Transcript Local Reentry Councils and Intermediaries: What Works

Dennis Schrantz
The Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency, Center for Justice Innovation
The Carolina Justice Policy Center Conference
Chapel Hill, NC - December 16, 2013
December 17, 2014
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Effective Transition Planning for Local
Reentry Councils (LRCs): Where Does
the Research Lead Us? Evidence Based
Practices – What works.
Application of Best Practices on the
Ground: The Reentry Process
Transition Plans are concise guides for returning citizens and
justice agency staff that integrate returning citizens' plans for
returning to their communities by spanning the four steps in the
transition process as well as agency boundaries.
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The Transition Plan reduces uncertainty in terms of actions and
activities - and their timing - that need to be taken by returning
citizens, prison staff, the releasing authority, community supervision
staff, and partnering agencies.
Increased certainty will motivate returning citizens to participate in
the transition process and to become engaged in fulfilling their
responsibilities and will ensure that all parties are held accountable
for timely performance of their respective responsibilities
Effective Transition Plans:
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Center on the returning citizen’s success in every interaction,
with the Transition manager as a COACH, guiding skill
development and pro-social activities.
Are driven by assessed risk – how best to manage it; and
assessed criminogenic needs – how to address them and
when.
Are collaborative with prison officials, returning citizens, their
families, supervision authorities and human service providers.
Effective Transition Plans:
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Prioritize returning citizen’s goals and include attainable
milestones and are built for success.
Include post-release supervision requirements.
Are responsive and flexible to adjust to accomplishments and
set backs.
Prison-based assessments of risks, needs, strengths, and
environment.
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Transition Planning starts in prison with a comprehensive
risk/need assessment that drives the Transition Planning
Process.
The goal is to understand personal, situational, and
historical/contextual factors behind each returning citizen’s
criminal justice involvement, their risks, needs and strengths in
order to mediate and manage risk and become successful in the
community.
The assessment should be validated and measure risk and
criminogenic need but should also include multiple screenings
and further assessment, as indicated, for a full range of
personal history and needs.
Prison-based assessments of risks, needs,
strengths, and environment.
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The Transition Plan is built in prison to manage risk and
begin to address the returning citizen’s needs for
community success, including but not limited to health,
mental health, family relationships, employment, and
housing stability.
The best Transition Plans are highly specific and include the
schedule for activities.
Reassessment is needed throughout the entire reentry
process. Reassessment allows the team to uncover new or
evolving needs and to track changes in dynamic
criminogenic needs following delivery of treatment,
programming, and other interventions.
Form, participate in, and lead Transition
Management Teams that work collaboratively.
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Throughout all three phases of reentry, transition planning
and management activities are conducted by an
interdisciplinary team called a Transition Management Team.
The composition of the success team and the respective roles
of its members will change over time, as the returning citizen
completes goals, identifies new needs, and transitions
through the three phases.
Form, participate in, and lead Transition
management teams that work collaboratively.
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Generally, the team should include the returning citizen,
prison staff, community supervision staff, facility and
community-based service providers, and family
members and/or pro-social supports.
During the institutional phase prison staff may lead the
team. During the reentry and community supervision
phase parole officers may lead the team. During the
reintegration phase human services agencies or
community services providers may lead the team.
Develop and implement with returning citizens, human service
agencies and justice officials a Transition plan directed specifically to
the level of risk and criminogenic needs.
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Provide or facilitate access to programs and interventions to address
risk and needs.
In addition to the role members of the success team will play in
delivering direct services, including assessment, treatment, and
motivational enhancement, at various points, the success team will
also fill a referral and brokerage role.
The two complimentary roles ensure that returning citizens have
access to treatment, programming, and interventions that will
effectively address risk and needs. Interventions should be
consistent with the principles of evidence-based practice.
Review progress and adapt plans accordingly over time,
including monitoring conditions of supervision and
responding appropriately to technical and criminal violations.
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When indications of sliding back toward old problematic behavior
patterns, a swift response to identify the problem and adjust the
plan accordingly is needed.
Conversely, faster than expected progress, compliance with
expectations and other achievements should be acknowledged and
rewarded to enhance motivation.
The Transition Management Team’s focus on monitoring and
adjusting the transition plan is especially important in the period
immediately following return to the community when anxiety and
stress require an adjustment period.
Review progress and adapt plans accordingly over time, including
monitoring conditions of supervision and responding appropriately
to both technical and criminal violations.
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It is important that community supervision officers have the skills
to distinguish between the behaviors that are affiliated with a risk
of future transgression and behaviors that are more likely
associated with the adjustment.
The success team should be equipped with a full range of
responses, including graduated levels of sanctions, that can be
used to facilitate compliance and encourage success.
Fully involve returning citizens in the transition process, help them
change, making efforts to enhance their motivation.
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By engaging returning citizens in the process, transition planning is an
intervention on its own, complimenting and enhancing the outcomes of other
interventions.
