Q: What role do families and communities play in helping people successfully return from correctional facilities, and how can reentry stakeholders engage them?

A: The entire community has a stake in making sure a person succeeds when he or she returns from a period of incarceration. By involving the public in their work, reentry stakeholders* can not only promote a more supportive environment for the individual returning from prison or jail, but can also foster greater transparency and accountability within their own agencies.

The influence and support of key community groups can have a significant impact on whether a person successfully reintegrates into the community. To engage the public in its reentry work, reentry stakeholders should build on existing relationships and community networks (for example, religious and civic groups) and partner with influential community leaders.

Family members (not just immediate family, but a broader network of related and unrelated including friends and neighbors) can provide valuable emotional support to a loved one returning home. They often play an integral role in helping the individual find a place to live, avoid negative peer influences, engage in necessary treatments, find a job, and more.† Unlike corrections and supervision agencies, family members have existing relationships and bonds with the person returning from prison or jail and are available to provide support and intervention anytime, not just during work hours. Research on family involvement indicates that people who engage more with their families while incarcerated and after their release recidivate less frequently and experience other positive outcomes, such as finding housing and employment, at a higher rate than people who do not maintain contact with their families.1

Neighborhood and civic groups can provide positive networks that help people get back on their feet by providing resources for jobs, housing, and other positive social supports. These groups can also play an important role in identifying mentors. Faith-based communities can provide personal guidance, connect individuals to mentors, and use their networks to assist with other opportunities such as employment and housing.

Public education can be used to demystify the reentry process and explain the challenges people who have been incarcerated face and what they need to be successful.‡ Effective public education provides an opportunity for community members to ask questions and voice concerns about the reentry process and on individuals returning to their community, and offers them specific guidance on how they can support and participate in the reentry initiative. Effective public education is proactive and audience-specific. Agencies involved in the reentry process should develop messaging targeted to specific community-based stakeholder groups. Reentry partners should also be prepared to respond proactively to each group’s specific concerns and misconceptions about individuals returning from prison and jail.

Q: How can corrections-based programs help keep families connected?

A: Research shows that people who engage more with their families while incarcerated are more likely to succeed when returning to their community.2 Corrections officials should provide programming for people in correctional facilities, especially for those who are parents, designed to keep families connected, promote responsible parenting, and ensure the best possible results when a person returns to his or her community. Decisions on what types of programming would be most beneficial to the individual should be based on assessments (conducted at intake or once people get to a housing unit after intake) that take family relationships and a family’s strengths and weaknesses into account.

In general, corrections-based classes designed to improve the quality of family visits and incarcerated individuals’ connections to their families should focus on relationship-building and communication. Parenting classes should reinforce age-appropriate parenting and effective relationship skills, and address issues of healing from trauma. Mediation services to negotiate intra-family conflict, parental rights, custody, and visitation are also very important. Parent education, parent support groups, and family counseling should be available, and should be provided by social services staff from corrections or community agencies that is professionally prepared to address these issues.3 In addition, mentoring programs can help incarcerated parents address the challenges in their relationships with their children and better understand their responsibilities.4

To help incarcerated parents reconnect or remain connected to their families, correctional officials should make an effort to make communication with families as affordable and accessible as possible. While correctional officials must take safety into account, they should balance these concerns with the needs of families to stay in contact.

Officials should encourage people in correctional facilities to connect with their family. For example, correctional officials can have people participate in literacy programs and write letters to their families. Many correctional institutions now provide people access to email on a conditional basis.§ Video-conferencing, while not a substitute for in-person visits, can also be helpful to increase the frequency of visits and keep people connected across long distances, including with loved ones out of state.5 In addition to family visitation, video-conferencing can also be used for other family-related events (such as parent-teacher conferences) in order to keep incarcerated parents engaged in their children’s lives. Officials can also invite family members to participate in discussions related to their loved one’s case conferences or parole or transitional planning either by phone, video-conference, or in person.

Correctional officials can also encourage family contact by offering certain family-oriented programs. In many cases, these programs are coordinated by community-based organizations who are invited into the facilities by correctional officials. Incarcerated parents can record book readings which are then sent to their children; family members can videotape special events like graduations and football games, which incarcerated parents can then watch; prisons can offer weekend visitation programs; or family members can attend an incarcerated loved one’s ceremonies celebrating program completion or holiday-related events (such as mother’s/father’s day or religious holidays) at the correctional facility.**

Q: How can correctional officials structure visitation opportunities to promote positive and safe contact between people in correctional facilities and their families?

