. Not only will they leave prison having changed little about their pre-prison experience, but they will leave with the additional stigma of a criminal record, that not only bars them from governmental assistance and access to a number of professons, but also psychological damaged, and legally and politically disenfranchised.

Publication Type: Proceeding