Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2021, $1,000,000)
Recent sentencing reform in WA State (Graduated Reentry and Community Parenting Alternative) will impact the number of incarcerated individuals in reentry within the WA State Department of Corrections (WA DOC). Over the next two years, the number of those eligible to be supervised in the community, will grow an additional 2,200 people. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure the reentry process is supportive and successful by providing a reentry plan with resources to help individuals not recidivate for the safety of communities and victims.
WA state DOC prison division provides targeted interventions to people while they are incarcerated. However, when an incarcerated individual transfers to partial confinement or is released to the community, there is a delay in services, and sometimes an inability to connect people to the needed resources to address the criminogenic needs through targeted interventions in the community, and also essential needs such as food, housing, mental health, and substance use treatment. Community-based case managers rely on insufficient lists of providers that are out-of-date, incomplete, or non-existent (rural areas) due to a lack of providers in the immediate area.
The DOC has successfully identified special populations to front load reentry services, and due to the front loading of reentry services success, DOC wants to expand these services further. WA DOC proposes to create a verified provider list, to help scale front loaded reentry services to be able to serve all individuals in reentry. This project will pair time effective and efficient reentry services with the new verified provider list to target incarcerated individuals releasing to areas impacted by disproportionate population of offenders and poverty within Benton, Cowlitz, Franklin, Pierce and Yakima counties within WA State.