Female Narrator: Welcome back to reentry mentorship training.
On screen text: "Module 2"
Female Narrator: In this module, you will develop a deeper understanding of the justice system so that you can better assist your mentee to navigate the reentry process. You will also learn about possible needs and behavioral traits that may indicate risks of future criminal involvement, including how to recognize signs of substance abuse and how you as a mentor can support your mentee throughout the recovery process. Finally, you will learn engagement techniques called motivational interviewing to help build rapport and create dialogue with your mentee so that you can help them reach their reentry goals.
On screen text: "Justice System, Part II"
Female Narrator: Let's start by talking about the typical path through the justice system and who is involved. The criminal process is triggered when a person is arrested for an alleged crime. At this point, the local police are responsible for taking them into custody. The arrested person, called the defendant, is then held at a lock-up facility operated by the police department until arraignment. An arraignment is a court hearing where the criminal charges are read in the presence of the defendant or their attorney to inform them of the charges against them. They are also advised of their rights.
Afterward, the defendant is expected to enter a plea, such as guilty or not guilty, or their attorney can enter the plea on their behalf. The court can then set bail, set conditions of release from detention pre-trial, or detain the defendant based on a motion from the district attorney that the defendant is dangerous. If the defendant cannot make bail or is detained, they go into custody of the local sheriff, who places them in the county jail.
If the court sets conditions of release, the defendant is either assigned to a probation officer, who monitors their compliance with the conditions of release, like attending regular visits with the probation officer, submitting to regular drug testing, or staying away from certain people, or is ordered to participate in classes or programs at the Community Justice Support Center.
Community Justice Support Centers, or Support Centers for short, are run by the office of Community Corrections, or OCC. They offer community-based rehabilitative tools and programs. People access these services through different pathways, such as intensive supervision with treatment, which you might also hear as IST, pretrial treatment, pretrial services, or re-entry services.
On screen text: "IST is supervised by a probation, parole, or correctional program officer. Pretrial Treatment and Pretrial Services are supervised by probation. Re-entry services is unsupervised, meaning the client comes in whenever they need help."
Female Narrator: Sometimes the pathway is part of criminal Justice supervision that is ordered by the court or parole board or is part of a conditional release, such as IST, PT, and PS. Other times, a person comes to the Support Center simply because they need help, as in reentry services.
The next stage is finding a resolution to the criminal case. This typically occurs through a trial or plea bargain. During this stage, the court and various key players are involved. These may include the district attorney, to represent the state, the defense attorney or public defender, to represent the alleged offender, and the judge. Others may be involved too.
If the alleged offender is found guilty of the crime, sentencing will occur. This may include placing them on probation or incarcerating them for a period. Depending on the crime, or in cases where there are multiple counts, sentencing may also be split. For instance, the defendant may be incarcerated for a part of their sentence, or for certain counts, and receive probation for the rest of their sentence, or for other counts.
If the individual is incarcerated, it will be at one of two places depending on how serious the crime was. For misdemeanor crimes, defendants may be incarcerated at the House of Correction, or HOC. The HOC consists of local facilities operated by the sheriff's department for persons convicted of lower level offenses. Those incarcerated at the HOC serve sentences of two and a half years or less.
For felony crimes, defendants may be incarcerated at the Department of Corrections, or DOC. The DOC consists of state prisons, housing only those convicted of felony crimes.
There may also be different ways the defendant is released from incarceration.
For example, a person can be released from incarceration early when granted parole. If this happens, the Parole Board imposes the conditions of parole and the individual is supervised by a parole officer. They might also be referred to the Support Center to meet mandated requirements.
It is also possible for the person to be released directly from incarceration with no Community Supervision requirement. But regardless of how they are released from incarceration, once any release requirements have been fulfilled, their sentence is complete.
Let's now switch gears and talk about criminogenic needs. What are criminogenic needs?
Criminogenic needs are dynamic or changeable factors that have been proven, through research, to affect recidivism, or the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend. This means that if these needs are effectively addressed, the person is less likely to commit another crime.
