FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #110 Second Chances, Stronger Communities
What if reentry didn’t start at the prison gate, but at the moment of arrest? We sit with Failsafe-ERA founder Juanita Shanks to map a different path—one built on evidence-based classes inside the jail, steady case management after release, and family support that breaks isolation and shame. Juanita shares the story that moved her from federal service to frontline nonprofit leadership, including the loss of her son and the hard lessons families face when addiction, courts, and costs collide.
Across the hour, we unpack a holistic model for change: interactive journaling that rewires thinking patterns, mental health support that addresses root causes, and a “Hall of Change” where graduates mentor those still inside. We dig into the toughest barriers—employment and housing—and how second-chance employers and rare but vital second-chance landlords can flip outcomes. With a team rich in lived experience, Failsafe-ERA reports a 4% recidivism rate among participants, underscoring how trust, structure, and consistency turn good intentions into measurable impact.
We also widen the lens to the people who bear the weight behind the scenes: parents, siblings, and children navigating stigma and uncertainty. Juanita explains why prevention and youth empowerment sit alongside reentry, and why mental health crises can pull any family into the justice system. Serving Planning District 16—Fredericksburg, Stafford, Spotsylvania, King George, and Caroline—the organization offers clear on-ramps for volunteers, donors, employers, and landlords who want to help. With over 90 percent of incarcerated people returning home, the real question is how we welcome them back with dignity, accountability, and a fair shot.
If this conversation moved you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. Want to take the next step? Learn more, volunteer, or donate at failsafe-era.org—and tell us how you plan to help someone’s second chance become their best one.
Juanita Shanks
Failsafe-ERA
failsafeera@gmail.com
+1 540-479-3021
1972 William Street Fredericksburg, VA
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I have a special guest joining me today. We have Juanita Shanks joining us, and she is with Failsafe ERA. Juanita, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Dori, for having me.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited to dive in and learn more about you and about your organization. So let's start there. Share with us all about Failsafe ERA.
Speaker 1:Gladly. So Failsafe ERA, we've been in existence since 2009, and we provide support and services to families and individuals that have been impacted by incarceration. So we're going into the jails to teach and train to help them change their thought processes, their behavior, their attitude. And then once they are released either from jail and or prison, they become out there, we consider them returning citizens. And then we continue with their healing process. And that looks like mental health support. We have our courage to change interactive journaling program that's also in the jail. But in addition to that, they continue once they re-enter back into the community. We also have uh second-chance employers that are that's working with us so that they can get some employment once they are back out in the community. Um, they also we have some second-chance landlords, not a lot. Housing is an issue, but we, you know, we do have some second-chance landlords. Um, and then we also just case management, working with them on a weekly basis, setting goals, helping them to meet their goals. And then once they meet their goals, they're inducted into our hall of change to become an agent of change. Um, and then they go back and they get the wounded. Um, so that's what we do for the I call them residents of the jails and the returning citizens. And then we also work with the families because the families are just as impacted by their uh loved ones that you know that are incarcerated. And so we work with the family members to provide them with social support, um social emotional support training. We have a support group that meets on the um third Saturday of the month. We also have our youth program, so it's about the entire family, it's a holistic approach to incarceration for the entire families so that we can ultimately bring healing to our communities.
Speaker 2:What important work you are doing. I'm so impressed by the wide range of services you offer. You know, so you're not just helping them when they first get out, but you're helping them continue on and you're staying with them. That's really important work.
Speaker 1:I've arrested. Yeah, you know, um, and it really begins, really. I I often say that the re-entry begins when they're arrested, because we need to catch them before they're coming even back out here into the communities if we can. And even before then, you know, where we're working with the kids, the youth, the families, we want to prevent, right? So we're all we're all about prevention and re-entry. So we just want to make sure that they have the resources and the tools so that they can come back into our society and our communities and be successful. I mean, they're gonna come home, right? They're coming home, you know. Department of Correction says over 90% are gonna come home one day. So we need to make sure that we have some resources and tools in place so that they can be successful when they do re-enter back into the communities.
Speaker 2:You're amazing, and I want to learn more about you. Tell me what gave you the passion and the drive to do something like this.
Speaker 1:Well, I will start by saying it was not my life dream.
unknown:Okay.
