Re-entry Mentor Training Project
This program offers training to prepare interfaith and community mentors to work with persons preparing for release from prison, to work with persons faced with the day-to-day transition and challenges associated with a successful return to their families or to a new start and mentor children of prisoners and juvenile offenders.

Goals

1. To make the transition from one lifestyle to another easier, more affective and permanent.
2. To promote healing, self-esteem, relationship-building and self-empowerment.
3. To formulate partnerships with faith-based and community organizations engaged in re-entry programs, that strengthen families and neighborhoods.
4. To expand public awareness and dialogue on the issues of re-entry.

Program Components

Two-Day Mentor Training Course

• Technical elements & strategies
• Mentoring and You
• Understanding background and Security issues
• Cultural sensitivities
• Infrastructure development
• Character building
• Direction in working with children and families of offenders
• Mentoring and communication techniques

Continuing Development Workshop

• Follow-up support for trained mentors
• Review techniques and best practices
• Evaluation of the on-going process
• Conflict resolution

Design

• Minimum of 15 participants per class to maximize effectiveness
• Customize to fit the needs of individual organization
• Two Saturdays (TBD)

"...Successful integration of formerly incarcerated individuals benefits the community and individual in ways that cannot be measured in dollars."

The social value of reintegration is measured by a formerly incarcerated person's ability to:

• Contribute to the support of their family
• Provide a healthy environment for their children and enhance the positive human resources in the community

To accomplish these ends, we must examine and implement effective interventions that could help people with criminal records on the path to productive community involvement as stated by the Reentry Working Group.

Prisoner Re-Entry Defined
Prisoner re-entry is the process of leaving prison or jail and returning to society. All prisoners experience reentry irrespective of their method of release or form of supervision. So both prisoners who are released on parole and those who are released to no supervision in the community experience re-entry. If the re-entry process is successful, there are benefits in terms of improved public safety and the long-term reintegration of the former prisoner.

More people are leaving prisons across the country to return to their families and communities than at any other time in our history. Nationally, over 600,000 individuals will be released from state and federal prisons this year, a fourfold increase over the past two decades. From a number of perspectives, the issue of how people fare after they exit the prison gates has received renewed attention. Many will have difficulty managing the most basic ingredients for successful reintegration-reconnecting with jobs, housing, and their families, and accessing needed substance abuse and health care treatment.

The potential "ripple effects" of the prisoner re-entry process for returning prisoners, their families and communities have sparked a growing level of activity among national, state and local policymakers, researchers and practitioners that is unprecedented.