For successful reentry, it is therefore most effective to target those needs that are changeable and most closely associated with reoffending. The most important criminogenic needs that may need to be addressed include the following: antisocial orientation and decision making, peer relationships, substance use, parenting and family relationships, education and employment, and leisure and recreation activities
Let's examine these one by one.
Substance Use: As people often turn to substances to manage negative emotional states, substance use and criminal involvement often occur together. Addressing the use or abuse of alcohol and/or drugs may require resources aimed at reducing the substance abuse and enhancing alternatives to substance use.
Antisocial Orientation and Decision-Making: Antisocial orientation and decision-making refers to attitudes and decision-making patterns that can lead to negative social behavior. General indicators of these include rationalizations for crime and negative attitudes towards the law. Programming and interventions can counter these rationalizations and attitudes with pro-social or socially positive attitudes. They can also help build up a pro-social identity.
On screen text: "Prosocial: Relating to or denoting behavior that is positive, helpful, and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship."
Female Narrator: Peer Relationships: Having supportive and pro-social peers and associations is another critical factor affecting reinvolvement in the criminal justice system. Associating with a friend or peer network that is involved in criminal activities may increase the risk of a mentee participating in such activities. Such risks can be minimized by replacing pro-criminal friends and associates with pro-social friends and associates. In this case, the mentor provides a key pro-social relationship.
Parenting and Family Relationships: Like peer relationships, a positive family relationship during and after incarceration can lower recidivism rates and lead to better post-release outcomes. Poor family relationships may include inappropriate parental monitoring and disciplining, as well as weak family relationships that contribute to the isolation and gravitation toward antisocial peers. If the mentee has children, parenting skills and enhancing warmth and empathy can be taught through relevant programming.
Education and Employment: There is also a close correlation between education and employment and reduced recidivism. Unfortunately, formerly incarcerated individuals face tremendous obstacles when trying to secure steady employment post incarceration, either because they lack the job skills needed for certain positions or because employers may be reluctant to hire someone with a criminal record. Interventions include enhancing work and study skills and nurturing interpersonal relationships within the context of work and school, such as through apprenticeships. This is also an area where a mentor can greatly assist the mentee, as securing a job and getting help planning for long-term financial stability are often main focus points and immediate needs for a person recently released from incarceration.
Leisure and Recreation Activities: The ways in which a person spends their free time also can impact their likelihood of reoffending. Participation in appropriate recreational programs can have many positive effects, such as boosting morale, increasing receptivity to rules, and improving attitudes. Supporting your mentee in making productive use of their leisure time and helping them identify positive recreational or leisure activities, such as sports or hobbies, can help minimize their risk of participating in pro-criminal activities.
In addition to criminogenic needs, there are other needs not tied to traits or tendencies of criminal behavior that are key to stability. These are called responsivity needs. They are factors that must be addressed in order for a person to be responsive to the support you provide to address their criminogenic needs. They include things like housing and residential stability, as well as emotional stability and mental health. They also include things like communicating with a person in their native language and understanding their cultural traditions and viewpoint.
Check with your sponsoring organization to find out if they have specific referral pathways for these types of needs.
Let's now circle back to substance use. As mentioned previously, substance use is often closely correlated with criminal behavior. So in this section, we are going to discuss substance use patterns and cycles, how to identify substance abuse issues, and how you as a mentor can support your mentee through the recovery process.
On screen text: "Providers Clinical Support System, Module 1: Understanding Substance Use Disorders, Aug. 17, 2018. https://pcssnow.org/education-training/training-courses/module-1-understanding-substance-use-disorders/"
Female Narrator: First though, what is substance use disorder?
On screen text: "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, American Psychiatric Association"
According to the DSM-5, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association used by clinicians to help evaluate and diagnose different mental health conditions, substance use disorder, or SUD, is a condition that includes substance abuse and substance dependency on a single continuum that can range from mild to severe. Stages of SUD can include: Substance abuse, which is commonly considered the early stage of dependence. Dependence, which is characterized by physical dependence, tolerance, and withdrawal, and, addiction, which is marked by changes in behavior caused by biomechanical changes in the brain.
