(C-BREES) Community Based Reentry Education and Employment Services for Currently and Formerly Incarcerated Women

Operation Restoration (OR) will implement (C-BREES) Community Based Reentry Education and Employment Services in collaboration with the Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPS&C) and Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) for currently and formerly incarcerated women to help reduce the challenges they face.  The overarching goal is to improve vocational education programs available to incarcerated women while in custody and upon return to the community. Services will begin prior to release from incarceration and continue for 12 months post-release. After a six-month planning period, OR will provide comprehensive education and employment services for 75 women total in two and a half years (30 per year). C-BREES will expand OR’s existing Lab Assistant Program at LCIW in partnership with DPS&C, and Delgado Community College Workforce Development and Technical Education Unit.    

The objectives of C-BREES are:

Engage in a six-month planning period to strengthen existing partnerships with correctional facilities, community supervision providers and other re-entry stakeholders. 

Expand partnerships with local hospital systems to provide employment opportunities to program graduates (2022 - 2024).

Recruit and enroll up to 30 women per year that result in improved educational outcomes for incarcerated women (2023-2025).

80% of program participants complete the Lab Assistant program and receive support from OR with the licensure process and seeking employment in the field post-release (2023-2025).

Start the NAACLS accreditation process for the Lab Assistant program by the end of the grant period (2023-2025). 

The proposed project is seeking priority consideration 1A (see pages 18 of full proposal) because it will promote racial equity and the removal of barriers to access and opportunity, primarily for women of color that are part of communities that have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by inequality. “Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one’s racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares” (Interaction Institute for Social Change). Racial equity is not only a goal at OR, but also an active practice within our internal policies and our external efforts to create more equitable pathways to liberation. In order to achieve racial equity OR staff work to dismantle the racist structures that uphold the hyper-incarceration of women and girls of color. This includes policies, practices, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race.