Research shows that people in correctional facilities who have frequent contact with their families are more successful after returning to their communities than those who do not (particularly for people will fewer prior convictions).6 Engaging with family members can be made a part of the incarcerated person’s schedule, and, to the extent possible, family visits should be considered part of the routine rather than a sporadic occurrence. Because family visitation has a direct statistical connection to reduced recidivism, correctional officials should avoid using it as leverage or revoke visitation or phone privileges as a consequence for bad behavior.7

It is important that correctional officials make visitation rules and regulations easily accessible and understandable. Every correctional institution has different rules and regulations around people visiting their facilities. These rules are necessary to ensure the safety of family members, correctional staff, and people incarcerated in the facilities. However, they can often be confusing and burdensome for families, especially those with young children, and may result in families being denied access or choosing not to visit in the first place.8 An institution’s visitation rules should be clear, consistent, and publicly available. Officials should try to keep families apprised of any new information regarding visitation via mail and the facility’s website, and should make staff available to answer questions by phone or email.

In addition to offering sentencing alternatives based on family considerations and seeing that people are placed in prisons as close to their families as possible, correctional officials can foster more frequent visitations by attending to a number of logistical concerns.†† They should ensure that adequate parking is available for visitors. When the prison is far away from population centers where many of the people in prison and their families live, officials should consider making public transportation available (or partnering with community-based organizations that can provide transportation assistance).‡‡

In both local jails and state prisons, there are a number of changes correctional officials can make to improve the visiting experience of all parties. Officials can expand visiting hours to include nights and weekends to accommodate different schedules, especially those of children. They should also make visitation rooms as welcoming as possible to families and children.§§ In particular, correctional officials should pay particular attention to the way the visiting room is staffed, set up, furnished, and decorated—as each of these elements contributes to a positive experience and future visits. They should also provide or allow games or books in visitation areas to create opportunities for parent-child interactions. When appropriate, institutional policies should also allow physical contact between parents and children to strengthen bonds when a loved one is incarcerated.***

Visits can be emotionally trying, and even painful, for the incarcerated individual, significant others, caregivers, and children. Some people stop visiting due to the difficulty of the experience—which can complicate reentry preparation. To help make visits a more positive and productive experience for all parties involved, correctional officials can partner with social workers and community-based organizations to provide a place to help family members process their feelings after a visit.

Correctional officials should ensure that visiting room staff understands that their job is not only to ensure safety, but also to promote a positive visiting environment and experience. Officials should train staff to work in the visiting center, both to positively interact with visitors, and to observe, recognize, and react to any signals of inappropriate or unusual behavior. Visiting room staff should be aware of any problematic family history or ongoing custody issues. In these situations, especially when children are involved, social workers may be involved in the family visit. Correctional staff should also be trained to partner with social workers and to understand their important role in the visitation experience.

Q: How can reentry stakeholders help facilitate family reunification?

A: Ninety-five percent of people in prison will eventually be released and return home to their communities.9 Many families wish to be reconnected with their loved ones after their release from a correctional facility, but may have concerns about their return home or interacting with community corrections officers. Families may face other challenges with reunification such as changes to roles within the household and financial barriers such as increased costs when a loved one returns to the home after incarceration. Some parents will return to different homes from where their children live, or they may be interacting with multiple other parents to their different children. Communication between the returning parent and the children’s caregivers is crucial to reentry and should be built into the planning process. Community corrections officers and community-based agencies should be in contact with both the families and the individual being released from a correctional facility prior to his or her release. This contact should focus on building a supportive and open relationship in which families feel comfortable expressing their concerns and sharing information that will be beneficial to these agencies in the reentry process. For example, the family can share any information about the family dynamics that may pose a challenge to the individual coming back into the home including whether there is any history of domestic violence that the community corrections officer should be aware of to help the family have a safe and mutually-beneficial reunification.

In many cases, it will be helpful to include a variety of reentry stakeholders in the reunification process. For example, reunification of a sex offender should be a gradual and deliberate process involving victim advocates, treatment providers, family therapists, supervision officers, and child welfare case-workers.10

These stakeholders should determine appropriate treatment options and goals for the family, victim, and the person returning from incarceration to ensure that all parties are ready for the release and/or the possibility of reunification. Ongoing education, communication, and collaboration between these parties can improve the chances of a smooth and safe transition.

Q: How do family reunification and contact strategies differ when there are issues of domestic violence?

A: To ensure a safe and successful reentry process, it is important for community corrections officers and community-based agencies working with people returning to their community after incarceration to know whether there is a history of family or domestic violence and if there are any ongoing legal situations such as restraining orders. Family members’ safety concerns must take precedence over the desire of the returning individual to re-engage with his/her family, and parental rights to visitation must be balanced against the rights of children to not see a person whom they fear.

