Young Latino Man smiling and hugging a young child in his arms, standing in front of a home
National Resource Center for Reaching Victims logo (helping those who help others) 
Opening the 
Door to Healing: 
Reaching and Serving Crime Victims 
Who Have a History of Incarceration 

February 2020 
Allison Hastings • Kaitlin Kall 


Table of Contents 

4 | From the Project Director 

6 | Introduction 

8 Adults involved in 
the justice system 
are victimized at 
high rates before, 
during, and after 
incarceration. 

10 Many people in 
the United States 
experience 
incarceration. 

36 Services and 
compensation 
are lacking for 
crime victims 
with a history of 
incarceration. 

44 Victim services and 
reentry programs 
are not working 
together. 


Photos depict models, and are 
for illustrative purposes only. 

16 The stigma of 
being “formerly 
incarcerated” is 
a formidable barrier 
to healing. 
46 How can crime 
victims with a history 
of incarceration start 
getting the services 
that help them heal? 

28 Reentry poses 
challenges to 
healing from 
trauma. 

50 | Conclusion 
52 | Endnotes 
60 | Acknowledgements 

61 | Credits 


From the Project Director 

knew I needed to talk to someone, so I went and the counselors didn’t know how to 
handle me [as a survivor who was raped in prison]. You see them tense right up. My 
husband kept pushing me to get help. Otherwise, I would’ve given up. 

his is the voice of one of many survivors who lives with a history of both 
victimization and incarceration. As the Vera Institute of Justice, on behalf of the 
National Resource Center for Reaching Victims, embarked on the journey to understand 
more about people who have had both experiences, we often heard that the shame and 
societal stigma of being “offenders” eclipses the less visible but painful reality that they 
are also survivors of violence—harm that may have happened to them before, during, 
and/or after their time behind bars. 

The stigma of being formerly incarcerated and the stark lines between “victim” and 
“offender” in our society are deep-seated. That stigma can make it extremely challenging 
for survivors who have previously been incarcerated to seek help. It can also make it 
hard for victim service providers to see this population of survivors as crime victims. As 
a result, they may not realize that their outreach efforts, community partnerships, and 
services are not effectively reaching these survivors because they aren’t knowledgeable 
about incarceration and reentry or don’t know about the overlap between victimization 
and incarceration. 

On the other hand, a number of formerly incarcerated people do get support from 
reentry programs during their transition back to the community after a period of 
incarceration. However, most reentry programs are designed to help people find housing 
and jobs, not heal from trauma. Reentry service providers are generally not asking their 
clients about trauma and wouldn’t know what to do if someone disclosed victimization. 
They may only recognize signs of trauma when a client’s behavior (such as, substance 
use) indicates that something is wrong, and the behavior is interfering with the person’s 
ability to keep a job or meet parole conditions. By that time, a crisis may be unfolding 
that ends with the person’s parole being revoked or a new arrest, both of which often 
lead back to jail or prison. 


These realities help explain why so many survivors with a history of incarceration do 
not get the services they need to heal. They also point to real opportunities for change. 
These range from naming this population of survivors to help reduce stigma and affirm 
their humanity to exploring ways to build skills and collaboration among victim service 
providers and reentry programs. In this report, we shine a light on crime victims who 
have previously been incarcerated, examine their needs and barriers to services, and 
offer strategies for opening the door to healing for these survivors. 

Allison Hastings 
Project Director 

About the National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 

Funded by the federal Office for Victims of Crime, the National Resource Center for 
Reaching Victims (NRC) is a one-stop shop for victim service providers, culturally 
specific organizations, justice system professionals, and policymakers to get information 
and expert guidance to enhance their capacity to identify, reach, and serve all victims, 
especially those from communities that are underrepresented in healing services 
and avenues to justice. The NRC is working to increase the number of victims who 
receive healing supports by understanding who is underrepresented and why some 
people access services while others don’t; designing and implementing best practices 
for connecting people to the services they need; and empowering and equipping 
organizations to provide the most useful and effective services possible to crime 
victims. The NRC is a collaboration among Caminar Latino, Casa de Esperanza, Common 
Justice, FORGE, the National Children’s Advocacy Center, the National Center for 
Victims of Crime, the National Clearinghouse on Abuse Later in Life, Women of Color 
Network, Inc., and the Vera Institute of Justice. The NRC’s vision is that victim services 
are accessible, culturally appropriate and relevant, and trauma-informed, and that the 
overwhelming majority of victims access and benefit from these services. 


barbed wire fence with a sunset and birds flying in the background
Introduction 

M

ore than 2 million people 
are locked up in U.S. jails 
and prisons.1 Most were victims of 
crime before they were incarcerated, 
and many experience victimization 
during their incarceration or once 
they return home.2 But regardless of 
when their victimization occurred, the 
vast majority of survivors who have 
previously been incarcerated do not 
get the services they need to heal. 
They face many barriers to services, 
including often not being viewed by 
service providers as “victims” because 
of their criminal history. As a result, 
many survivors who have a history of 
incarceration live with a great deal of 
unaddressed trauma. 


