Op-ed: Faith-based resource centers are trailblazers in reentry work

April is Second Chance Month, a time for exploring how our community can reduce barriers for individuals coming home from jail or prison. Faith-based organizations have long been the safety net for the justice-involved, long before Santa Clara County opened the Reentry Resource Center in 2012.

In 2011, Assembly Bill 109 or Public Safety Realignment Act was passed, shifting nonviolent, nonserious, nonsex offenders from state prisons to local county jails and probation departments. Counties received AB 109 funding to manage that responsibility. Instead of building bigger jails, Santa Clara County designated most of its funding for in-custody and community-based programming.

Given the faith community’s experience with providing support to the justice-involved, the county spearheaded the multifaith Faith Reentry Collaborative and contracted with local churches to create four faith-based reentry centers. Over the last 14 years, those centers — Bridges of Hope with Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, Destiny with Bible Way Christian Center, The Good Samaritan Project with Breakout Prison Outreach and Mission Possible with Maranatha Christian Center — have provided support to thousands of reentry clients in collaboration with the Jewish, Buddhist and Muslim communities and other nonreligious groups.

Staff from these centers walk this journey with individuals healing from the wounds of incarceration and play a crucial role in preventing homelessness. They provide basic needs, behavioral health services, substance use treatment, primary health care, employment, transportation and permanent housing placement.

While basic needs are among the most requested resources, connections to the faith community are not far behind. Providing community and hope, as well as peer mentors who have experienced incarceration, is very effective at fostering healing and change.

Faith-based services extend to Gilroy by way of The Good Samaritan Project at the South County Reentry Resource Center. Good Samaritan volunteers and staff facilitate a support group called Hope, Help and Healing, a client-centered group addressing challenges with transition back to home, at work, with family and in the community. Group activities also help develop social skills while utilizing leisure time in a healthy, pro-social manner.

These faith-based reentry centers are also tackling generational incarceration. The Santa Clara County Office of Diversion and Reentry Services and its four faith-based reentry center partners were awarded a $500,000 grant from the office of state Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) to launch a fellowship serving justice-involved clients and their children in 2024. The fellowship created jobs for justice-involved fellows and expanded programs to support children of reentry clients. It is crucial to acknowledge long-term effects of parental incarceration on children, such as lower academic achievement and risk of involvement in the juvenile justice system.

The fellows at the four centers established homework clubs and supported academic accommodation plans and extracurricular activities like swimming lessons, Little League baseball, football, soccer, family rafting, cheerleading, family holiday celebrations and much more. As a result, staff witnessed tremendous family bonding, community citizenship and decreased recidivism.

Kristina Mitchell has lived experience and dealt with her parents cycling in and out of jail as a child. She received stabilizing services at Bridges of Hope as an adult, and obtained a fellow position there after graduating from the program. Her childhood experience gave Mitchell a perspective that enabled her to have a tremendous effect on both the children and parents she served at the center. Rooted in faith, Mitchell is now a successful reentry case manager at another nonprofit working with individuals released from prison.

In April, we celebrate the vast contributions of faith-based partners in reentry work and the powerful ripple effect on our community of offering second chances.

Sharon Miller is director of Cathedral Social Ministries with Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County. Christina Yee is executive director of Breakout Prison Outreach dba California Youth Outreach.