Peer Reintegration Initiative of Maine (PRIME)

The PRIME program is the third iteration of our prison outreach initiative. Our primary objectives are to reinforce the value that nobody has to go through reintegration alone and leverage the lived experience of our Community Reintegration Specialists and their volunteer assistants to help develop a plan for life after incarceration.

To understand the full scale of the challenge, it is necessary to consider all of the different factors that come into play for a person who has gone into the prison system:

Initial Trauma

It begins with a traumatic unmet need. The circumstances are as varied as the individuals who encounter them, but it can be anything from lack of love and attention or a desperate financial situation or being abused or traumatized in some way. Whatever the need, it becomes so pervasive in a person's life that crossing moral and legal boundaries starts to seem preferable to the continued suffering. Sometimes the intermediate step of self-medicating through substance use occurs, and the substance dependancy drives the financial crisis.

Criminal Behavior

So, the boundaries are crossed. And here's the insidious thing - it works. For a time. The horrendous metaphorical itch is scratched, there is a high from the adrenaline release (as well as perhaps a literal one, if substance use is involved), and the person feels fulfilled.

Until it wears off. It doesn't always happen right away, but eventually, the need returns. Stolen money is spent. The adrenaline fades. Whatever reward the behavior provided is gone now, and not only has the suffering returned, but now it is compounded with the guilt and the shame of what the person has done. Often the only way to prevent those feelings from taking hold and bringing despair to a person is to repeat the criminal behavior again.

And again.

Until eventually...

Arrest and Incarceration

It's not like Scooby Doo, where the bad guy laments that he "would've gotten away with it". On one level or another, most people experiencing that vicious cycle want to be caught. The cycle is painful for them, just as it is for the community that they're hurting. We often hear people say that getting caught literally saved their lives.

Of course, that doesn't mean that they're interested in all of the consequences of their actions. The wisdom of incarceration as a rehabilitative tool is open to debate, but that debate is beyond the scope of our work. What is not debatable is that incarceration, justified or not, is a traumatic experience.

So traumatic, in fact, that it is worth examining the typical side effects:

Isolation/Separation

This consequence is perhaps the most obvious. The person is literally removed from friends and family and taken to an environment disconnected from anything familiar or comforting. There is limited access to outside support (if any).

Emotional vulnerability can be life-threatening

Stigmatization

The person's imperfect behavior becomes known and judged, and they are forever branded with the label criminal. Assumptions are now made about their lack of intelligence, lack of will and lack of wisdom by most members of the community.

They are seen by others - and themselves - and less worthy. Their contributions in the future occur in spite of their "handicap".

Loss

The person develops a perception about life from the moment those bars first close in front of them: that happiness and the feeling of “being complete” are now permanently beyond their reach. Opportunities that they had once dreamed of are now irrevocably closed doors; new barriers exist, in the form of stigma, to anything they might accomplish in the future. Relationships with family and friends are damaged, possibly beyond repair, and new relationships will now have this cloud hanging over them. It could almost be considered paranoia, except that the person knows it is demonstrably true.

Mental Stress

The prison experience includes seeing things that cannot ever be unseen and experiencing things that can never be un-experienced. Years after release, flashbacks of traumatic events can resurface in response to seemingly random stimuli. Psychological and even physical symptoms of the trauma manifest themselves long-term.

Forced Adaptation

Prison is a microcosmic society. Like any society, it has rules, and we're not talking about the rules laid out by the guards. Perhaps one of the most famous is the anti-snitching rule, "Snitches get stitches."

Surviving in prison for any length of time means adhering to these rules, to a new culture that is at odds with societal expectations ("See something, say something") and the person's survival is dependent on successfully conforming. Coming out of a long prison sentence can be culturally similar to moving into a new country.

Release

To the uninitiated, it is assumed that release from prison is a joyous, blissful occasion. It's a popular saying: "I loved that place; it was like getting out of jail." For those with adequate family and friend support, it genuinely can be like that.

For people without support in the community, release is not something to be celebrated. It is rife with anxiety; the certainty of prison meals and housing is replaced with the need for the person to supply those things themself, and quickly. Even ignoring the difficulties in getting housing and employment with a criminal record, the simple truth is that a new landlord isn't going to wait three weeks for a first paycheck to clear. Release is the fourth source of stress, compounded on top of everything else.

Where We Come In

It's a daunting task, getting through all that. But we did it. Our Community Reintegration Specialists have all navigated the road from those dire conditions back to a healthier state; one where we can be valuable and respected members of our families and our communities.

We work from the outside in. Re-entry planning and resource brokering are important, but they only deal with that top layer of stress. Once the returning citizen begins to stabilize, all of the trauma of incarceration belatedly begins to impact them, and needs to be talked out and dealt with. This is where our own experiences tend to be particularly valuable, as we've been where our fellow returnees are in that journey.

After that, then the guilt and shame of their own criminal behavior hits. To someone who isn't expecting it, this sudden slump can seem like it comes out of nowhere - someone doing great and dealing with things well suddenly comes crashing down on themselves because they're now free, often for the first time, to analyze and understand exactly how much they hurt people with their past actions. Again, an understanding and guiding voice is essential to help process these events.

At the bottom is the original unmet need. Ideally, that should be tackled with a professional psychologist, but often that's not an option for formerly incarcerated people, especially when psychologists are mandatory reporters, and any unprosecuted crimes or backsliding mentioned to the psychologist might legitimately cause another round of punishment. In those circumstances, we do what we do best: we listen. We emphasize that the reentrant is not alone and that together, we can move forward in a way that would be impossible for any of us alone.

Our Methods

Mentorship

There is value in hearing someone say, "This is how I handled it." Two minds are always better than one, and even if we have no strong advice to offer, sometimes just the exercise of explaining the situation to us helps people come up with their own solutions.

Safe Space to Vent

Sometimes people don't need advice, they just need someone they can rant to. We fill that role fairly well for people, and act as a pressure valve for their very real frustrations with the process of reintegration. We also represent a simple truth, just by our presence: success is possible.

Resource Expert

As we continue to walk with people on their reentry journeys, our knowledge of the various assistance resources for different kinds of situations continues to increase. We are often aware of those quasi-hidden programs that can give people a leg up in the right circumstances.

Advocate

Some doors in life only open with a good recommendation. By going on this journey with our reentrants, we get to know them well, and can become comfortable vouching for them to people who are considering giving them a chance. Sometimes, though, the people we most often need to remind of how far they've come and what good they're capable of is the reentrants themselves.

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