Restoration not incarceration
Restoration Not Incarceration is an environmentally-based initiative targeting the restoration of Houston’s prairies, bayous, wetlands and Gulf Coast shore in conjunction with rehabilitation and recidivism reduction of juveniles and adults in the Harris County Corrections System.
2010 GOAL: Complete Restoration Not Incarceration Phase I (Planning and Design) and Phase II (Last Stage Design/ First Stage Implementation) by the end of 2010, and raise 2010/2011 program budgets.
Restoration Not Incarceration is being designed out of the successful practices and principles designed in Plains Youth InterACTION.
Houston jails are tremendously over-crowded with inmates serving time for relatively minor offenses. At the same time, less than 1% of native Gulf Coastal Prairie remains. In partnership with Katy Prairie Conservancy and the Harris County Attorney’s Office, Restoration Not Incarceration will restore several thousand acres of native coastal prairie while providing special rehabilitative work opportunities to temporarily incarcerated individuals. The program is strictly volunteer; qualifying individuals will receive 3:1 good time for their work, clean, nutritious meals, and individualized social work support. The restoration of our Houston prairies provides the mechanism through which struggling individuals, particularly young urban males, can establish a pathway to employment once released from jail with the skills learned through this initiative. An integration of values and productive work in nature provides an avenue for youth and adults as they reintegrate into society and achieve improvement of life outcomes.
Restoration Not Incarceration will eventually expand to other prairie locations/municipalities.
Evidence-based Recidivism Reduction
Compiled by Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC)
Restoration Not Incarceration is social entrepreneurial work, designed to holistically integrate proven effective treatment approaches for prisoners with the new field of work therapy in nature, and advance the effectiveness of simultaneous objectives toward reducing recidivism and ecological degradation. GPRC advances existing models by combining 1.) trust-and-motivation based social work with 2.) skills training in nature with 3.) ecological recovery and protection, and personalizing the meaningful nature of all three.
- A Harris County, TX (Houston) Corrections pilot project, “The Conservation Work Probation Program (Conservation Camp) performing wetlands and prairie restoration out at Sheldon Lake had an Effectiveness Rating of “77.2% graduates with no new arrest after up to 24 months.” (Harris County Attorney’s Office).
- Dr. Nalini Nadkami runs a Washington State program known as the Sustainable Prisons Project: “The Sustainable Prisons Project is a partnership of the Washington State Department of Corrections and The Evergreen State College. Our mission is to reduce the cost and environmental impact of prison operations by training prison staff and offenders in science, sustainability and skills for the emerging green economy.”(http://acdrupal.evergreen.edu/greenprisons/) “We’re saving money, saving resources, and saving lives,” said Dr. Nadkami. State prisons 'go green' to save more than planet
http://www.king5.com/localnews/environment/stories/NW_061709WAB-green-prison-KS.8e8905db.html?rss
Successful Re-Entry: "Green Prison Reform" http://www.kcts9.org/video/green-prison-reform discusses the Washington State program as well, and highlights a successful re-entry (into society) case.
Prairie Restoration and Prisoners, Washington State: Now, The Nature Conservancy, through a Department of Defense Legacy Resource grant, is now partnering with Sustainable Prisons to work with prisoners at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center, “to grow threatened prairie flowering perennials”.
- Recidivism Study 1: “ST [Skills Training] proved more cost effective than MEN [Mentoring], achieving a 14% relative reduction in recidivism at a savings of $33,600 per hundred youths. In ST, 37% were rearrested 2 years or more after intake, compared to 51% in MEN and 46% in JD [Juvenile Diversion]. In two of five propensity subclasses, time to first rearrest was longer in ST (M = 767 days) than in MEN (M = 638 days) or JD (M = 619 days).” (Elaine A. Blechman1, Araya Maurice1, Betsy Buecker1 and Clay Helberg, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at, Boulder “Can Mentoring or Skill Training Reduce Recidivism? Observational Study with Propensity Analysis”, Prevention Science, Sept. 2000.)
- Recidivism Study 2: “Most important, unlike 30 years ago, there is today an enormous body of sophisticated research proving that unlike incarceration, which actually increases offender recidivism, properly designed and operated recidivism-reduction programs can significantly reduce offender recidivism. Such programs are more effective, and more cost-effective, than incarceration in reducing crime rates.” “Roger K. Warren, Primary Author, “Evidence-Based Practice to Reduce Recidivism: Implications for State Judiciaries”; prepared for the Crime and Justice Institute, National Institute of Corrections, and National Center for State Courts, 30 August 2007.)
- Physical Health from Nature: “…[A]ccess to [the natural environment] can modify pathways through which low socioeconomic position can lead to disease. … Health inequalities related to income deprivation in all-cause mortality and mortality from circulatory diseases were lower in populations living in the greenest areas.” (Mitchell, PhD, Popham, PhD., “Effect of Exposure to Natural Environment on Health Inequalities: an Observational Population Study”, The Lancet, 8 November 2008).
- Mental Health from Nature: University of Michigan psychologist Michael Berman and colleagues completed a study that found “Interacting with nature shifts the mind to a more relaxed and passive mode, allowing the more analytical powers to restore themselves … the kind of attention we need to study for exams, make financial decisions, and so forth—the business of daily life”, and that this ability to focus and concentrate is depleted in the constant noise and overstimulation of modern urban life. (“In Our Nature”, Newsweek, February 2009.)
The Ecologist and the Prisoners
by Valerie Brown
Miller-Mccune
Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
