The Reentry partnership includes many agencies: Sheriff’s office, Probation, the Choices Program, Forensic Mental Health, Behavioral Health and Recovery Services the Northern California Service League and the Achieve 180 program. These agencies participate in the development, management, and staffing of this program.
Re-entry refers to a coordinated program that assists people incarcerated in County jail re-enter their community upon release. It is founded on the need to reduce inmate recidivism, reduce jail population, and provide the incarcerated population with treatment and support programs to better prepare inmates for re-entry into the community. The Reentry unit offers expanded inmate services within the County jails and provides a case management approach to assist incarcerated inmates as they await transition into our communities. The target population includes inmates who have, as a condition of their probation, the ability to be modified out of custody to a treatment program as well as those inmates who have a chemical dependency and/or anti-social behavior. The creation of the Probation Re-entry position, the Achieve 180 Program and the expansion of the Choices Program, is a valuable tool towards reducing jail overcrowding and providing enhanced services and treatment for inmates.
An integral part of this project is the role of the probation officer. A probation officer is assigned full time to the Maguire Correctional Facility and the Women’s Correctional Center and employs a case management and liaison approach to achieve the program’s goals.
The Reentry Probation Officer:
The Re-entry Probation Officer works to place county jail inmates with a court ordered modifiable sentence in state certified and Court approved residential drug treatment programs (RTP) or other Court ordered programs. The officer facilitates clients’ release from county jail to a program. The client must then complete their remaining jail sentence in the RTP and successfully complete the treatment program. Although the majority of the clients are on supervised probation or mandatory supervision, a number of them are solely on court Probation or state parole.
All of the clients who are modifiable (with no holds preventing their release) are interviewed by the Reentry officer, who informs them of their modifiable conditions, contacts RTPs if they have already applied or been accepted to an RTP, and reviews and assesses pertinent client history which may affect their acceptance into an RTP.
The Reentry PO also consults with the clients’ assigned probation officers or parole agents to ascertain their agreement with client being released to an RTP. It is important for the Reentry PO to receive any information the assigned officer or agent may have from working with the client or from the file that may have a bearing on which programs might work for the specific client.
The Reentry PO then refers the clients to appropriate RTPs and works to get the clients accepted and modified out to the programs prior to the clients’ jail release date. The clients are transported to the RTP either by program staff or the Reentry PO (with a partner) after the Reentry PO has facilitated a release date with the jail.