Franklin County Sheriff’s Office
Franklin County, Massachusetts
Last Updated 2018
.Last Updated 2018
NOTABLE FEATURES
- The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Greenfield, Massachusetts was a Second Chance Act Reentry Program for Adults with Co-occurring Substance Use and Mental Disorders grantee in Fiscal Year 2013
- Jurisdiction geography: Rural; 71,372 residents
- Size of correctional facilities and populations incarcerated: 250 men
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Under the leadership of Sheriff Christopher J. Donelan, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) implemented a trauma-informed, integrated substance use and mental disorders treatment program in 2014 for approximately 120 men who were sentenced and incarcerated. Most of these men were assessed as having high- to very high-criminogenic risk. Since then, the FCSO expanded program eligibility to pretrial detainees and now includes approximately 175 men. Although the FCSO only incarcerates men (women are housed in a regional facility in a nearby county), case management support is available through FCSO to both male and female participants post release. FCSO offers participants evidence-based interventions, including Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment (IDDT) case management for people while incarcerated and post release, Thinking for a Change (T4C), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Stages of Change and Motivational Interviewing, Seeking Safety, and Nurturing Parenting. Program participants also receive group therapy, peer mentoring, case management, education, and vocational services prior to release and are also connected to supported or affordable housing. As participants move through phases of the program, they are transitioned to different sections of the jail with lower security levels until they are released.
- FCSO staff use the following instruments to screen and assess program participants:
- PROXY static risk assessment
- Level of Service/Risk-Need-Responsivity (LS/RNR)
- Clinical diagnostic assessment
- Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) scale
- Brief Situational Confidence Questionnaire (BSCQ)
- Comprehensive ACT Assessment (CompACT)
- Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20)
Lead Case Planners and their partners were asked to provide information about how their programs implement some of the Collaborative Comprehensive Case Plan priorities. See below for more information about the efforts in Franklin County, MA.
Interagency Collaboration and Information Sharing
Before FCSO received its Second Chance Act (SCA) award to fund its reentry program, it was selected as a site for the Transition from Jail to Community initiative, a project between the National Institute of Corrections and the Urban Institute that provided technical assistance to test a model for improving long-term reintegration outcomes for people returning from incarceration. As part of the initiative, Sheriff Donelan reached out to social service agencies and legal partners to form a leadership committee. The FCSO also tapped into existing county coalitions to support its efforts to improve reentry and help them design their treatment program so it would be aligned with the needs of their population. Ed Hayes, assistant superintendent of human services, notes that the county’s pre-existing culture of agency collaboration (because the county is rural with limited resources) helped to form the initiative, and multiple community and government partners were willing to assist the FCSO, especially after they began to see the effects of opioid misuse and opioid use disorders on the county.
Sheriff Donelan also realized opportunities for intra-agency collaboration among the staff at the jail to help make the treatment program successful. While there was some initial resistance from security and treatment staff at FCSO to reentry programming for people who have co-occurring disorders, FCSO began hiring for correctional officer positions who would also serve as correctional case workers to specifically partner with treatment staff and co-lead groups. The hiring protocol at the FCSO also changed to focus on the sheriff’s reentry priorities and to seek out applicants with human services background to be corrections officers. Additional case workers were also hired to provide intensive post-release support, including wraparound services, such as transportation assistance, recovery coaching, and systems navigation. This case management continues post release as long as participants are fully engaged in it.
The information sharing process occurs internally between the various divisions at the FCSO and externally with partner agencies and family members of participants. Internally, case conferences occur weekly and include staff from the education, clinical, medical, security, and reentry teams. Participants with cases of concern are discussed and relevant community-based agencies are contacted according to those discussed needs (such as referrals to the Department of Mental Health to qualify for additional resources). This participant information is also stored digitally within FCSO’s case management software, making information sharing simple and direct. Externally, FCSO’s information-sharing process begins during participants’ initial intake and continues as reentry case plans are developed in consultation with partnering agencies and the people in the participant’s support system. When it is deemed appropriate and helpful to ensuring continuity of care, FCSO’s information-sharing protocols allow for behavioral health, medical, and other case management data to be shared with relevant partners as well.
Staff Training
The FCSO reentry program is based on two core frameworks: 1) risk-need-responsivity (RNR) and 2) a behaviorist approach to trauma-informed, integrated mental illness and substance use treatment focused on learning new behaviors to address co-occurring disorders and criminogenic risk. FCSO case workers and their licensed behavioral health care partners complete cross-training on security and core trauma-informed treatment principles, and on evidence-based interventions (see above). Additionally, all new uniformed officers participate in training on RNR, behaviorism, and substance use disorder principles during their cadet academy, with refresher trainings offered annually.
All human service staff at FCSO receive an intensive two or three-day training in RNR and are certified to administer a criminogenic risk and need assessment. The human services team then applies lessons learned from these trainings to weekly reviews of participant cases. Monthly lectures are held to continue to develop the staff skill sets around these modalities and other topics such as staff resiliency and secondary trauma.
While the SCA grant provided some funding for these trainings, Sheriff Donelan also prioritized training in the agency’s budget and directed some general appropriations to fund the trainings. The FCSO leadership team sought external partners to deliver trainings, when possible, instead of trying to plan and deliver all trainings in-house because partners in the community often have the knowledge and the ability to cross-train in different areas.
Screening and Assessment
The FCSO uses screening and assessments to help develop case plans for reentry program participants. Participants are assessed for criminogenic risk using the Level of Service/Risk Need Responsivity (LS/RNR), and a licensed behavioral health specialist conducts a clinical biopsychosocial assessment for both mental illness and substance use disorders. The combination of these assessments along with additional screens and assessments (see above) helps the team focus the interventions on criminogenic and behavioral health needs and to identify each participant’s goals and values in life. Together these assessments inform participants’ treatment within the facility, which is then documented in their Individualized Service Plans (ISP). Depending upon participants’ level of risk and need, the ISP will include various levels of intervention, such as evidence-based treatments, vocational & educational programs, comprehensive reentry services, and post-release reentry supports.
A reentry case worker meets with program participants within the first few days of incarceration to conduct additional screening and case planning. Using a software application called iCIM—which contains several domains such as mental health, recovery support, and housing—the case worker determines where participants need the most support to succeed and includes that information in their reentry case plan. That plan is reviewed by the case management team regularly and updated as participants’ behaviors and/or circumstances change. The case management team conducts formal reviews of these plans every 60 days.
Prior to their release from the jail, participants meet with their case worker, post-release case worker, a medical practitioner, and key community partners such as a probation officer, recovery coach, or other agency representative to review any final details of the reentry case plan together (which is a continuation of their ISP). The medical practitioner will review any arrangements that are made regarding prescriptions, including medication assisted therapies, and ensure continuity of care with an outside community-based behavioral health treatment provider. Participants are released with a copy of this plan and provided details on next steps in key areas of reentry (i.e., housing, medical care, and employment). This plan is also forwarded to participants’ probation or parole officers after appropriate release of information forms are signed.