Halfway Houses/Hawthorn Heights

These types of facilities serve as transitional "safe-houses" for recovering addicts who need time to mend fences and reestablish themselves as normal members of society. In this shared living environment, residents typically share responsibilities, participate in group therapy sessions and attend required 12-step meetings. They are also monitored on a daily basis to assure they don't break important house rules such as using substances.

If we dissect a hypothetical situation in which a halfway house is being occupied with recovering drug addicts, how can we be certain that the home is going to be supervised properly? However, residents of the halfway house are not always going to be under direct supervision. For example, if a resident decides that they no longer want to be there. They have the opportunity to escape with very little effort. This confinement is not as easy to accomplish with a judicial institution. These offenders can become a hazard and dangerous to others due to their extreme behavior as they seek out for drugs, or trying to run away from capture. Between January 2008 and March 2009, there were 201 escaped offenders from a halfway house resident according to the New Jersey Today. This is an average of one escape every two days over a fifteen-month time frame. These escapes were associated with seven out of the twenty-five privately run halfway houses in Trenton, New Jersey. An obstacle, such as this, proves that the instability of halfway houses is lacking in view of management. Furthermore, halfway house programs sometimes reflect a corrupt system that awards contracts on the basis of political favoritism rather than the ability to reduce recidivism. Halfway house agreements are sometimes seen as a way for government officials to reward political backers and campaign contributors. Unfortunately, not all halfway

The early resurgence of halfway houses in the 1950s was due to the inability of institutional corrections to effectively rehabilitate offenders and limit further criminal behavior (Latessa & Smith, 2011). Therefore, halfway houses provided offenders transitional support to bridge the gap between imprisonment and free society, and most early halfway houses focused on individualized treatment, counseling, and substance abuse counseling, which conformed to the medical model used in prisons (Latessa & Smith, 2011). Furthermore, the need for halfway houses garnered additional attention from the federal government, and in 1965, the Prison Rehabilitation Act was enacted permitting the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to create community-based residences

The Federal Bureau of Prisons contracts with Residential Re-entry Centers (RRCFs), also known as halfway houses, to provide assistance to inmates who are nearing release. A traditional supervised RRCF provides a structured environment, counseling, job placement, and other services; ergo, each halfway house is unique in regards to the programs offered and the type of clients they serve. A prisoner re-entry program, halfway houses help inmates to gradually rebuild their ties to the community and facilitate supervising offenders' activities during this readjustment phase. This dissertation is dedicated to examining Dismas House of Kansas City Missouri.

In order to address recidivism rates in this matter treatment needs to concentrate on the individuals criminogenic needs, and then be followed up by aftercare. The offender should complete all programs, like halfway houses/community residential treatment facilities. These facilities need to be empathetic, accepting, and genuine in nature for rehabilitation to occur. (Loftus, lecture)

The Federal Bureau of Prisons contracts with Residential Re-entry Centers (RRCFs), also known as halfway houses, to provide assistance to inmates who are nearing release. Traditional RRCF’s provide a structured, supervised environment offering employment assistance and preparation, clinical counseling, mentoring and other services; ergo, each halfway house is unique in regards to the programs offered and the type of clients they serve. As a prisoner re-entry program, halfway houses help inmates to progressively repair their relationship to the community and expedite supervising the offenders' activities during this rehabilitation stage. This dissertation is dedicated to examining Dismas House of Kansas City Missouri (DHKC).

This method has proven to be engaging because it seems to satisfy the goals of imprisonment without the social and financial costs that are associated with imprisonment. Like halfway houses, it is an alternative to prison overcrowding and is less costly.

Inmates are released with few if any resources and usually end up returning to the institution after failing to reestablish productive lives in the community. This alarming reality is both a fiscal and social problem: state budget deficits bring enormous prison expenditures to light as social injustices in the system persist. Reforming the system to end the cycle of incarceration will have positive effects on the bottom line while reducing crime and thereby increasing public safety. Clearly, the deterrence effects of harsh prison sentences have not been effective. It may be time to once again embrace and expand the rehabilitative capacity of the criminal justice system.

It has been about six years since I last saw my cousin, who will remain anonymous, and unfortunately, the last time I saw him, it was through a thick sheet of bulletproof glass, talking over a telephone, in the county jail where he was being held during sentencing. I regret to say that this was not the first time I had seen him “behind bars”. As a matter of fact, I cannot even remember the last time I saw him when he was not wearing an orange jumpsuit. I know that when I was young, I always got picked on in school and he was the only person who stood up for me. He protected me and loved me the way only your favorite

Community aftercare is a significant component to further the success of prison-based treatment. Prison-based treatment starts the recovery process, but a continuum of care is a necessity to maximize the effectiveness of treatment (Olson & Lurigio, 2014). Continued substance abuse treatment along with educational and employment training will be emphasized at the IDOC reentry center. A lack of a high school diploma or GED has been correlated with a high number of offenders who are probation violators (Linhorst, Dirks-Linhorst, & Groom, 2012). Employment training will be provided as many offenders have poor work histories. However once an offender obtains employment, research has shown the chances of them remaining a productive member of society increases. (Webster,

Upon release contact will be made with the former inmates periodically over a five-year time period. Ideally contact will be made once every year, five times in total. When one on one interviews are possible with former inmates they will be asked if they believe that the re-entry services have helped them substantially in becoming a productive member in society. If they did not

Evans et al. (2011) focused on two separate treatment groups (high-risk offenders & low-risk offenders) who were followed-up on at the 12 and 30 month mark after they were assessed for treatment. The length of treatment, not the classification risk of the offender, was found to be a significant variable of recidivism as those who received a longer length of treatment were less likely to be re-arrested Evans et al. (2011). Because not all offenders are guaranteed treatment, in some circumstances there is no length of prison-based treatment. In order to continue to reduce the prison population and provide treatment to offenders, early parole programs have been developed.

The goal of the halfway house is to provide a temporary safe environment for soon to be released prisoners. Some of the prisoners stay a short period of time approximately 6 months. ( Bohm & Haley, 2014) The halfway house is to help the prisoner transition back to society. The principal goal of the halfway house is to make sure that the prisoners are getting the things that they’re needing to make sure they won’t end up back behind bars. The main goal is to help the prisoners find a steady job where they can be held accountable for their own actions. Education for prisoners is very important so making sure that the prisoner is going to educational classes such as GED classes or trade school. Most important to the prisoners in the halfway

In the article “Evaluating reentry programming in Pennsylvania’s board of Probation & Parole: An assessment of offenders’ perceptions and recidivism outcomes” by Jesse S. Zortman, Thomas Powers, Michele Hiester, Frederick R. Klunk & Michael E. Antonio, explain the positive outcome of reentry programs for offenders under supervision. The research conducted used the outcomes from the Reentry Program in Pennsylvania, and focused on offender’s issues faced when reentering back into the community (Zortman, Powers, Hiester, Klunk & Antonio, 2016). Researchers Philips and Spencer pointed out the different factors which include education, employment, income, stable housing, family, substance abuse and health issues (Zortman et al., 2016). The reentry

The cons to halfway houses are mostly the re-occurring criminals that cannot change their ways and it hurts taxpayers to support these houses. In essence, people of the facilities are not always going to be under “great” supervision. Envision that a criminal decides they no longer want to be there and they escape with very little effort, a task not as easy to do in a judicial care system.