by Tameka Davis

Getting Out, Coming Home

From the Penitentiary to the Community

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ach year more than 650,000 prisoners are released back into their community nationwide. Upon release, they face many challenges, ranging from finding housing, maintaining employment, complying with parole stipulations, reconnecting with family members, and completing treatment programs for various issues. Yet one critical issue remains largely unaddressed: the potential for domestic violence among intimate partners.

Pernell Brown, a consultant for IDVAAC who works with incarcerated men on domestic violence issues, has coined the question: "Are you getting out or coming home?" He often poses it to inmates he works with. His point is that when they get out, they may not be prepared to stay out of prison and reconnect successfully with their families. According to Brown, "coming home" means that the men reframed their attitudes, thinking, behavior and commitment to coming home and positively engaging with community, family and self.

The criminal justice system is disproportionately represented by African American men. In addition, studies show that the incidence of intimate partner violence is unusually high in the African American community, with some sources showing rates for intimate partner homicides among African Americans as 2.5 times higher than rates for whites.

The Safe Return Initiative (SRI) is a program to deal with issues related to domestic violence and reentry. The intent of the program is to support battered women and children when men they are connected with return to the community from prison, regardless of the reasons for incareration. SRI also provides techincal assistance to domestic violence programs, as well as parole and community supports that work with battered women and men who may have histories of violence. SRI was created by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women and IDVAAC.

In August, IDVAAC was asked by the Batterer Intervention Services Coalition of Michigan and the Michigan Domestic Violence Prevention & Treatment Board to recreate an SRI symposium IDVAAC hosted in 2005 in Minnesota. The Michigan-based Getting Out, or Coming Home? symposium was held on Aug. 19 in Detroit.

Presenters included experts in criminal justice, corrections, prisoner reentry, domestic violence, community supervision, batterer intervention, battered women’s advocacy, and faith-based domestic violence support services.

Keynote speaker and noted criminal justice activist Dr. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who was portrayed by actor Denzel Washington in the 1999 biographical film The Hurricane, gave an inspirational speech on the first day of the conference.

His presentation was drawn from his own personal prison experience of transformation from a life of anger and violence to a life of peace and productivity, including his personal recommendations for working with men in prison to help them realize their individual potential.

IDVAAC hosts roundtable

A separate, invitation-only roundtable on reentry strategies was hosted by IDVAAC Aug. 20-21 in Detroit. The two days included presentations and discussions with representatives from the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) and 14 states from across the country. The roundtable was organized and sponsored by IDVAAC and was an SRI activitiy.

Representatives from Kansas, Louisiana, New York, the State of Washington, Oregon, Missouri, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, Colorado, Washington, D.C., and California presented and shared projects from their states, which were completed or underway, that deal effectively with reentry, release and parole, victim services and batterer intervention.

The two-day roundtable culminated in a targeted report that showcases best practices on a national level and outlines solutions and recommendations for successful reentry programming.

In conjunction with the Safe Return Initiative, IDVAAC has created many resources to address this critical issue. These resources include roundtables, Webcasts, training videos, conferences, in-depth reports, and award-winning DVDs.