In the case of past domestic violence, reentry stakeholders should help the family find an appropriate balance between their desire to reunite with loved ones and the challenges associated with reunification. Family members who have been victims of family violence or are the caregivers for children who have witnessed family violence should have every opportunity to voice their concerns and to refuse any on-going contact with the incarcerated individual.††† Many correctional facilities do not allow in-person visitation while a person is incarcerated if there is a history of domestic violence between the person in prison and the family member. In such cases, correctional officials should offer video conferencing as an alternative and allow phone and mail service to help family members stay in contact.

Intake officers should use assessment tools that disclose violent attitudes towards family members when screening people at admission to the correctional facility. These assessments should be used to inform both in-prison programming (such as anger management classes) and when determining the best course of action when a person is being released to their community.‡‡‡ Community corrections officers should be made aware of these assessments—as well as any current orders of protection—before the person is released.§§§ As part of the reentry planning process, community corrections officers can hold more extensive conversations with family members to identify any violent tendencies.

Q: How can reentry stakeholders help people in correctional facilities manage arrearages, including child support, during the reentry process?

A: More than half of all people in prison are parents, even if they did not live with the child at the time of incarceration.11 Many of these parents were required to pay child support before they were incarcerated and will continue to be required to pay upon their release. And without intervention, these child support payments continue to accumulate while a person is incarcerated, leaving them with sometimes insurmountable child support arrears when they are released, in addition to other debts such as restitution and parole or probation fees. In one state, for example, incarcerated parents left prison owing an average of over $20,000 in child support arrears.12 Financial pressures and paycheck garnishment resulting from unpaid debt can increase participation in the underground economy and discourage legitimate employment.13

Research highlights the importance of programs that, in appropriate situations, facilitate and strengthen family connections during incarceration.14 Parents who make regular child support payments are likely to have improved familial ties which, in turn, can help reduce recidivism and restore stability.15 Realistic payment amounts can also help to ensure long-term payment compliance. Unless suspended or reduced during incarceration, accumulated child support debt can interfere with family reunification in desired circumstances and undermine a parent’s efforts to retain regular, legal employment that will be a source for ongoing child support payments upon release from prison or jail.16

Addressing child support issues when a parent first enters the criminal justice system may prevent substantial arrears from accumulating during a period of incarceration. Some states allow for the individual to put their child support payments on hold while they are incarcerated, but they must file a request with the state child support enforcement agency. Many people do not do this, either because they lack access to the state child support enforcement agency or they are unaware that this is an option. In states where suspending child support payments is permitted, corrections officials should work with people when they are admitted to the prison to help them file for this reprieve while incarcerated. Then, prior to release, staff from community corrections and/or community-based agencies should help ensure that the incarcerated individual starts working with the child support enforcement agency to develop a realistic repayment plan for any arrears and to modify the child support order so it is appropriate for anticipated post-release earnings.**** These officials can also help the individual reinstate his/her driver’s license if it was suspended for non-payment of support.

Community corrections staff should inform non-custodial parents returning from prison that child support and arrears will be deducted from their paycheck and up to 65 percent can be withheld if other arrangements have not been made with the child support enforcement agency.†††† Failure to pay child support—regardless of the person’s ability to pay—can result in conviction and re-incarceration in some states.

Q: How can reentry stakeholders address child custody issues during the reentry process?

A: About 48 percent of parents in prison lived with their minor child prior to incarceration, and in about 84 percent of these cases the child will reside with the other parent while the person is incarcerated.17 People who are released from incarceration may be required to attend custody hearings to regain custody of their minor children. Particularly relevant for those serving longer sentences, the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act authorizes states to initiate termination of parental rights proceedings when a child has been placed in foster care for 15 months in a 22-month period.18

Community corrections officers or child welfare agencies should help prepare a person being released from prison for child custody hearings. Generally, a court will not consider custody issues until after an individual is released from prison, as most will want to know whether the individual’s living and employment situations are stable before permitting visitation or a change in custody for children. However, by engaging the incarcerated parent early and regularly throughout a child welfare case—starting at arrest all the way through the post-release phase—a child welfare agency can improve the likelihood that the child will be returned to their parent after release from incarceration.

It should be noted that it is often difficult to find free legal services to help resolve these issues. However, community fatherhood programs and advocacy groups for the incarcerated can provide additional information and resources, including possible legal assistance.‡‡‡‡

Q: How can community corrections officials work with families to increase the likelihood that the returning individual succeeds after his/her release?

