Pioneering community justice with our reentry program
A pioneer in community justice for over 125 years, we champion the humane treatment of returning citizens with our reentry program.
We provide services to help returning citizens successfully transition from prison to a productive life in the community. Additionally, we offer rehabilitation services and steer youth to set new, positive directions for their lives. Our services include halfway houses and work-release programs, day reporting, diversion and pre-trial services, residential treatment, family supports, and dispute resolution and mediation services.
Specialized Case Management Services
Intensive supervision and support can divert youth from the court system or incarceration. The service is provided to pre-trial defendants in the community who may otherwise be incarcerated while awaiting trial.
Residential Treatment
Our specialized in-patient intensive treatment programs, using cognitive behavior approaches coupled with more traditional 12-step and relapse prevention services, are helping break the cycle of recidivism and are provided for individuals, women parenting children, and youths referred by the criminal justice system.
Community Sanction & ReEntry Program
Through our reentry program, we provide a continuum of proven service models to help returning citizens rebuild their lives and re-enter their communities. Through literacy training, housing location, alcohol and substance use treatments, and case management, returning citizens gain skills and thus are empowered to succeed.
Day Reporting
Day reporting provides low-risk returning citizens with a way to make amends to the community and serve their sentences or parole sanctions in a community center without incurring the high costs of a prison stay. These centers assess an individual’s needs and develop specialized treatment and/or case management plans, focusing on employment and skills training. All returning citizens are monitored to ensure every expectation is met.
These are real people: someone’s mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, husband, or wife. And for whatever reason, they’ve become a statistic. They desperately seek the same avenues of hope yet approach the future with disadvantage and doubt.
Maud Booth, our co-founder, knew this. She said, “When you have served your time, I will nurse you back to health. I will get you work. Above all, I will trust you. I will help you over the rough places, but mind—I will not carry you.”
Volunteers of America continues to address these issues as our citizens return to their communities. We believe everyone deserves a second chance and a right to the dignity that comes with it.
“ I think (my kids) are accomplishing things I don’t believe they would’ve accomplished had I continued down my path of drugs and alcohol abuse. It wasn’t until I came to live at a (Volunteers of America, Dakotas) halfway house, that my attitude and thinking began to change.“
– Jaimie, mother of three
“We see their whole person, not just the offense.”
Amicus Reconnect has been training volunteers to serve as mentors for individuals returning to society across Minnesota for nearly 50 years.
Watch the video, “Amicus – Starting Over With a Friend” now. Or click the button below to learn more about Amicus.
“In one word. It’s a blessing. I have never known a program like this.”
– Dwayne, enjoying his first job after finishing the Amicus Ex-offender Mentoring program
The power of affordable housing as a building block in life
The lack of affordable housing leaves returning citizens competing for the same limited resources as others with no criminal history.
