Partnerships for successful reentry: Staying healthy with HIV beyond prison walls

Community Connections is a reentry intervention for former State prisoners living with HIV/AIDS. This intervention grew out of community-based participatory research in an urban neighborhood planning unit in 2006. The community identified ex-offender reentry and reintegration as driving high levels of criminality in their neighborhoods, and as their primary public safety concern. Residents envisioned a program linking mentoring and employment resources to formerly incarcerated persons in their communities. Community Connections is a further outgrowth of this CBPR project targeting services to reentrants who are HIV positive. Community Connections is coordinated by an academic institution serving as the junction for three types of community partners: governmental, organizational, and individual. The diverse partners linked by Community Connections together provide support for successful reentry. The Department of Corrections provides Pre-Release Planning to HIV positive reentrants by scheduling essential social service and medical appointments, and providing copies of medical records. They serve as the first link to Community Connections' post-release services. Community Connections identifies unmet needs of reentrants and provides critical linkages to the expertise of community-based organizations chartered to meet those needs: housing, substance abuse treatment, education, medical, and social support. Peer-guides with knowledge of corrections, HIV/AIDS, addiction, and mentoring serve as genuine connections to the community for reentrants in the first year following release. A healthy association with a peer-guide provides a stable relationship for reentrants, who often face chaotic and overwhelming situations. Peer-guides as individual partners inform the development of the program through feedback and monthly progress narratives.