SUD is often characterized by loss of control, in which the individual takes a larger amount of the substance for longer than intended, wants to cut down or quit but is unable to, spends an increased amount of time getting, using, and recovering from the drug, and experiences cravings. SUD may also be characterized by continued use despite negative consequences, like the failure to carry out obligations at work, school, or home, the continued use of the drug despite social and/or interpersonal problems, stopping or reducing other important activities, recurrent use in hazardous situations, and use despite medical or psychological problems.
As a mentor, it is not your role to provide substance abuse counseling or medical intervention. However, it may be important to recognize signs of substance use so that you can assist your mentee in finding supportive resources they may need, or so you can report back to your sponsoring program for assistance. Some signs of substance use issues may be: The smell of alcohol or other substances, such as marijuana, on the person's body or clothes, red, watery eyes or smaller or larger pupils than normal, extreme hyperactivity or talkativeness, extreme lethargy or poor coordination, slurred speech, deterioration of hygiene or physical appearance over time, and/or needle marks on the person's arms or legs.
As you work with your mentee, particularly if they have a history of substance use, be aware of these signs so that you can provide the appropriate support and direction to resources. Be sure to check with your sponsoring organization on resources in your area.
When supporting mentees in their recovery process, it is also important to remember that denial, excuses, and promises are all a part of substance use disorder and that mentees with substance abuse issues will find little intrinsic motivation to change if they deny having a problem. So, what can you do as a mentor?
First, it is important to understand the stages of positive change. These include: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and relapse.
Let's look at what occurs during each stage in someone's recovery.
In the precontemplation stage, the person is unaware of a problem or hasn't thought about change. In the contemplation stage, the person is thinking about change in the near future. In the preparation stage, the person is planning to make a change and is setting gradual goals. In the action stage, the person is making specific changes to their lifestyle to meet their recovery goals. In the maintenance stage, the person continues desirable actions or repeats periodic recommended steps. Finally, there is relapse. It is important to recognize that SUD is a chronic disease and that relapse is part of the process. It is not an indication that treatment or your support have failed.
It is also important to remember that your role as a mentor is not to treat someone's substance use disorder, but to support them through these stages of change. If your mentee has substance use issues, they will likely be enrolled in a recovery program, or you will help them enroll in a program, like a 12-step or cognitive behavioral therapy program, so that they can get the therapeutic help they need.
So besides directing your mentee to appropriate resources, how else can you support them to make positive changes?
One key technique you can use to support your mentee in finding intrinsic motivation for making changes in their behavior is through motivational interviewing, or MI.
MI is a goal-directed, client-centered counseling style for eliciting changes in behavior. It uses an approach of helping someone explore and resolve their ambivalence around changing. A key feature of MI is the use of non-judgmental, non-confrontational, and non-adversarial methods to help resolve their ambivalence by helping them see the discrepancy between their current behavior and their desired goals while minimizing resistance.
MI is not therapy, but a tool for supporting positive changes in behavior. This helps people change by first recognizing their high-risk behavior and then evaluating how much of a problem their behavior is for them in relation to other issues in their life. Finally, it helps them look at ways to begin the process of changing.
There are five principles of MI that you can learn and practice as a mentor.
The first is to express empathy. Expressing empathy is important because when an individual feels understood, they are more likely to share their thoughts and feelings and to begin examining their behaviors.
But how do you express empathy? Expressing empathy is a learnable skill for seeing and understanding things from another person's point of view. Ways of expressing empathy include demonstrating that you understand your mentee's feelings, paying attention to what they say, and continually trying out hypotheses to get to an understanding of their meaning.
A central technique for addressing these elements is reflective listening, in which you, the listener, help the other person clarify their thoughts. We'll show you how to do this in just a moment.
The next principle is to develop discrepancy. Essentially, you want to help create a gap between where the person is or has been and where they want to be. The goal then is for them to resolve this discrepancy by changing their behavior.
