District of Columbia Fathering Reentry Court

The Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI) is designed to provide funding to state units of government to develop and implement institutional and community corrections-based offender reentry programs. The PRI strengthens urban communities characterized by large numbers of returning offenders. The PRI is designed to reduce recidivism by helping returning offenders find work and assess other critical services in their communities. The PRI supports strategies to deliver pre- and post-release assessments and services, and to develop transition plans in collaboration with other justice and community-based agencies and providers for supervised and non-supervised offenders.

The District of Columbia Justice Grants Administration will use its award to establish the District of Columbia Fathering Reentry Court (FRC) in order to integrate the requirements of child support enforcement and prisoner reentry process.

The FRC program will be a court-supervised, sanctions-based, comprehensive program for prisoners returning to the district who are the subject of active D.C. child support cases. Participation in the program will include at least six months of pre-release services by the Bureau of Prisons, transition planning by the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) and the Fathering Court Project Manager, as well as case management in the community. Services and support will be designed to prepare fathers to play a more positive role in the lives of their children, and encourage fathers to provide financial support for their children. Participants will receive job readiness and employment opportunities from the Department of Employment Services in order to support themselves as they move from subsidized to unsubsidized employment.

CA/NCF