TJC Toolkit Module One

Module 1: Section 1: There are four main benefits of implementing the TJC model in your community

Benefit 1: Long-Term Public Safety

Communities fail to maximize opportunities to enhance long-term public safety when people discharged from jail, especially those with high risk and need, are not identified and prepared properly for release, supervised, or supported in the community.

Public safety TJC strategies include:

• Implement transition planning using validated screening, assessment, and evidence-based programming and interventions during incarceration to facilitate successful transition to the community when the person is released.
• Coordinate with pretrial services, probation, and behavioral health providers to ensure continuity of engagement.
• Transition substance abusers directly to outpatient or residential substance abuse facilities. Every day people with substance abuse issues are sober is a day they will not resort to illegal activities to support their habits and a day they will manage their thoughts and actions to stay out of trouble and/or avoid overdose.
• Provide regular forums to discuss needs of individuals transitioning from jails to communities.

Benefit 2: Cost Effectiveness

The TJC model allows you to use your dollars and your resources in a more cost-effective way by identifying partners for collaboration and allocating scarce resources wisely to best engage people in jail based upon the level of risk they pose to your community and break the cycle of repeat jail incarcerations experienced by many high-need people. Sharing resources improve efficiency and save time and resources—particularly important given today’s budgetary constraints. In the long term, collaborative partnerships that reduce recidivism and public health problems add up to substantial savings.

There are many examples of how the TJC model's focus on collaboration can reduce unnecessary costs:

• Partners can conduct joint training and purchase shared resources.
• Partners can coordinate service provision to target interventions for the most appropriate individuals, address service gaps, and avoid service redundancies.
• Community options can be used to intervene with low-risk, high-need people, rather than incarcerating them.
• Efforts for low-risk, low-need individuals can focus on enhancing prosocial engagement within jobs, communities, and relationships, rather than on incarcerating them and actually increasing their likelihood of reoffending.
• Lower recidivism rates can reduce the need for costly jail beds.

Benefit 3: Improved Individual Outcomes

Many individuals in jails have co-occurring needs, so the TJC model is designed to put an infrastructure in place to motivate individuals to effectively address their needs. Such an infrastructure at the agency level benefits recently released individuals who want to take ownership of their transition and recovery plans utilizing all available resources.

List of improved individual outcomes:

• Reduced recidivism
• Reduced drug and alcohol use
• Reduced risk of overdose
• Reduced homelessness and housing instability
• Increased obtained and sustained employment
• Improved physical health
• Improved behavioral and mental health
• Fewer emergency room visits
• Increased access to benefits
• Improved use of community resources and community involvement
• Increased family and community engagement
• Increased use of treatment and services that change offending behavior

Benefit 4: Resource Expansion

“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” describes the synergy that can occur when agencies adopt the TJC model. Agencies that operate in “silos” that don't interact with outside partners agencies can't compete with agency collaboration that pools knowledge and resources from across agencies and organizations.

Resource expansion benefits:

• Better coordination and pooling of resources
  • Cross-training and increased system efficiency
  • Coordinated delivery of services and resources to increase continuity and avoid duplication or conflict
• Increased use of services
  • Co-location of staff from multiple agencies in one place prevents individuals from having to travel to multiple places in a short period of time.
  • Co-location of staff increases continuity of service, consistency of purpose, and delivery of services.
• Case management connectivity
  • A shared data system for tracking individuals and their involvement across multiple agencies and measuring their outcomes
  • A shared responsibility for case management allows the system to use all resources fully from jail to the community, thus enhancing or enlarging the transition service net.

Jails can play a key role in this relationship, offering a framework that reinforces, regularizes, and rationalizes the notion of working together for the good of society.

¹Robinson, M., and G. White. 1997. “The Role of Civic Organization in the Provision of Social Service: Towards Synergy.” Research for Action 37 . Helsinki, Finland: World Institute for Development Economics Research.