Speaker 1:This was not something I said when I grew up, I want to be a re-entry nonprofit uh founder, director, uh uh or founder or director of a community re-entry organization. I happen to be the founder as a result of walking through the criminal justice system with my son. So it started back in uh 2004. I think he graduated from high school. He was an honorable student. He was on a basketball scholarship, raised up in a two-parenting home, doing all the right things, as well, for the most part, all the right things that a kid can do. Um, but he he he he had what he had the dream home life, right? He went off to college on his basketball scholarship and he came back a drug addicted dealer. And that changed the trajectory of his life. And so from that point forward, he was basically in and out and in and out of the system up until he passed away on January 21st of 2021, um, of a brain aneurysm, one day before going to court.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:So he's the reason why Felsafe started because this was not something that I I have, I I wouldn't not wish this on any parent. I didn't know how to deal with it once, you know, I got that one collect call. This is from the it was from at that point, the Alexandria Detention Center. I didn't know what to do with that information. That hit me and it sunk, it was like it just hit the pit of my stomach and it was just coming up through everywhere. You know, just you could just I didn't know how to deal with that. You know, and it was just there was a lot of emotions involved in that. There was um, I was I was angry with him because in my mind he did not need to commit these crimes. Um, even though I had to learn and realize that the crimes he were that he were that he committed were all drug related. He needed treatment, he didn't really need incarceration, right? Um, and then so so I had anger, there was shame because I'm a federal government employee at the time. I retired in 2017, but I was a federal government employee, a leader in the government, and I had a kid that's in prison, but I wouldn't tell anybody. And so nobody knew until I retired out of government because I was ashamed. And so that's something that families walk through, it's the shame. And then there's so so you have the anger, you have the shame, you have the um the guilt, because you think about you know, I wonder if I had I uh had I done this, or maybe if I could have or should have done that, maybe he would not have made the decision. So um, so as I walked through all of that, there was no fail-safe error to help me through this. I didn't know what to do. So all I knew is that I needed somebody to help me walk through this process. Um, because at that point we were we were almost about to lose our home paying lawyer lawyer fees. I I did, I kept paying these lawyer fees because I wanted to help, right? Um, and so at some point you have to get to the you have to recognize that you have to stop. You're just gonna have to stop and help them to learn a lesson. And then and learning that lesson may be that you don't always pay for that lawyer fee. But that's what I did, you know. As a as a mom, he was my first son, my firstborn and only son. And so I wanted to help him. Um, and so I started this organization to give him, to give us what I felt like we needed. For me, it was a support group, and that's how we started was a support group. But little did I know, at that time, the other parents were just like me. They were not coming out because they are ashamed. They do not want anybody to know that they have a loved one that's incarcerated. So I began to go into the jail, the Ruffahannock Regional Jail, and thought that I can get to the parents that way, but that didn't happen as it turns out. That um at that point we recognized that the entire family needed help. So I just built what I felt like we needed: a support group for the families, mental health for the incarcerated, um, educational opportunities. So we partnered with Jamanna for educational opportunities. Um they need employment, they need substance abuse, they need housing. So all of these are the things that we offer in Failsafe. Um, and um in my mind at that time is what was needed to make him whole. And I've learned that through our clients, it it is definitely what is needed for our returning citizens to help them to become whole. So that's how Felsafe got started in 2009. I was I built what I felt like we needed as a family.
Speaker 2:Wow. Wow. My heart goes out to you. And uh it it's interesting, you know, most nonprofits are built because of something that someone never expected they were gonna have to go through. Yeah, and so it what a gift though you are to families now that you have built this program. And um, my brother was incarcerated right before he graduated from high school, and I I understand the financial stress and burden and the emotional toll on the whole family, you know, as his sister, it was very confusing, you know, as a young person. And I just um applaud what you're doing. And so I I would love to learn, you know, listeners, uh, people listening right now, if if they are interested in in getting involved, what are some ways that the community can help your cause?
