Click here to view our YouTube video recognizing the work of our Americorps VISTA volunteers who are working to expand prisoner reentry programs in Delaware.

SURJ is proud to celebrate Americorps week (May 8 - May 15th, 2010) by recognizing the ongoing prisoner reentry work of its seven VISTA volunteers.  These volunteers are working with six local organizations to expand and improve prisoner reentry services.

The organizations hosting a volunteer are SURJ, Delaware Reentry Consortium, Delaware Center for Justice, A Center for Relational Living, the Office of the Public Defender, and The Elizabeth House Family Life Center.  VISTAs are tasked with expanding the capacity of the organizations where they are placed.  Some of the VISTAs’ activities include recruiting volunteers, creating or improving programs, and investigating grants.   Specific areas of service include creating mentoring projects for individuals leaving prison, expanding mental health support for ex-offenders, creating programs for older prisoners, and honing in on the specific needs of female prisoners. 

VISTA volunteers sign on for a one year term of service, which includes a modest living allowance from the federal government of between $800 and $900 per month.  The meager stipend helps VISTAs experience—some, for the first time—living at or below the poverty level.  This is an important “immersion experience,” since most of the programs where VISTAs are placed serve clients who are struggling to make ends meet due to their recent incarceration.

Specific activities of the VISTAs include:

• Tiffany Reed (Office of the Public Defender) is focusing specifically on female prisoners at Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution.  She has interviewed 27 female inmates over the last three months in order to assess the unmet needs that the women encounter when they are released from prison before their trial.  Based on the interviews, Brooks has created a Gender-Specific Pretrial Reentry Needs Assessment Tool.  The needs assessment includes the five commonly identified reentry pillars (housing, employment, human services, education, and community reintegration) but includes other needs as well.  The tool will help the Public Defender staff to better understand the needs of their female clients and will enable the staff to develop protocol and best practices for new client intake.  Brooks is also laying the groundwork for a “Pathways Through Probation” support group for the women.  This pilot project would provide female offenders with the tools necessary to navigate the terms of their probation and would help them avoid technical violations while providing a safe place to get moral support.  The pilot program design and launch plan should be in place by next February.
• Nicole Jones (A Center for Relational Living) is expanding a mentor program for former prisoners. Jones is currently assisting ACRL with recruiting mentors.  Jones, who recently left her corporate job in New York to pursue public interest work, has been interviewing current and previous mentors at ACRL to determine how the organization can improve its program.  She is also creating a mentor application process and is assembling training materials for mentors who are selected.  ACRL will launch a mentor recruitment initiative in June to attempt to attract more male mentors to the program.  Jones is also ramping up the organization’s donation system in order to ensure that the program is sustainable.
• Tiffany Brooks is assisting the Delaware Reentry Consortium in its mission of providing resources and support to agencies that engage in prisoner reentry work.  Brooks has recruited three new board members to the organization and is assisting DRC with planning public events.  She has also updated DRC’s Prisoner Reentry Resources Online Directory, which helps ex-offenders, their families, and service providers find appropriate services and resources by geographic area or by service category.
• Charles Goldberg (Delaware Center for Justice) is assisting DCJ with implementing a program aimed at ex-offenders who struggle with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  Although approximately 25% of incarcerated individuals suffer from ADHD, little to no resources exist to provide them with behavioral coaching to control their symptoms as they reenter the community.  Goldberg has been successful in implementing an ADHD screening tool for inmates that will be used by some probation officers going forward.  He is also working with local mental health experts to design and implement a research project designed to study whether ADHD treatment and behavioral coaching contributes to reducing recidivism.
• Tinisha Brown and Talita Virgil (Elizabeth House Family Life Center, Inc.) are assisting EHFLC with developing and formalizing the organization’s ex-offender mentoring project.  Virgil and Brown are developing the operations manual for the program, focusing on research pointing toward best practices in mentoring.  In the coming months, Virgil and Brown will be recruiting mentors for the program.
• Julie Miller (Stand Up for What’s Right and Just), an attorney who graduated from Widener Law School in 2009, is assisting SURJ in its pilot year of the Project for Older Prisoners, or POPS Program.  Under the supervision of SURJ, Widener Law students staff the program.  POPS identifies eligible geriatric prisoners who pose a low risk for reoffending and for whom sentence modification may be an appropriate option.  If sentence modification petitions are successful and the older inmate is released from prison based on the law students’ advocacy, prisoner reentry services are provided by the Delaware Center for Justice.  Miller has assisted SURJ in coordinating the many legal and systemic details associated with submitting sentence modification petitions.  She has also focused on recruiting law students to participate in the program and on securing grant funding to ensure that the program is sustainable.