The hope of a re-entry simulation hosted by River Valley Behavioral Health Wednesday was that attendees would better understand the difficult task for people recently released from jail or prison to integrate back into society.
If comments from participants are any indication, the simulation was a success.
“It was very eye-opening,” said Sid Nelson, an outreach specialist for the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters Joint Apprenticeship and Training Fund. “(There are) a lot of struggles that go along with this.”
Participants, many of whom work closely with those incarcerated and those just released, navigated among 13 different tables that were set up as resources that ex-inmates need. WARM Center residents acted as gatekeepers at those tables, which included:
- An ID station
- Transportation/Rent
- Rent assistance/Food assistance/SSI/Disability/Family support/Voc Rehab
- Bank
- VA Testing/Discount medical clinic
- Employer
- Plasma center
- Homeless shelter/AA/NA testing
- Quick loan and Pawn shop
- Counseling/Treatment
- Courthouse/Restitution
- Probation and Parole
And always a possibility if a participant didn’t meet the requirements of probation and parole, he or she would be sent to jail.
Though only a simulation, it was easy to see that participants felt several emotions as they attempted and often failed to work their way through the system. Frustration, aggravation, sadness, anxious and a feeling of being overwhelmed were all mentioned by participants in the course of the simulation.
At its beginning, each participant was given a profile of a person recently released and were asked to navigate the re-entry as that person. For instance, one profile was of a man who’d just served two years for assault with a knife. Now out, he had a $500 rent due at the end of the month, but had neither a job nor identification upon release. Each participant faced similar roadblocks.
The simulation consisted of timed sessions when participants rushed to the resources they needed and included on their profile sheet. When time ran out, many of those tasks ordered by probation and parole were left undone, which got some sent back to jail until they were bailed out or released.
Paul Brantley, who recently took over as chaplain for New Genesis Jail Ministry at the Henderson County Detention Center, said the simulation did a good job of showing the hurdles that many face upon release from jail or prison—getting a job, finding a place to live and obtaining transportation is big, he said. One of the main focuses of New Genesis is to get recently released inmates back on their feet out in the world.
Some of these tasks seem elementary to those already established. But when you start with almost nothing, participants learned seemingly simple tasks can be difficult.
Karyleen Irizarry, a senior director of community health and forensics for RVBH, said she hopes that providing an understanding of those difficulties can both decrease barriers for the recently released and for that population to be seen as who they are and not as their past crime or sentence.
With that mindset in place, a community would help an ex-inmate by offering a more supportive environment which would in turn help that person navigate the logistics of the system but also assist in the mental health aspects of re-entering society, Irizarry said.