Speaker 1:Wow, so many ways, so many ways. We need lots and lots of help. And when I say that, we need help. Um uh, you know, we need financial support. We don't charge our um clients anything. So we provide the training and the jail, and those, you know, that's several hundred inmates that participate in this training, those booklets cost us seven dollars per person. So we need help with the training. That same training is also out in the community. This training is evidence-based, it was developed by probation officers. It makes a difference. We have several people that have gone through the training and they're out here and they're successful. So, that training, first of all, to help with the cost of the training and other resources. Um, we need help facilitating those trainings in the jail. We need help facilitating that training out here in the communities. We need help working with our families, our support group. Um, we also have the uh our youth empowerment is another initiative that we've launched, sounding the alarm. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit. But it is on youth empowerment, helping our youth so that they don't follow in mom and dad's footsteps, right? So that they don't make bad decisions. So we need help with uh managing our events. We need grant writers, we need marketing is key. We need people to help us with marketing. Um, again, so we need donors, we need supporters, we need case managers, we need event uh persons to help with events, um, we we need facilitators. If I didn't say that, I know I probably said it three times because that's how much we need them. Um, case managers, all of those things um that will help us to continue to make an impact in our communities. And and I will tell you that uh we we we we're doing good, we're doing good. We and I think we're doing good. I we are just beyond blessed with the team that we have, but because the majority care of our team are members with lived experiences, we are this is what makes us a success and our recidivism rate at 4% because they can relate. They can relate. So, not that we're saying those are the only types of people that we would like to have help from. We want them, but we want others. We also have people who've never been impacted, and when they join our team, it's like an aha moment. They realize that, oh boy, these really are just people who made a bad decision, right? These really are people who just made a messed up, yeah. But it's just it does not define who they are. So we just need people who have enough passion and understanding that everybody deserves another chance. Those are the kinds of people that we need help from.
Speaker 2:And is where should people go to learn more and to connect with you? Is is all of this listed on on your website?
Speaker 1:It is at uh failsafe.org. So that's failsafe-era.org, failsafe era, and you can find all the information that can go there, excuse me, and register to become a volunteer, to learn more about us, to make a donation, anything, everything helps because again, um you know this is a community issue, so it's gonna require the entire community. We can't do it our own.
Speaker 2:So Fredericksburg, Stafford County, Spotsylvania County, is that kind of the geography that you are concentrated on?
Speaker 1:We we we service all of Planning District 16, so Stafford, King George, Caroline, um, Fergusburg, and Spotsylvania. Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
Speaker 2:What is something that you wish the listeners knew about the Failsafe ERA?
Speaker 1:That um that Failsafe ERA is necessary. It is needed in our community because people are going to come home from incarceration, and when they come home from incarceration, they need resources, they need support, they need someone to get behind them to help guide them, and that it can happen to anybody. We can never say um those people. This was certainly not what I thought would have happened to me. And I know too many other people that would say I would never have imagined. Um, and I would tell you, the thing that that was really pushing a lot of people today are is mental health. So you can easily find yourself or your child or your grandchild incarcerated because of a mental health crisis that caused them to do something that that that that that you know allowed that that forced them into being incarcerated. Um, so it can happen to anybody. And so I just want the community to understand the importance of the work that we do, and it is necessary because again, 90, over 90% of people are coming home from jail and prison. And we cannot, Failsafe ERA cannot do it alone. We need the community support, we need the community's buy-in to understand that crime is gonna happen. This is a I had a um, God rest his soul, one of my board members, Bobby Anderson, awesome, awesome gentleman, blessed, kindest heart. He was one that had never been impacted, right? But he sat in on one of our Toastmasters programs and he listened to our clients tell their stories. And from that day forward, he his heart was changed. He saw that these are people that they had trauma in their lives as a child, maybe coming up, that caused them to make some bad decisions, injuries, any of those things that can cause you to change that your uh an injury to your head can cause you to make a bad decision. Um, he saw that these were people who had some maybe troubled childhoods or something happened, something happened. Nobody's born bad. Something happened that caused them to make the decision that they made, but yet they're still a human being. And he saw the human side, and that's what I would like the community to see is the human side of people. Yeah, we all deserve another chance. Some people need more than one, but yeah, yeah, everyone deserves a chance.
Speaker 2:I love how well I am going to put all of the contact information um on how people can help in the show notes. And Juanita, I want to thank you for joining me on the podcast today. And this is such an important issue. You are an angel. The work that you are doing is just you're it is a community issue and it affects all of us. And thank you for the work that you're doing, and thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so very much, Dori, for having me.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to FXBG Neighbors Podcast.com.