Inmates on this Texas program are leaving jail with jobs — and decrease probabilities of reincarceration

Join The Temporary, The Texas Tribune’s day by day e-newsletter that retains readers up to the mark on probably the most important Texas information.

---

GATESVILLE — As Amanda Morgan walked out of state jail for the third time in her life, she felt outfitted to by no means return.

She wouldn’t spend the {dollars} in her pocket on a pack of cigarettes, as she says she did the final two occasions she was launched from jail. And fairly than returning to a lifetime of medicine and crime in her earlier house, she’d be dropped off at a sober-living facility in San Angelo and had plans to start a full-time job nearly instantly.

“I’ve worked hard to get where I am today,” Morgan, 45, mentioned as she ready for her launch from the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit about 40 miles west of Waco. “I’m going to be good.”

Morgan is one in every of 30 girls who graduated final week from STRIVE, a extremely selective, 12-week reentry program the Texas Division of Felony Justice launched in 2019 to assist girls incarcerated on the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit (previously referred to as the Mountain View Unit)

handle emotional trauma, be taught skilled expertise and land a job previous to their launch.

STRIVE, an acronym for Energy By Restoration, Independence, Imaginative and prescient and Empowerment, has graduated 824 girls. Each graduate left jail with a job provide in hand, and graduates are about half as prone to return to jail as the overall jail inhabitants, state officers mentioned. Inside three years of their launch, 5.6% of STRIVE contributors returned to jail in comparison with 9.7% of all incarcerated Texas girls, based on information supplied by jail officers.

Felony justice reform advocates say lawmakers ought to pump cash into STRIVE and comparable packages that contribute to decrease charges of recidivism. Analysis, time and time once more, has discovered such packages to economize that the state would in any other case spend to reincarcerate repeat offenders.

However extra dire wants for the state’s roughly 135,000-person jail inhabitants imply rehabilitation packages like STRIVE usually are not the place the company plans to direct extra state {dollars} within the subsequent funds cycle.

The identical day Morgan and different STRIVE graduates donned robes and walked throughout a stage to gather their diplomas, the legal justice company’s government director Bryan Collier defended his funds request earlier than state lawmakers.

Final yr, the company submitted a historic $10.9 billion appropriation request for the subsequent two years. Requests embody $240 million to assemble dorms to deal with a inhabitants projected to extend by about 10% over the subsequent 5 years, a further $404.5 million to pay for inmates’ well being care prices and $28 million to fund a pay enhance for parole officers who had a 33% turnover fee. An extra $215 million is required for main facility repairs.

Not included within the funds request are {dollars} to increase rehabilitation and reentry packages which embody chaplaincy, reentry transitional coordinators, substance use remedy packages, and the intercourse offender remedy program. STRIVE additionally falls into that bucket, although it’s run in collaboration with the Windham College District, which gives schooling to Texas’ incarcerated inhabitants. Windham can be not at the moment searching for state {dollars} to increase rehabilitation packages, officers mentioned.

“If rehabilitation works, then let’s invest in it,” mentioned Jennifer Toon, who was incarcerated and now runs Lioness Justice Impacted Girls’s Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for at the moment and previously incarcerated girls. “STRIVE is at one facility. How do we replicate that culture and make it more than just three months?”

The STRIVE mannequin 

The STRIVE program is very coveted for its competitiveness, contributors mentioned. They need to full an interview and aptitude evaluation to achieve admission. This system is open to girls who’ve demonstrated good conduct and usually are not in high-security custody, amongst different necessities.

STRIVE residing quarters don’t have metallic bars nor are they darkish, isolating cells. As a substitute, the ladies reside communally in a vivid, rectangular dorm with rows of cots separated by pink brick. Phrases of encouragement beautify the white partitions: “There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.” “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”

Members be taught coping expertise and wholesome methods to reply to triggers in a category targeted on trauma and therapeutic. The course additionally addresses problems with home violence and sexual assault. One other few hours are devoted to profession and know-how. The ladies obtain an electronic mail handle and pc entry to seek for and apply to jobs. They will additionally full certifications in skilled communication, occupational security, secure meals dealing with and forklifting to make them extra enticing job candidates.

“This is the first time I’ve ever done anything during my incarceration,” mentioned STRIVE graduate Aubrey Nothaft, who mentioned she has been in jail eight occasions and plans to work in cosmetology, a talent she realized whereas in jail. “I begged to get into STRIVE. I just don’t want to come back (to prison).”

A program supervisor and two case managers are devoted to the STRIVE program. There are additionally two full time academics from the Windham College District. About six mentors, who’re feminine inmates chosen by the warden and different company officers, stay with contributors and provide assist.

Mentors and neighborhood volunteers additionally educate the scholars about wholesome relationships, habit restoration, and managing funds.

This system is “the full package with the bow on top,” mentioned Sherri Cogbill, the deputy director of the Texas Division of Felony Justice reentry and integration division. “The confidence they gain through this program is extraordinary.”

