Thirty women who graduated last week from STRIVE, a highly selective, 12-week reentry program the Texas Department of Criminal Justice launched in 2019 to help women incarcerated at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit. STRIVE, an acronym for Strength Through Restoration, Independence, Vision and Empowerment, has graduated 824 women, the Texas Tribune reports. Every graduate left prison with a job offer in hand, and graduates are about half as likely to return to prison as the general prison population, state officials said. Within three years of their release, 5.6% of STRIVE participants returned to prison compared to 9.7% of all incarcerated Texas women. Criminal justice reform advocates say lawmakers should pump money into STRIVE and similar programs that contribute to lower rates of recidivism. Research has found such programs save money that the state would otherwise spend to reincarcerate repeat offenders.
More dire needs for the state’s 135,000-person prison population mean rehabilitation programs like STRIVE are not where the agency plans to direct additional state dollars in the next budget cycle. The same day STRIVE graduates donned gowns and walked across a stage to collect their diplomas, the criminal justice agency’s executive director Bryan Collier defended his budget request before state lawmakers. Last year, the agency submitted a historic $10.9 billion appropriation request for the next two years. Requests include $240 million to construct dorms to house a population projected to increase by about 10% over the next five years, an additional $404.5 million to pay for inmates’ health care costs and $28 million to fund a pay increase for parole officers who had a 33% turnover rate. An additional $215 million is needed for major facility repairs. Not included in the budget request are dollars to expand rehabilitation and reentry programs which include chaplaincy, reentry transitional coordinators, substance use treatment programs, and the sex offender treatment program. STRIVE also falls into that bucket, though it is run in collaboration with the Windham School District, which provides education to Texas’ incarcerated population. Windham is not seeking state dollars to expand rehabilitation programs..
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