Module 1: Section 2: Goal of the Online Resource

The aim of this online learning resource is to provide you, our TJC partners and those interested in community transition efforts, with practical information to help you implement the model. The TJC learning sites were instrumental in the development and continued revisions of the Toolkit. Working with these sites allowed us to tailor the Toolkit content based on the actual needs and reality jails and communities face when implementing a reentry initiative. This resource has several purposes: 

• Give an overview of the TJC model.
• Help begin the process of implementing a jail reentry initiative in your community.
• Foster an understanding of the key elements necessary to implement the TJC model.
• Explain basic TJC concepts and terms.
• Provide resources for jail administrators, community providers, elected officials, and other stakeholders.
• Serve as an advocacy tool for community stakeholders interested in gaining support for the model.

This online resource is arranged in nine user-friendly modules based on the key components of the TJC model:

Module 1:Getting Started introduces the Transition from Jail to the Community Initiative and outlines how to use this online learning resource.

Module 2:Leadership, Vision, and Organizational Culture focuses on leadership, vision, and organizational culture in the success of your community's jail transition strategies.

Module 3:Collaborative Structure and Joint Ownership provides practical information to help you develop a reentry system where collaboration and joint ownership permeates the transition process.

Module 4:Data-Driven Understanding of Local Reentry examines the vital role that reliable data plays in successfully transitioning people from jail to the community, and provides tools and information to help jurisdictions collect and manage data.

Module 5:Targeted Intervention Strategies provides an overview of targeted intervention strategies to improve outcomes of people transitioning from jail to the community.

Module 6:Screening and Assessment focuses on the importance of identifying the risks and needs of your population as the starting point of any targeted intervention strategy.

Module 7:Transition Plan Development emphasizes the elements of an individualized written transition plan that lays out the intervention, treatment, and services for a person in jail and after release based on a prior assessment of the person's risk and needs.

Module 8:Targeted Transition Interventions concentrates on the development and implementation of appropriate jail transition strategies and follow-up services in your community.

Module 9:Self-Evaluation and Sustainability highlights the use of data and scientific evaluation to understand the effectiveness of interventions and system initiatives, determine their fit within a system of transition and reentry, and highlights strategies to help sustain the Initiative's efforts.

In addition, two key documents, the TJC Implementation Roadmap and the TJC Triage Matrix Implementation Tool guided the content of this learning resource. The roadmap identifies the tasks, subtasks, participants, and associated milestones and products for implementing the TJC model. Included in the Implementation Roadmap is the TJC Implementation Tracking Tool to help you track your milestones and timeframe when implementing the TJC framework. The Triage Matrix Tool outlines implementation considerations related to the targeted intervention elements of the TJC model.

Additional resources providing more information on the TJC initiative are located at the TJC web site, including the TJC brochure, which provides a brief overview of the initiative and the model and the Final Report: Process & Systems Change Evaluation Findings from the TJC Initiative,examining implementation of the TJC model across the six Phase 1 learning sites.

Module 1: Section 3: Recommended Audience

The recommended audience for this online resource is stakeholders, administrators, and staff working with individuals returning to their communities after being discharged from jail:

• Sheriffs
• Jail administrators
• Correction officers involved in transition efforts
• Jail treatment staff
• Community corrections staff
• Pretrial services staff
• Reentry coordinators
• Community treatment and service providers
• Social service providers
• Probation officers
• Pretrial services
• Government officials, including county board and legislative members and staff of the executive branch of local government
• Criminal justice coordinating council members
• Judges and officers of the court

Module 1: Section 4: How to Use the Modules

While each module stands alone, they also build on one another in the order outlined in the TJC model, beginning with system-level elements of the initiative and then moving toward individual-level interventions. We recommend that you begin with Module 2: Leadership, Vision, and Organization Culture and work your way through to Module 9: Self-Evaluation and Sustainability

Each module should take between 20 to 30 minutes to complete and follows the same format:

• Welcome Page: includes the module's title, the focus of the module, a quote from a practitioner, average time to read the module, and the recommended audience.
• Module Objectives: include the specific information discussed in the module, the titles of each section, and the knowledge you should gain by completing it.
• The Transition from Jail to Community Model: visually highlights where the module fits in the TJC model.
• Content Sections: provides key information on areas of interest relating to the module's subject matter.
  • Resources: provides additional resources with links to content.
  • Summary: a brief review of what the section covered.
• Terms Used in the Field: the last section in each module, where key terms and concepts are defined.
• Conclusion: a brief review of the main issues covered by the module
   

Module 1: Section 5: Module Navigation

Throughout the modules there will be words and phrases that are hyperlinked to direct you to documents, other sections of the module, or that pull up “popup” windows with additional information. The hyperlinks are activated by clicking on the highlighted words or phrases.

The development of the TJC online learning resource was informed by the knowledge and expertise of a diverse group of advisors, including jail administrators, sheriffs, social service providers, community and victim advocates, formerly incarcerated individuals, corrections policy experts, and researchers.
 

Module 1: Section 6: Authors and Contributors

The lead authors of the first iteration of the TJC Online Toolkit were Jeff Mellow, Gary Christensen, Kevin Warwick and Janeen Buck Willison. The 2024 update to the Toolkit was the work of Jeff Mellow, Jesse Jannetta, Shruti Nayak, Will Engelhardt, Gary Christensen, Kevin Warwick, Evelyn McCoy, and Samantha Hoppe. 

The authors would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance in the original development of this resource: Kevin Barnes-Ceeney for his help in drafting the reentry revisited questions, section summaries, and resource content; and Jesse Jannetta, Allison Dwyer, Amy Solomon, Diana Brazzell, Andrea Matthews, and Shebani Rao at the Urban Institute for their tireless efforts in reviewing each module of the original Toolkit and providing excellent feedback.

We would personally like to thank our Transition from Jail to Community core team members in each of the following counties for their time, effort, and commitment in implementing the TJC initiative.

Phase l TJC Learning Sites

Phase ll TJC Learning Sites

We are grateful to the members of the subject matter expert advisory group the National Institute of Corrections and the Urban Institute convened to advise on the 2024 update to the Toolkit. Their diverse expertise and perspectives helped ensure that the revised version of the Toolkit incorporated attention to critical and emergent issues and the jail reentry knowledge-building and innovation that has occurred since the Toolkit was first launched. The Toolkit content is the product of the authors alone and does not reflect a consensus position of the advisory group members, but it was strengthened immeasurably by their insights.

Javier Aguirre, Director of Diversion and Reentry Services, County of Santa Clara, California

Sharon Bean, Jail Population Manager, Camden County (New Jersey) Department of Corrections

Dr. Gary E. Christensen

DeAnna Hoskins, President and CEO, JustLeadershipUSA

Kendra Jochum, Deputy Warden of Programs and Services, Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation (Maryland)

Jane Klekamp, County Administrator, La Crosse County, Wisconsin

Paul Mulloy, Director of Programs, Nashville Sheriff’s Office of Davidson County

Carol Peeples, Executive Director, Remerg

Kevin Warwick, President, Alternative Solutions Associates

And finally, a special thank you to our partners at the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) across all phases of the project since 2008: Kermit Humphries, Jim Barbee, Pat Taylor, Danny Downes, Katie Reick and Ronda Gibson for the support and hours of expertise they have contributed to the Transition from Jail to Community Initiative and the development of the TJC online learning resource.

This project was supported by Cooperative Agreement Nos. 09K110GJY4 and 23JD02GLN8, awarded by the National Institute of Corrections. The National Institute of Corrections is a component of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Points of view or opinions in this Toolkit are those of the authors and do not represent the official position of the United State Department of Justice.

Additional information and links to our TJC Partners, materials, and other jail reentry relevant projects and resources are available on the TJC homepage.