Jail populations have changed greatly over the past decade. With those changes, the challenges faced in facilitating transition from jail to the community that keeps communities safe and supports individuals are more complex than ever. The systems approach to jail reentry that underlies the TJC model is intended to help local jails and communities navigate that complexity by building collaboration, understanding issues through data, orienting around evidence-based practice, and making deliberate decisions about where time, energy and resources should go, whether a place has the capacity to go big or needs to start small.
Jail reentry is a long game. As one of the subject matter experts responded when asked what advice they’d give about taking on the work of jail reentry: “My advice is that this is a long process. For anybody who thinks that they’re going to be able to do one thing or two things and then things are going to be better, it takes a long time and it takes consistency. It’s a patience game and a consistency game and a personal fortitude game to get it to work.” Few communities may be ready to take advantage of all the opportunities to improve their jail reentry work named in the TJC subject matter expert panel discussions. However, any reentry partnership can make progress on at least a few of them based on their own priorities and capacities. Beginning with data and assessment is an important starting point, allowing any community to ensure that its capacity for reentry intervention, even if modest to start, is being used where it can do the most good.