Unfortunately, lack of access to such services is not unique to 
survivors who were once incarcerated. Every year, millions of 
people nationwide become victims of crime. But according to 
the National Crime Victimization Survey, only about 8 percent 
of people who experience violent victimization report that they 
have received victim services.3 To understand the reasons that 
so many victims do not get services—as well as what resources 
and tools the field needs to reach more survivors—the National 
Resource Center for Reaching Victims (NRC), funded by the 
Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) of the U.S. Department of 
Justice, undertook a comprehensive yearlong assessment of 
the victim services and related fields, beginning in the summer 
of 2017. The NRC, a collaboration among nine organizations, 
sought to understand who is underrepresented and why some 
people access services and others do not. (For more about 
the collaboration, see “About the National Resource Center 
for Reaching Victims” on page 3.) Using a number of methods 
including informational interviews, listening sessions, literature 
reviews, surveys, and reviews of practice documents, the NRC 
found that a number of groups of survivors were particularly hard 
to reach, including people who are formerly incarcerated. 

The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera), the NRC partner leading 
the work to improve access to victim services for formerly 
incarcerated survivors, conducted a landscape analysis to 
understand service needs and gaps for this population of 
crime victims. Vera assembled a group of experts comprising 
victim service providers, advocates (including people who have 
personally experienced incarceration), and allied professionals 
to help design and implement this assessment.4 With the 
group’s guidance, Vera engaged more than 40 people through 


informational interviews, listening sessions, and exploratory 
phone calls. They represented a range of perspectives and 
included Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) administrators, victim 
advocates, lawyers, reentry professionals, formerly incarcerated 
survivors, researchers, and criminal justice reform advocates.5 
Vera also compiled and analyzed practice documents as well as 
an academic literature review. 



“According to the National Crime Victimization 
Survey, only about 8% of people who survive 
serious violence report that they have 
received victim services.” 

This report synthesizes the information and insights Vera and the 
NRC gleaned from these activities and includes references to 
research and practice materials. The first section summarizes 
current knowledge about the overlap in experiences of 
victimization and incarceration, and the second section provides 
foundational information about incarceration in the United 
States. The third section describes what we learned from the 
assessment, and the last section outlines the priority needs that, 
if addressed, could lead to more crime victims who were once 
incarcerated getting the services they need to heal. 


Young white man with a baseball cap looking down at the ground, serious.

close up of a mid-aged Black man, serious.
Adults involved in 
the justice system 
are victimized at 
high rates before, 
during, and after 
incarceration. 

any formerly incarcerated 
people have unaddressed 
trauma stemming from victimization 
they experienced at some point 

in their lives. This section describes 
what is known about the violence 
people experience prior to incarceration, 
during incarceration, and once they 
have returned to the community. 


Many people in U.S. jails and prisons were victims of crime before 
they became incarcerated. Although the last national data BJS 
released about victimization prior to incarceration is 20 years old, 
that study found that men and women in state or federal prisons, 
in jail, and on probation had higher rates of childhood physical and 
sexual abuse than rates reported by the broader public.6 The study 
also found that one-third of women in state prison and a quarter 
in jail said that they had been raped before their sentence; more 
than half of women said they had been abused by their intimate 
partners. In the two decades since BJS published its report on 
the victimization experiences of people under some form of 
correctional control, other researchers have published studies 
that shed light on similar experiences that people had before they 
were incarcerated. A 2009 study coauthored by Rutgers University 
Professor Nancy Wolff examined 7,500 incarcerated people across 
multiple prisons in one state and found that more than half of men 
and women reported childhood physical abuse.7 Approximately 
ten percent of men and 47 percent of women surveyed reported 
childhood sexual abuse.8 Another noteworthy study from 2012 
looked at 491 women in nine rural and urban U.S. jails and found 
that trauma and victimization were nearly universal among this 
population. Eighty-six percent of women had experienced sexual 
violence, 77 percent had survived intimate partner violence, and 
60 percent had experienced caregiver violence.9 

Sociologist Bruce Western’s 2018 book, Homeward: Life in the 
Year After Prison, takes an expansive view of victimization and 
chronicles the violence his study participants experienced 
beyond childhood sexual and physical abuse. Western studied 
122 people (107 men and 15 women) who returned to the 
Boston area post-incarceration, and found the following 
about participants’ experiences prior to their imprisonment:10 


• 40 percent had witnessed someone being killed; 
• nearly half had been beaten by their parents; 
• one-third grew up with family violence; 
• 16 percent reported being sexually abused; and 
• half had been seriously injured while growing up. 


