Roadmap to Re-Entry
The Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC), guided by the leadership of Governor Mitch Daniels and Commissioner Edwin G. Buss, has forged partnerships to enhance prisoner re-entry and bring Indiana to the forefront of national discussion surrounding the reentry process. In 2007, over 18,000 offenders were released from Indiana prisons to one of ninety-two counties. Successfully integrating each released offender into his or her community involves coordinating a variety of resources, programs, and agencies, all of which are striving toward a common goal of lowering the recidivism rate and changing lives. The IDOC strives to be the catalyst in bringing all resources together for this common purpose.
Despite the recent emphasis, the concept of re-entry is not new to the IDOC. The staff of the Department of Correction begins focusing on re-entry the first day of an inmate’s incarceration. Each offender develops, in coordination with their Unit Team, a Re-entry Accountability Plan (RAP). The RAP is developed following a needs and risk assessment and focuses on solution-based re-entry programming. Offenders will also participate in a pre-release program within their last twelve months of incarceration.
Offender progress and program completion can be shared with anyone in the community who provides a service that assists with offender reentry through a Progress Report. Re-entry programs focus on the vital areas of character, education, employment, family, health, and housing as a means to break down barriers to reentry while maintaining and enhancing public safety.
One of the aforementioned DOC re-entry programs, PLUS (Purposeful Living Units Serve), is a faith and character-based re-entry initiative. These living units are designed with the purpose of teaching core fundamental values that will challenge participants and focus on positive reinforcement through learned behavior to achieve a more successful re-entry. Another program, CLIFF (Clean Lifestyle is Freedom Forever), is a substance abuse program for methamphetamine addictions. This program provides a positive environment in which offenders learn skills to help them be successful in their re-entry transition. These are just two examples of the types of programs the DOC provides to aid offenders in their travel down the road to re-entry.
On a larger scale, the Plainfield Re-entry Educational Facility (PREF), which opened in July 2006, is the first of its kind in the country. PREF is dedicated to addressing individual re-entry barriers for each offender. By focusing on education and vocational skills built during the last twelve to thirty-six months of an offender’s incarceration, PREF creates a setting that is as close to community living as possible to help mitigate the shock of re-entry. Inmates are referred to as residents and the prison is set up as an open campus environment. PREF is a good representation of the innovative solutions that the DOC has implemented to address re-entry.
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