A: Family members can play an important role in the community supervision process, and it’s important that supervision agencies promote a sense of partnership—and overcome any potential adversarial feelings—with families. Before release, community corrections officials should consider ways to reach out to family members to explain the reentry process and its challenges and to better understand family members’ concerns, hesitations, and priorities regarding the release of their family member.§§§§ For example, supervision agencies can hold family orientation sessions so families can learn about the supervision process, ways they can work in partnership with supervision officers, community resources available to them, and how community corrections officers can help both their loved one and family members overcome obstacles they may face.19 Additionally, when parole or probation officers conduct home visits with the family to check whether home placement is appropriate, they have created an opportunity to engage the family in the transition process. Supervision agencies can also develop an informational pamphlet for families that explains how they are a partner in the reentry process, including how they can and should participate and the benefits of being involved.

Building these relationships is not only beneficial to the families, but can also help community corrections officers more effectively supervise and support the person being released, making for a smoother transition from incarceration to the community. When community corrections officers perform their regular contacts with the families, they can work with them to better understand potential obstacles to successful reentry and identify triggers that can lead to offending behavior or violations of supervision conditions. Understanding a person’s and a family’s needs will increase the community corrections officer’s effectiveness and lead to a more productive and successful relationship.

As such, after release, parole and probation officers should be in frequent contact with the families of formerly incarcerated individuals and work to create a trusting environment in which community and family members can approach them about concerns.20 Community corrections staff can learn about the family’s concerns related to reentry and to conditions of supervision, and families can provide insight into the motivating factors for their loved one and the individual’s strengths and weaknesses. Parole and probation officers should consider information about the returning individual’s family while developing a case plan, and determine how the supports and assets a family presents can help mitigate the factors that may contribute to their committing crime (such as negative peer influences, conflict within the family, and anti-social attitudes or beliefs). Community corrections agencies should train probation and parole officers on how to effectively connect with families and build positive relationships.*****

For some people on supervision, childcare can be a challenge that may lead to someone missing an appointment, and community corrections agencies can go a long way towards engaging family members as cooperative partners by making reporting offices more child-friendly. This will help to foster more positive and productive relationships with parents returning from prison.21

Q: How can community-based reentry stakeholders work with families to help them prepare for their family member’s release from incarceration?

A: Families can experience significant emotional and financial loss during a loved one’s incarceration: when a person is incarcerated, his or her family may have lost a parent and parenting partner, a wage earner, and a source of emotional support. At the same time, his or her family members may experience anger, shame, depression, loneliness, isolation, or other complex emotions as a result of the incarceration. The reentry process should provide a space for family members to address these emotions. Service agencies, faith-based groups, and other community-based groups can meet with families at the time of their family member’s incarceration and continue to work with them while the person is incarcerated to prepare members of the family for their loved one’s return to the community. Not only does this help heal open wounds, but it also increases the chance that the family will participate in the reentry process.

During the period of incarceration, these groups can offer classes, resources and support for family members, not only to help them prepare for their loved one’s return to the community, but also to help them deal with the financial, social, and emotional strains of separation. Adopting a broad definition of family (including not only immediate family, but also more distant relations and non-relations with close ties to the incarcerated person), family outreach programs should use an approach that focuses on the person and family’s strengths, rather than their weaknesses and pathologies.††††† This type of focus is often referred to as a “strength-based approach.”‡‡‡‡‡

Community-based agencies can partner with correctional agencies to develop specific ways to engage family members in the reentry and supervision process (for a further discussion of how supervision agencies can engage families, see the question above). Family members can participate in numerous ways. They can attend meetings with reentry planners and service or community corrections agencies; visit their incarcerated family member; participate in family-based programs run through the correctional facility; and help plan for reunification (even if the family is not comfortable with reunification, they should be invited to participate in developing a reentry plan). Both the family and the returning individual benefits from clearly understanding what the family will and will not do.

Halfway houses and transition facilities in the community can also organize structured and unstructured time for families. These provide important opportunities for family members to learn together how to address the challenges they will face after the individual’s release.§§§§§

Q: How can faith communities help people returning to their community after incarceration?

Faith communities can provide traditional pastoral resources, such as counseling and support groups for both people who are incarcerated and their families. Leaders of the organization can also encourage members to support these families much as they would support families struggling with an ill family member.****** They can assist by providing transportation for visitation of incarcerated family members. As respected members of the broader community, congregations and faith-based communities can also provide a valuable supportive voice for establishing and sustaining programs for individuals returning to the community. Faith-based organizations should not take the place of trained human service professionals, but can complement these individuals as a part of the reentry team.