The evidence shows that returning citizens are more likely sustain desired
behavior changes if the goals and process for achieving the goals are
meaningful for them.
The returning citizen must thus be a central member of the Transition
Management Team. It is not enough just to ask for feedback from time to
time. The team should seek to build a trusting relationship with the returning
citizen through regular and consistent contact, including both formal meetings
and less formal check-ins, such as a conversation during meal time at the
facility or a home visit in the community.
Fully involve returning citizens in the transition process, help them
change, making efforts to enhance their motivation.
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Another, more direct means to enhance motivation, is for members of
the success team to use communication styles and techniques
designed to enhance motivation, such as Motivational Interviewing, in
all of their interactions with the returning citizen.
Rather than impose goals and demand solutions, these approaches
employ empathy and specific communication skills to direct the
returning citizen through his or her own exploration of the need for
change and identification of goals and solutions.
Every interaction with a returning citizen is an opportunity to advance
the change process. The four main goals of returning citizen
interaction, and what to expect, include:
Engagement
To assist the returning citizen in taking ownership for his/her supervision
Transition plan. Ownership derives from the:
 Returning citizen’s understanding of the rules of supervision (criteria for
success, rewards, the behaviors that will end in revocation, etc.),
 Returning citizen’s understanding of what is needed for personal change and
how to “flip the script” on his or her cycle of involvement in the justice
system.
Early Change
To assist the returning citizen in addressing dynamic criminogenic factors that
is meaningful to both the returning citizen and the criminal justice system.
 As part of the change process, all individuals have certain interests and needs
that can be used to motivate them to commit to a change process.
Sustained Change
The goal of supervision is to transfer external controls from the formal
government institutions to informal social controls (e.g. parents, peers,
employers, etc.).
 This is best achieved by assisting returning citizens in the change process, to
help them stabilize in the community, and to utilize informal social controls to
maintain the changes.
 Part of the supervision process should be to identify those natural support
systems that the returning citizen has or to develop these natural support
systems to be a guardian for the returning citizen to provide the support
mechanisms.
Reinforcers
As part of each contact, the goal is to reinforce the change process.
 The transition team should use tools to reward positive gains and to address
negative progress.
 The formal process of swift and certain responses provides the protective
process for the returning citizen that shows that the supervision staff
recognizes small incremental steps that facilitate change and sustain change.
Expect Relapse and “slippage”
Allow for renewed motivation
and participation as part of the
learning and change process
What are the details of prison-based transition development?
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What are the results of the assessment process in terms of risk level
and the returning citizen’s needs?
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What elements of the prison based Transition Plan have been
completed driven by the assessed risk and need?
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What were the returning citizen’s achievements in programming and
work assignments?
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What are the returning citizen’s goals in life areas and how were
they addressed in prison?
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What remains to be addressed that is critical for the communitybased Transition Plan for release?
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Is their an opportunity – in person or virtual - prerelease meeting
with the returning citizen, prison staff, and the Transition Team?
What is the returning citizen’s home plan?
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Is there a home plan or does it have to be developed?
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If it already exists, how sustainable is it?
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If in public or supported housing, how is it financed and for how
long?
What weaknesses exist in the home plan, for example, if living with
relatives are they justice involved? Alcohol and/or drug involved?
Employed?
How frequently in the two years prior to incarceration did the
returning citizen move? What are the details of those moves – why?
To where?
What are the service priorities and timing of those priorities?
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What are options for housing if a home plan doesn’t exist?
Does the returning citizen meet eligibility criteria for supportive or
public housing?
How will the returning citizen’s transportation be handled?
What is the level of need and timing for substance abuse treatment?
Mental health treatment? Other services?
Which services are in place and which services have not yet been
arranged?
What are the details about post-release supervision?
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Who is managing post-release supervision?
What is the timing of the release compared to the first appointment
with the supervising agency?
What are the supervision conditions and requirements? How can the
LRC assist the returning citizen in meeting those conditions and
requirements?
To what extent has the post-release supervision agency been
trained/educated about the role of the LRC and the transition
planning process?
What are the details about post-release supervision (cont’d)
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If post-release supervision is not part of the returning citizen’s
release plan, does the returning citizen’s level of risk pose any
issues?
If the returning citizen has been in prison prior to this term, what is
their history of post-release supervision? Progress? Violations?
What are the law enforcement resources available to the LRC and the
Intermediary if such resources are required?
Community engagement should begin the moment the returning citizen is
released from prison. The LRC needs to know:
How do we determine what programs to which to refer, based on
risk and need ?
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What are the specific needs of the population of citizens returning?
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What types of treatment/services should we form relationships with?
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Are these programs using proven treatment models?
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Can we assess their use of evidence-based practices?
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When can post-release contact occur so that it is at the soonest
possible time after release.
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How is risk and needs updated and when? By whom?
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What needs assessment tool(s) does the intermediary utilize for
substance abuse, mental health, job skills,