The halfway house push

This is the section that changes outcomes. If you read one part of this guide, read this one.

What is supposed to happen

Policy contemplates that their unit team makes a pre-release placement referral roughly seventeen to nineteen months before their projected release date, at a scheduled program review, with the warden signing off.

Statute permits up to twelve months in a halfway house, and separately permits home confinement for the shorter of ten percent of the term or six months.

Program Statement 7310.04, Community Corrections Center Utilization and Transfer Procedure.

What actually happens

Nothing happens unless someone makes it happen. Caseloads are large, there is no performance measure attached to this, and no consequence for a late referral falls on anyone but them.

If their sentence is short, that window may open almost as soon as they arrive, which means the conversation has to start at their first team meeting rather than a year in.

What you do

• Know their projected release date and count backward to when the referral window opens;
• make sure they raise it at their first team meeting and every one after;
• call the case manager yourself and ask, politely and specifically, when the referral is scheduled and what length is being recommended;
• ask for the name and title of whoever you speak to, and write down the date;
• and follow up on a schedule rather than when you get anxious.

Two points of pressure work better than one. A call from outside creates the one thing staff reliably respond to, which is the sense that someone is paying attention.

Their half of the push is covered in what to carry in your head. Make sure they have read it.

Someone else is sitting exactly where you are. Pass it on.