Washington County teams up with nonprofit to plan new program to combat recidivism
For years, the Washington County jail has dealt with overcrowding, leading county officials to roll out a pilot program called the Community Rebuilding Initiative (CRI) in the old Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) building with the help of a local nonprofit, Returning Home Inc.
By: Rachel Williams
5 News
For years, the Washington County jail has dealt with overcrowding, leading county officials to roll out a pilot program called the Community Rebuilding Initiative (CRI) in the old Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) building with the help of a local nonprofit, Returning Home Inc.
County Judge Patrick Deakins says that "based on certain criteria, we're going to take detainees from our main Washington County Detention Center and house them in the CRI building. Then they'll be exposed to therapies, life skills, classes, those types of things."
Detainees eligible for this program must be:
- Nonviolent or non-sexual charges
- A bond of $10,000 or less
- Must be male (currently only a men's program)
- Willingness to follow program rules and regulations
- Approval from the Prosecutor's office
This week, the county was awarded a $355,455 grant through the Department of Finance Administration (DFA) at the state level to help finance the pilot program, planned to run through May, until the end of September.
Judge Deakins says three important tenets are important to this initiative.
The first one is reducing recidivism, fiscal responsibility, and community integration. Deakins adds "What we're seeing is individuals, countless number of times, interacting with law enforcement and going back to our facility. We have people who have been inside our detention center 100-plus times."
"The second tenet is it reallocates our taxes and our finite resources, our tax dollars. We're breaking the definition of insanity. What we're seeing in our criminal justice system right now just isn't working," said Deakins.
Read more here.
