Champaign County Reentry Council Updates

It's been a while since I've posted an update on the Champaign County Reentry Council (Cheat Sheet post on County Board meeting where they presented their 2019 3rd Quarterly Report here. Video presentation here). The printed version of the 4th Quarter report is now available here. Reentry housing is a major hurdle in the reentry process and there was a three year study and report released about the situation in the State of Illinois available here. NPR had some highlights from that report:

According to a new study from the Illinois Justice Project and the Metropolitan Planning Council, making sure people have a place to live when they get out of prison is a huge, unaddressed issue in Illinois, one that's been overlooked even as the state has focused more efforts on preventing people from returning to prison.

According to the state of Illinois, almost 30,000 people return home from state prison each year, and about half of them end up back in prison within three years of being released. That failure to help people stay out of prison is expensive for Illinois taxpayers and disruptive to communities.

A big reason for the failure, according to the study released Wednesday, is that many of the people leaving prison don't have stable housing and the state isn't doing enough to help them find it. The study's authors say fixing the problem would ultimately save the state $100 million per year and could help bring down violence in Chicago.

Full article and radio segment here. Locally there was a recent panel of reentry housing experts hosted by the Housing Authority of Champaign County (video here, News-Gazette coverage here).

There was also a report on the potential local implications of cannabis conviction expungement under a new Illinois law given by Champaign County Health Care Consumers. An overview of that report is available here. For a helpful explanation of expungement and sealing, including the new law on expungement of some cannabis convictions, the Champaign County Circuit Clerk had a recent presentation on the subject for CU Speaks.

There was a presentation on the local Crisis Intervention Team (previous Cheat Sheet Post on CIT here). Slide's from the presentation (I believe these were the same ones as our presentation) are available from the Urbana City website here. Excerpt from the August 7th rough meeting minutes:

Lt. Joel Sanders presented on behalf of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) a strategic plan for building a community response to individuals in crisis. The purpose of this plan is to develop a one door mental and behavioral health system model which seeks to capture individuals at various points of entry within the criminal justice system and divert the individuals to services. Its seems as though as a community we are do well with Initial Detention/Court Hearings, Jails/Courts, Reentry, and Community Corrections but is lacking in Community Services and crisis care continuum by Law Enforcement prior to an arrest.

The goal of CIT is to help persons with mental disorders or a dual diagnosis access medical treatment rather than place them in the criminal justice system due to illness-related behaviors. The current focus is on Police Training called the One and Done which entails required partners to complete a one door system. Majority of the required partners are on board but it is still a work in progress.

There were presentations aimed at social services providers on the Council from TASC and the Salvation Army along with the usual data and program updates, but the above is probably the most useful information to catch up over the summer.

Looking ahead there are a lot of local government issues coming up at the County level (updated jail consolidation plans) and with City Government (Champaign looking at reforms of its reentry housing rules) and private organizations like First Followers working with the Housing Authority on reentry housing pilot programs. It could get pretty interesting. November's presentation will be by DREAAM House.