My Way Out Inc

• Reduce recidivism for justice-impacted individuals regardless of criminogenic need and risk up to and beyond the 3 year period due to resource deficiencies, inadequate, inconsistent, comprehensive and/or coordinated reentry services personalized to the individual for employment, housing, health, and family reintegration that have customarily been lacking throughout our communities including equitable access to ongoing established relationships with providers.

• Reduce gaps and inconsistency in preparing justice-impacted individuals for transition back into the community with the current ratios of correction staff to institution residents, limited programming related to extent of need, limited staff supervision to conduct in-house programs, and variance across institutions of available programs for adult education, career/technical education, substance abuse, and mental health services that would prepare residents for scheduled release.

• Address comprehensive criminogenic needs of residents and related risks necessitate that coordination and consistent case management services should be aligned for each resident long-term with individualized pre- and post-release plans based on current, available resources with frequent opportunities for justice-impacted individuals to communicate with their case manager and eliminate barriers to success.

• Poverty, inequality and the stigma of incarceration make reentry almost impossible without multiple interventions and consistent support from individuals they trust and share experiences with.

• Both pre- and post-release, justice-impacted individuals would be more invested in their success and in preventing recidivism if they can personally take their first steps to empowerment by reaching out to supportive service providers themselves and prioritizing their needs and action issues.

• Medium to high criminogenic needs and risks need to be prioritized and addressed individually in partnership with the resident and an assigned supportive service provider to track actions and outcomes and reinforce accomplishments. Any barriers to success and potential interventions can be identified and acted upon in a timely manner in partnership with the resident both pre- and post-release with their assigned supportive services provider.

• Structure newsletter communications for all Wisconsin correctional institutions to inform and educate residents about the services associated with My Way Out, their opportunities to prepare for scheduled release with participation in available trauma-informed treatment programs, higher education, workforce training and certification programs, and access to training in technology use upon release by indicating their interest in writing to work collaboratively with MWO.

• Rather than identifying and selecting individuals for participation based on criminogenic needs and risks, MWO leverages an individual’s own motivation and their feelings of empowerment to drive resident investment in pre- and post-release planning using personal interests and assets, skillsets, self-awareness and commitment to trauma-informed care and treatment, building on education, prior work experience, and the opportunity to have access to a MWO reentry supportive services provider 24/7 via the anti-bias mobile app platform or in-person post-release to address criminogenic needs and risks and reduce barriers to success with targeted referrals and follow-up.

• The opportunity for justice-impacted individuals to sustain communication and support from MWO reentry supportive service case managers continuously over a period of months and years through the MWO mobile app platform supports an individual’s commitment and creates a safety net to track priorities, action items, goals and accomplishments, education and training participation and completion, employer contacts and employment interviews, meetings with probation or parole officers, barriers and potential solutions, as well as provide demographic profiles, and content regarding housing, healthcare, and family and community reintegration issues.

• MWO and its reentry supportive services staff will improve correctional institutions sole reliance on correctional officers, the need for on-site access to residents for pre- and post-release planning, and provide up-to-date referrals post-release from probation and parole for wraparound safety net services by using MWO’s communication tools to establish pre- and post-release personalized reentry plans including employment opportunities in their release locations.

• With MWO’s technology platform for justice-impacted individuals, MWO will be able to communicate with and track over a period of years both short and long-term demographic data and outcome variables for preventing recidivism for all participants from low to high criminogenic need and risk on the impact of internal Earned Release programs, pre- and post-release interventions in treatment modalities, adult education enrollment, career/technical education participation, AODA programs, job-readiness training and employment sector hiring, housing and transportation issues, and access to family and community resources.

MWO has identified key variables that contribute to recidivism including the lack of consistent, pre-planned reentry case management services and options for future housing shortly after sentencing, inconsistent coordination, collaboration and communication between providers and the corrections system, and the lack of more robust strategic pre-release and reentry workforce-readiness program participation, coaching and employment opportunities.
An October 2019 pilot project evaluation study funded by BJA reiterated that ‘finding employment plays a critical role in preventing recidivism.’ The white paper offered guidance on how to design employment-focused reentry programs that incorporate risk/need-responsivity (RNR) principles into service delivery; it included a tool to help policymakers and practitioners match people to appropriate services that have the maximum impact on recidivism and employment outcomes. The framework emphasized that connecting a person to the right combination of services and appropriate level of intensity during various points in reentry planning can reduce his or her chance of recidivating. These resources refocus a person’s time and efforts on prosocial activities, making the person less likely to engage in riskier behaviors and to associate with people who do. To test this framework, the pilot project focused on people returning from prison or jail to Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and Palm Beach County, Florida, who were assessed as being at a moderate to high risk of reoffending and as having varying levels of employability. The results suggest that the challenges/successes aligned with the areas identified as fundamental to implementing a collaborative and coordinated approach to reentry planning: leadership commitment, timely use of assessments, detailed process analysis, capacity to meet the population needs, and data tracking. The pilot sites were successful in ensuring the resource-allocation and service-matching tool was used after release, but they needed to improve their efforts in assessing levels of job readiness and providing the appropriate employment-related services before release. To expand their implementation on a systems-wide scale, each site needed to refine their coordination and information-sharing agreements across the corrections and workforce development systems and engage executive leadership to increase service capacity capabilities for reentry and employment programming before and after release. To mitigate this challenge, program coordinators and community-based providers expressed that extending ownership of reentry planning to participants and incorporating the use of reentry-focused coordinators before and after release has been effective.
MWO will build on its current success in fulfilling wraparound case management needs create individual onboarding opportunities, and will connect individuals with second-chance employers maintaining case management services for 3 years.