The next principle of MI is to avoid argumentation. MI is about working with the person where they are and helping them see how they can get where they want to go. It is not about convincing them of your opinions by arguing or challenging what they say.
Next, remember to roll with resistance. This helps de-escalate resistance and avoid a negative reaction. You can handle resistance by practicing some of the other principles of MI covered in this module, such as through reflection or acknowledgment of your mentee's feelings, clarification, shifting focus, or emphasizing personal choice and control.
This leads us to the final principle of MI, which is to support self-efficacy. Telling someone what to do can lead to resistance. Instead, allow for and emphasize their personal choice and control over their problems.
Let's now talk about some motivational interviewing strategies.
As mentioned before, reflective listening can be an excellent technique for expressing empathy. When you listen reflectively, you try to restate what the other person is saying as a way of helping them clarify their thoughts. To do this, there are a few types of reflections you can use.
The first is simple reflection. In simple reflection, you either repeat what the individual has said or alter it slightly. For example, if your mentee says, "I want to start going to more AA meetings," you would respond, "You want to start going to more AA meetings," or, "Going to more AA meetings is very important to you."
These types of simple reflections add little or no meaning or emphasis to what the individual has already said, but demonstrate active engagement with what the individual is saying.
Another type of reflection is double-sided reflection. Double-sided reflections help reflect both sides of the individual's ambivalence. Here's an example.
Mentee: "I know I'm wasting a lot of money buying cigarettes, but smoking relieves my stress."
Mentor: "On the one hand, smoking provides you relief, but on the other hand, you have less money for other things as a result of buying cigarettes."
These reflections help acknowledge that the individual may feel two ways about the issue at hand.
Finally, there is amplified reflection, in which you reflect what the mentee has said in an exaggerated way, but in a matter of fact tone. Let's look at an example of amplified reflection.
Mentee: "I only come to these meetings because my probation officer is making me."
Mentor: "It sounds like you really don't like these meetings and only come because your probation officer says you have to."
Using this type of reflection encourages the individual to argue less and can elicit the other side of their ambivalence about the issue. Just remember not to use any hint of sarcasm, impatience, or skepticism; this could elicit an adverse reaction or even increase resistance.
As you can see, to express empathy, reflective listening includes affirming, in which you support, encourage, and recognize someone's difficulties. It also includes summarizing, in which you pull together the comments your mentee has made, as well as eliciting self-motivational statements in which you point out changes you've observed and ask them how they did it.
Another MI strategy to use is elaboration. Elaboration involves making open-ended questions, ones that cannot be answered with yes or no. An example of an open-ended question that would invite elaboration is, "Tell me more about" or "What does that look like?"
These types of questions can help the mentee explore the reasons for and possibility of change.
For instance, your mentee may express that they want to be a better parent for their child. Having them elaborate on how they see themselves being a better parent could begin to provoke thoughts of change to meet that goal.
Reframing is another strategy you can use. Reframing places different meaning on what the person says, creating a new way of looking at a situation, person, or relationship. This can help the mentee see things from another perspective.
An example of reframing is redefining a problem as a challenge. Let's look at an example.
Mentee: "I've tried to find a job everywhere, but no one will hire me."
Mentor: "You are persistent. Even when you face challenges, finding a job is really important to you and you aren't giving up."
Recognizing and verbalizing ambivalence is another strategy you can use to help the mentees see their own conflicting thoughts emotions and actions around making change. Asking questions to help them explore their ambivalence, such as what they like about their current behavior, and what benefits they can experience if they change their behavior, can help them have a clearer understanding of where they are in their process of changing. Here's an example.
Mentee: "I know I should stop drinking so much, but I really don't see that happening."
Mentor: "What was your life like before you begin drinking so much? In what ways is your drinking a problem for you now?"
Together, these strategies can be used to help your mentee recognize their high risk behavior, consider how this behavior impacts other issues in their life, and then look at ways to begin the process of changing.
In closing, we hope this module helped give you a better understanding of the justice system and the re-entry process. We also hope this content helped you understand and identify criminogenic behaviors that may impact re-entry success and learn strategies to engage and support mentees during the re-entry process.