County Jail Re-entry Project

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 Community Corrections Division (CCD) of the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) will use grant funds to increase local re-entry programming within county jails through a competitive subgrant process. The CCD will use the existing structure of the community corrections agencies statewide to implement the county jail project. The purpose and function of the community corrections agencies comport with the requirements of this project. Each agency is governed by a local advisory board whose membership is established by state statute and requires participation by county sheriffs. These agencies already provide programs for offenders housed at local jails and those offenders ordered to participate in community corrections as a condition of probation. Additionally, the advisory boards will serve as the required advisory group for the prisoner re-entry initiative.

Counties selected to participate in the reentry project will provide offenders housing, basic sustenance, medical services and social service programming such as: education assistance, substance abuse treatment, and job training and placement. Matching funds will be supplied through offender housing costs at participating county jails. Grant funds will also be used for an independent evaluation of the project and for travel costs to BJA-sponsored training and conferences.

CA/NCF