Faith institutions are often central features in a community, and their leaders are often considered a community’s leaders. Therefore, congregations can serve as valuable partners in helping people returning to their community after incarceration by providing services and supports both inside and outside of correctional facilities. They can also help create awareness within their communities of the challenges facing people returning from incarceration. ††††††Congregations can be good places to identify volunteer mentors to work with people while they are incarcerated and provide continuing support as they are released and reintegrated into the community.

Q: What is the role of a mentor in reentry?

A: Mentors can provide a stable, caring, prolonged, and consistent relationship with a person returning from prison. They can act as a role model, provide support, guidance, and encouragement to help a person reentering the community develop constructive relationships, find a job or a place to live, reconnect with family members, and remain crime free. Mentors have been shown to reduce reoffending by acting as a positive social support for people during and after incarceration.22

Mentors are not case managers. While case management is centered on linking individuals to formal services in the community and tracking the individual’s progress, mentoring provides an individual with social support. The mentor does not manage the mentee’s case plan and is not responsible for making service referrals. However, the mentor can be a reference and a support in accessing services and following the case plan. Additionally, the mentor should be available to offer a significant time commitment and friendship to the mentee, which a case manager generally cannot.

An effective mentoring program requires clear goals and a clearly defined target population and set of expectations for the mentor. The program should establish clear guidelines about the degree of involvement with a mentee and any necessary limitations on interactions to make sure both parties are aware of the responsibilities and expectations. Effective programs have a clearly defined recruitment strategy, training protocol (based on a curriculum), and mentor-mentee matching strategy. Mentor-mentee relationships need to be structured and require monitoring, support, and follow-up.

The mentoring program can support a mentor in a number of ways, including facilitating contact by providing meeting locations, answering mentors’ and mentees’ questions or concerns, and offering ideas for possible activities some of which may include family members. Building effective partnerships with faith and community-based organizations to provide mentoring services can be a productive way of creating a lasting program.

Q: How do mentoring programs recruit, train, match, and retain mentors?

A: To recruit mentors, reentry stakeholders should rely on existing social networks.‡‡‡‡‡‡ To the extent possible, mentoring programs should utilize natural supports such as family members and friends as mentors for individuals returning from prison. Formerly incarcerated people may also be effective mentors in that they can share common experiences, and many mentor programs connect community volunteers to people returning from prison.

It is important to follow through immediately when potential mentors express interest. When formerly incarcerated people are serving as mentors, these programs must be careful to check with correctional officials to make sure they allow formerly incarcerated people into their facilities before matching them up with potential mentees. Once mentors are recruited, they need to be screened and interviewed to ensure that they are a good fit for the program.§§§§§§

The agency or organization in charge of developing a mentoring program needs to ensure that mentors are well trained in communication skills to identify and reinforce positive behavior change.****** Training should help familiarize the mentors to their new roles, teach them how to maintain appropriate boundaries with the mentees, explain the program’s policies and requirements, and make clear the program’s expectations regarding their engagement with mentees as well as program staff. Once active, coordinators should support mentors and encourage them to develop relationships with other mentors.

Mentors and mentees should be matched with the goal that the individuals can relate to each other based on a common experience or background, as well as availability and geographic proximity. Same-gender matching is typical. By clearly defining the objectives for the mentoring program at the outset— in particular, why you are creating the mentoring program and what you expect it to achieve—programs will find they have a more appropriate pool of mentors and therefore are better positioned to match the right mentors to participants. To support these relationships, regular contact between mentors and mentees (once or twice a week) is recommended. Mentoring staff should be available to both parties for questions, support, ideas, and to address any issues that may arise.

Mentors should feel adequately supported and programs should make every effort to retain them for the duration of their commitment. Mentors should be thanked and appreciated for their work and should always be respected by program staff. Mentor appreciation parties, individual mentor-supervisor meetings, and other types of mentor recognition events can do a great deal to show mentors how valuable they are to the success of the reentry program. As much as possible, program staff should tailor the type of support provided to meet the individual needs of each mentor.

At the same time, program staff should hold mentors accountable for their commitments. Though generally volunteers, mentors have a very real responsibility to their mentees as well as to the program – and in a sense can be considered to hold jobs within the organization. Staff who supervise mentees should carefully outline their expectations for each mentor. They should check in on how mentors are doing, help address any challenges they face, and commend them for accomplishments along the way.

Throughout the life of the program, staff must consistently evaluate the mentor program’s success (starting by agreeing on a definition of success), work towards building sustainable programming and funding, and plan for the future. All of these efforts require developing ongoing partnerships with community members and partners to ensure that the mentoring program meets the needs of its community and adapts as those needs change.