Criminal Justice System Reform & Re-Entry Supports
The US incarcerates more individuals than any other country. Black people and other people of color are incarcerated at higher rates than white people. Nearly 700,000 people are released from prisons and jails each year. The lives of those who cycle in and out of prison are constantly disrupted.
Individual, financial, and societal costs are enormous. Many of these individuals leave prison hoping their punishment has ended, only to encounter a combination of laws, rules, biases, racial discrimination, and collateral consequences forming barriers that block them from jobs, housing, and equitable participation in political, economic, social, and cultural life. Three-quarters of these individuals have a history of substance use, and more than one-third have a physical or mental disorder.
C4 partners with communities, systems, and individuals to identify, develop, enhance, and evaluate equitable criminal justice report initiatives including re-entry and recovery supports and services. Our primary goal is to restore rights and privileges of citizenship for justice-involved individuals and foster conditions needed to support equitable access to recovery, housing stability, and well-being for people who are returning to their communities.
We employ justice-impacted experts who educate, inform, and empower by reducing stigma and bias and raising awanress of the challenges assciated with community re-entry. Our staff have personally grappled with and successfully developed effective, equitable strategies and solutions to the challenges of mass incarceration and re-entry.
We believe re-entry starts at the beginning of the sentence, and we build bridges from prison to community for the safe return of justice-involved people. In all our work at C4, we focus on racial equity and center people with lived experience. Our services assist community-based criminal justice system and law enforcement professionals; community corrections such as probation, parole, pre-trial services, and court personnel; drug courts, behavioral health facilities, and re-entry programs; and human service providers that serve justice-involved juveniles and adults.
We Can Help You
- Host community conversations and build connections with law enforcement
- Provide training on effective, equitable jail and prison in-reach programming
- Identify and develop strategies to prevent return to substance use
- Orient and train staff in forensic peer support
- Develop and implement equitable re-entry services
- Address racial trauma of mass incarceration
- Collect data about criminal justice populations and assess effectiveness of services
- Address collateral consequences after incarceration
- Develop re-citizenship support groups
- Become a re-entry friendly organization
- Identify and customize training and consultation tailored to specific organizational approaches and needs to support re-entry and promote recovery, housing stability, and well-being
Learn more about partnering with us.
Our Experts
Judith Fox, Peer Workforce Development Specialist
Learn More
- Harm Reduction: Compassionate Interventions for Recovery: online course starts February 26, 2024
- Criminal Justice & Race Equity in Recovery Services—podcast episode with Daryl McGraw and Steven Samra (20:36 minutes)
- Recovery LIVE: Supporting Recovery for Individuals Who are Incarcerated (60:05 minute video)
- Supporting Justice-Involved People in the Community—video recording with Daryl McGraw for a CARE TA Center event (2:22:48 hours)
- My Recovery Journey: Steven Samra—video (4:35 minutes)
- Equity and Recovery
- Integrating and Supervising Peer Workers
- Medication-Assisted Treatment/Medication-Assisted Recovery
- Recovery Housing
- Stigma and Recovery
- Criminal Justice System Reform & Re-Entry Supports
- Recovery-Oriented Systems
- Opioid Overdose Prevention and Support
- Pregnancy and Recovery
- Substance Use and Mental Health Recovery Supports
- Substance Use Prevention and Early Intervention
More about our expertise and our training and technical assistance approaches and offerings.