C3 - Community Coalition Coaching
We help you create your Community Transformation Coalition.
One of the prime components of a jail transformation effort is for the community to come together and become proactive in welcoming people home after incarceration. This has two primary activities: creating a reintegration mindset among the community leaders and stakeholders, and creating a Community Resource Directory that is immediately useful to the returning individual (and others on the team and in the process).
THE REINTEGRATION MINDSET
The reintegration mindset is the opposite of the traditional "lock 'em up and throw away the key" mentality that has prevailed in society's view of the criminal justice system. When a community becomes focused on the reintegration of the offender back into society, even from the earliest stages of the process such as at sentencing in court, it changes the entire dialog about rehabilitation and the entire approach to the best method to bring about transformation in the life of the perpetrator. As the adage goes, "Today's inmates are tomorrow's neighbors."
The pro-active community focused on really solving the true problem and the underlying factors will start at the end-point of successful integration and work backwards from there to make sure each piece of the process is in place and functioning properly. This mindset shift will require ongoing education and re-education of community leaders, stakeholders, and influencers until it eventually is accepted as standard practice.
THE COMMUNITY RESOURCE DIRECTORY
The basic job description of the Community Transformation Coalition is to identify all of the local resources that someone "starting their life over" will need to be successful. Our "continuum of care" resource directory template has 85 categories of either mandatory or recommended resources. The goal of the Coalition is to fill in each category with the local service provider (agency, organization, ministry, etc.) that fits there. NOTE: If the category is important yet is not available locally, the Coalition will either need to work with local entities to create a new service or locate a service provider within a 50-75 mile radius that does have it.