Earlier than STRIVE graduates return to the free world, they choose hygiene merchandise {and professional} clothes to take with them. Mentor Shy Belser, 61, helps contributors choose clothes of their dimension.

“I can’t be more ready to go home,” mentioned Ahlante Wilson, a STRIVE graduate who left jail final week after serving eight and a half years. “It’s the best feeling.”

A bit of the puzzle 

STRIVE is a vivid spot inside a state legal justice system contending with a extreme staffing scarcity, a rising inmate inhabitants and ballooning correctional well being care prices. The state jail system is chargeable for housing about 135,000 offenders and managing the parole and probation of one other 437,000 individuals.

Lowering recidivism is among the many company’s priorities, outlined in its 2030 Imaginative and prescient. Texas will grow to be a “national leader in rehabilitative programming,” the company web site states.

“To me, public safety is achieved if [inmates] don’t come back,” Collier instructed state lawmakers throughout a public listening to final week, including that schooling and rehabilitation packages are among the many main drivers of low charges of recidivism.

However as they wrestle to reply to speedy operational wants at their greater than 100 services, company leaders usually are not requesting to spend more cash on rehabilitation. As a substitute, their funds proposal targets outdated know-how, growing older infrastructure, and staffing issues that, based on a Sundown Fee Report, have impacted the company’s potential to offer satisfactory public security.

“It has to be a safe environment for anything good to happen in there,” Collier mentioned throughout final week’s Senate Finance Committee listening to.

The Texas Division of Felony Justice has requested for the 2026-27 funds cycle $424 million to offer rehabilitation and reintegration companies to convicted felons — any enhance in comparison with the present funds cycle would solely cowl the rising prices of salaries and remedy. Rehabilitation and reintegration companies embody substance abuse remedy and vocational coaching however don’t embody the {dollars} expended by Windham college district.

Regardless of competing priorities, some legal justice advocates say rehabilitation packages like STRIVE ought to nonetheless be expanded and that doing so might in the end save the company cash.

“My hope is that lawmakers will explore incorporating a boost to the funding for these kinds of effective treatment programs,” mentioned Marc Levin, chief coverage counsel on the nonpartisan assume tank Council on Felony Justice.

The Council of State Governments estimated in a 2024 report that Texas will spend $369 million to reincarcerate individuals who have been launched from its prisons in 2022. To avert these prices, the council recommends that state and native governments, together with nonprofit organizations, increase assist to people getting back from incarceration.

Company officers say they are going to prioritize rehabilitation by maximizing the prevailing funds.

Some previously incarcerated girls have prompt including funding to STRIVE to make it longer than 12-weeks and to increase the companies to different girls. In fiscal yr 2024, about 6,200 girls have been launched from jail or state jail, TDCJ reported.

“I did 33 years in prison. Three months was not enough to help me learn to reintegrate back in society,” former STRIVE participant Donise Cherry mentioned throughout a Sundown Fee listening to in November.

Jail officers mentioned they wish to increase parts of STRIVE to different services. Final yr, the Texas Division of Felony Justice opened a brand new jail targeted on rehabilitation. One reentry program the jail presents to male inmates is modeled off of STRIVE.

Windham College District superintendent Kristina J. Hartman mentioned the district shouldn’t be asking for extra funds for STRIVE this legislative session as a result of it’s at the moment specializing in assessing their packages.

She mentioned her district will take into account rising its choices within the 2027 legislative session, which can embody an ask for know-how to make sure college students can compete within the job market and entry on-line alternatives.

Reentering society 

Simply because Morgan was not locked up didn’t imply life would grow to be simple. Morgan was launched final week on parole and must fulfill sure circumstances, together with carrying an ankle monitor, reporting to her parole officer every week and finishing a weekly drug take a look at.

Morgan was convicted in 2021 of possession of lower than a gram of a managed substance, methamphetamine. She additionally has two prior theft convictions.

The day after Morgan’s STRIVE commencement, she arrived on the sober residing home the place she tried to begin off on the best foot. She deliberate to report back to parole, go to the meals stamp workplace, purchase a number of clothes gadgets and finalize the main points of her job, however she bumped into obstacles.

“I got on the wrong bus, ended up going the wrong way and had to explain that to my parole officer,” Morgan mentioned. “It was a very stressful day. I didn’t get anything accomplished.”

After realizing the Goodwill workplace she was slated to work at would take hours to succeed in by bus, Morgan discovered a job at a landscaping firm. The coaching she accomplished in horticulture and concrete farming whereas in jail would turn out to be useful, she mentioned. The job was brief lived, although. The corporate didn’t have sufficient work for Morgan, so she is again on the seek for a full-time job.

Regardless of the ups and downs of life submit incarceration, Morgan says she feels ready and dedicated to bettering her life.

“I feel like they covered everything we would need in order to start fresh,” Morgan mentioned about STRIVE. “It’s all going to work out.”