Rocky Boy Health Center Prevention Department Chippewa Cree Tribe Re-entry Program

The Chippewa Cree Tribe Courts Re-Entry Program was discussed with Kris Anne Billy, Re-Entry Coordinator.   The mission is to successfully help former offenders (reentrants) reintegrate back into our tribal community. It’s a reintroduction to society in a respectful and healthy self-sustaining way. Reentry’s purpose is to provide intervention and treatment for reentrants who want to make positive life changes and break the cycle of recidivism. The program generally takes 9 – 12 months to complete. Reentrants progress in phases. The Reentry Program provides access to holistic, structured, and phased treatment and rehabilitation services that are inclusive of our unique culture and traditions. Traditional concepts of justice and healing are incorporated into each offender’s treatment plan. Traditional healing modalities are offered and encouraged, as these practices have proven highly effective in the treatment of alcohol and substance abuse in Native people. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello, everybody. Uh this is Mike Gibo at the Rocky Bo Health Center Prevention Department podcast room, and we have a special guest today. I'll let her introduce herself.

unknown 0:12

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Good morning, everybody, and good day. My name is Chris Hanbily, and I work as a re-entry coordinator for the Chippewa Cree Tribal Courts.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Thanks. So this is a follow-up from the last time, last week. We did a podcast with the Healing to Wellness Adult, and then we also did family. And there was a juvenile one last week, Juvenile Healing to Wellness Program. So we talked about that. We went over the dynamics of the meeting, how everything goes. And so we're talking about the re-entry program this today, and uh we're gonna just talk about some outcomes. And I I've invited uh Chris Anne to uh share kind of what she's been dealing with with her clients and also staff and and then I guess the team and kind of what's been going on. So yeah, what would what would you like to share about um anything from uh re-entry program outcomes?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

So um so basically how we measure um our outcomes of the re-entry program is that we measure for the next three years after somebody has successfully completed our program, we measure if they are going to re-offend or end up back into the prison system. And what our goal is is to reach for an 80% positive income. So that basically means 80% of our graduates will not re-offend after three years.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Awesome. So I think in another way, sometimes they call that recidivism, reducing recidivism.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Exactly, recidivism. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

So yeah, so I think that's really good. I think in terms of um how re-entry helps people, uh, keep them from going back to incarceration, and they they get to focus on freedom, family, and things that are they're within their control in their environment, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yes. So the mission of our program is to successfully help our clients reintegrate back into our community. We as a team at the re-entry program, I do not work by myself. I um actually have a compliance officer, and her name is Allison Grant. And so our goal is to implement the smooth re-entry process, and so we want to enhance the offender's ability to succeed outside of the bars in the prison system. We help provide access to enhanced treatments, so we work really well with uh WAPAKESIC, and we also want to provide the you know the most critical support services, so such as food and you know, a place to live, um, access to health care, all those important components to provide, you know, improve their quality of life. And um we do not have a cookie-cutter approach to any of it. We know that everybody is different, so we individualize all these plans after we do uh careful assessments as far as what the criminal history is, um how they were brought up, how they um did in school, you know, what their work uh history is like. So um we actually measure their individualized programs upon the um assessments that we do early on, and we do it within our first phase.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Okay, so you sounds like maybe you had some specialized training to look at when you do an assessment, how you can tailor the needs to what they need.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah, uh we do um we're we've all been trained at the court system to implement, it's called a case assessment. So um it's a series of questions. This is something that we do not utilize and provide it to, uh we do not provide that information to our team. It's completely confidential. So we we're trying to create a safe space for our people to let us know, you know, that that they did this in 2007, and you know, we're just letting them know, you know, hey, whatever you did in 2007 doesn't matter here. We're just trying to find out what the best way to um approach their their care plan.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Mm-hmm. Okay, so so yeah, so moving forward is important. Uh whatever happened in the past, I know that's good to let go of and move forward and focus on healing, wellness, um, recovery. I know that we all have different levels of complexity of problems in our past, but moving forward, there's a lot more um structure that we can focus on. And like you mentioned, uh healthcare needs, behavioral health, uh things that are important, such as um housing, having food, and getting around.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Yeah, we we help identify any of those problem areas that um they've had in the past. And if it's something that is in the present, we help them connect with um the resources around the reservation. So we do do a lot of referrals to vocational rehabilitation. We do uh refer people to the 477 program. So if they can't find a job uh immediately, you know, there is the GA option. Um we have MOUs signed with um all of the departments throughout the reservation. So um everybody is excuse me, everybody, excuse me, everybody is um, you know, we're all in this together, we're all here to help each other. And um so we just we know that the rural area of where we're at, you know, there's not a whole lot of resources, but our reservation is is very resourceful. Um, we do not have any kind of monetary direct services. Um, the one thing I do want to point out with um our program is, you know, we we're not able to provide any kind of like checks or money or anything, but you know, we do refer them to the service to the resources that they have around the reservation. And, you know, when we do have our clients that are on, you know, state probation also, you know, outside of the reservation, you have to pay for, you know, the um the compliance part. So you have to pay for the GPS monitoring or the scram monitoring. Our program provides that for our people. Um, they do not have to pay out of pocket for that. So that's one of the things, the positive things that I like about our program is that we're not gonna, we're not already gonna put, you know, uh financial stress on them just to supervise them.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Well, that's a good uh good deal for the people not have to cover an extra few dollars or I don't even know what that would cost, but I know that it does cost money to do um monitoring, electronic, and all the GPS, and that's really good that they could have a oh yeah, like outside of the reservation, it's like five dollars a day just to breathe or five dollars a day to, you know, at five dollars adds up. Yeah, yep. I think everything adds up as you look at costs and and if uh thinking from a person, a client perspective, you know, the first thing they're looking at is probably food and gas if they have a ride or getting around. Absolutely. So I know you mentioned making referrals to programs. I know under the clinic we have the Wapakisic, behavior health, family services, uh MAT program. Uh there's a lot of programs over there. And we also have medical side where they could probably um and dental and optometry. We also have peers peer support specialist services and uh in our in our area, both sides of the clinic at the admin and our department, and also at the TAC team. And so there's a lot of support at the clinic for the um clients as they come over, and so we we like to uh work with them also and uh setting up uh some plans to work towards with um recovery, wellness. It's really good that we have people coming in, checking out the program.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

We have plenty of partners, um especially the the tribal wellness coalition. They have a referral program going on right now with uh men's health. And we've referred our clients over there. They are actually given gift certificates for that. I know that you have to have a physical examination and also a um dental and an eye exam, and um you will see Tina Morales for any of that.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Yeah, so they get gift cards for going to do a physical and an eye exam and a dental exam. That's awesome. And yeah, and I also wanted to share that we're gonna be doing some cleanup next week, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and they're getting$25 gift cards for for the uh CNC firehouse grocery market. So I know that we like to invite people to come and do that. It's gonna be nice out. So the um re-entry program is uh working with federal and state probation clients. Yes. Right? Okay. And so the outcomes that we um we shared earlier was, you know, as they get referred to these programs, they're able to support them in different ways. And uh I think the most important thing is that they're getting educated on how to transition back into the community in a positive way and finding uh sober contacts, finding people that support them and and uh so they can continue to be with their family and uh do things in the community. That's a good deal. So yeah, I wanted to thank uh Chrissanne for coming over, sharing her information on the re-entry program at the Chippewakree Tribal Courts. I think that's a uh really awesome program that uh goes right along with the other programs that I have over there. And so yeah, I just want to uh thank you for coming over and talking about how we can help our uh our people, our relatives. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. All right, take care.