Lancaster County Reentry Planning Grant

The Second Chance Act provides a comprehensive response to the increasing number of incarcerated adults and juveniles who are released from prison, jail, and juvenile residential facilities and are returning to their communities. The FY 2013 Second Chance Act Juvenile Reentry Program helps ensure that the transition the youth make from secure confinement facilities to the community is successful and promotes public safety. A secure confinement facility may include a juvenile detention center, juvenile correctional facility, or staff-secure facility. Eligible juveniles must have been confined under juvenile court jurisdiction. CATEGORY 2: Implementation Projects must include specific strategies for implementing the ten Mandatory Requirements of a Comprehensive Reentry Program.

The City of Lincoln and Lancaster County, Nebraska would like to continue the implementation of the Juvenile Offender Re-entry Program. Currently youth who have left residential treatment centers recidivate 20% of the time. The goal of this program is to provide an evidenced based re-entry strategy that will reduce the number of youth returning to secure facilities by 50%, while maintaining public safety for a 5 year period. A team of 21 stakeholders are committed to the Lancaster County Re-entry Initiative. This team meets monthly. There is also a Re-entry Advisory Council that meets quarterly. The target population is high risk youth identified through the Youth Level of Service Risk/Needs Assessment. Any youth, ages 12-17, who scores above a 20 on this instrument and is returning to Lancaster County is eligible to participate. The estimated number of youth to be served is 125 youth per year. This grant will provide youth with individualized re-entry plans. Goals will be accomplished through transition specialists, employment readiness, family advocacy, academic assistance, treatment services, cognitive based programming and mentoring. An evaluation will determine if goals and objectives are met. Two partnering agencies include the University of Nebraska and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. CA/NCF