Western’s researchers conducted lifetime history interviews with 
40 participants who reported a total of 291 violent situations 
(such as suicides, accidents, sexual abuse, domestic violence, 
murders, assaults, and fighting). Among these participants, 25 
percent had been shot or stabbed. 11 

People experience high rates of sexual and physical violence 
while they are incarcerated. As described in the previous section, 
people entering jails and prisons have experienced higher than 
average levels of trauma and violent victimization. Sadly, a lot of 
people experience high rates of sexual and physical assault during 
their incarceration; many are revictimized and re-traumatized. 
Much has been written about how conditions of confinement can 
cultivate hypervigilance, fear, and mistrust of others, all of which 
can lead to aggression and situations in which people resort to 
violence quickly.12 When people survive violence while they are 
incarcerated, they have little access to victim services. Most jails 
and prisons simply do not have infrastructures for healing. The 
DOJ National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison 
Rape require that correctional facilities provide incarcerated 
people with access to outside confidential support services 
and victim advocates before and after a sexual assault forensic 
medical exam,13 but compliance with these requirements varies 
dramatically in facilities across the country. 


More than half of men 
and women surveyed 
experienced childhood 
abuse. 

icons of people illustrating the statistic - half are one color and the other half are another to show who has experienced childhood abuse.

Research on victimization other than sexual abuse inside 
detention settings is sparse. The research we do have—findings 
that have been reinforced and upheld by formerly incarcerated 
people who have spoken about their experiences inside— 
indicates that many people are victimized by staff and other 
incarcerated people during their detention. Some localized 
nonfederal studies provide useful data points, such as the 
following: 

• Of the 122 participants in Western’s study, three-quarters 
reported witnessing assaults in prison.14 
• Wolff and her coauthors found that 38 percent of men 
surveyed in prison had been a victim of sexual or physical 
violence by another inmate or staff member in the previous 
six months, as had 37 percent of incarcerated women.15 


The passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003 
led to more robust data collection about the incidence and 
prevalence of sexual abuse and harassment in correctional 
facilities. In 2013, the last time BJS reported on the sexual 
victimization of incarcerated people, researchers found that 
about 4 percent of people incarcerated in state and federal 
prisons and 3 percent of those in jail said they had been 
sexually victimized by staff or another inmate or both within 
the previous year.16 Significantly, a year before that study was 
released, BJS published the results of a survey of people who 
had previously been incarcerated in state prisons, research 
that indicated higher rates of sexual violence behind bars than 
did the 2013 study, which relied on self-reports from currently 


incarcerated people. In the study of people formerly held in 
state prisons, nearly one out of 10 participants reported that 
they had been sexually victimized at least once during their last 
period of incarceration.17 These rates may be higher than in the 
aforementioned BJS study of current prisoners for two reasons. 
First, those who were surveyed while incarcerated may have felt 
less comfortable reporting victimization due to fears including 
not being believed, retaliation, and potentially being placed in 
isolating protective custody units. Second, researchers asked 
about the entire lengthof incarceration, not just the previous 12 
months, and thus a longer time frame was considered. 
People continue to experience violence after they return to the 
community from jail or prison. It is difficult to find information 
about the victimization people experience once they return 
home, but Bruce Western’s work is instructive. In his Boston 
Reentry Study, he reported that one-fourth of the study’s 
participants had been threatened or attacked since their release.18 
Anecdotally, in the course of the needs assessment this report 
is based on, NRC staff occasionally heard formerly incarcerated 
people describe becoming crime victims after they had come 
home. In those instances, they typically reported reluctance 
to report the crime to police or cooperate with investigations, 
citing their previous negative interactions with law enforcement 
and the criminal justice system. More research is needed to 
understand fully the experiences of people who are victimized 
after they return to the community after a period of incarceration. 






Young white woman sitting against a wall outside, serious.
Many people in 
the United States 
experience 
incarceration. 

he number of survivors 
who have previously been 
incarcerated is extremely high 
because incarceration touches so 
many lives in the U.S. This section 
offers a snapshot of the reach and 
impact of incarceration in the United 
States to drive home this reality. 


Spending time in jail or prison has become a common American 

experience. To understand how many crime victims with a history 
of incarceration live in our communities throughout the United 
States, it is important to recognize how common it is to be 
involved in the justice system is in this country. One quarter of 
the world’s prisoners are in U.S. correctional facilities, and on any 
given day more than 2 million people are living in the country’s 
jails and prisons.19 Every year, over 600,000 people return home 
prison.20 This breaks down to roughly 1,700 people leaving prison 
every day in the United States. By contrast, on any given day, 
approximately 731,000 people are detained nationwide in 3,000 
local jails, and many are released within a number of days.21 But 
this is just a one-day snapshot; more than 10 million people churn 
in and out of local jails year after year.22 

It is far more common for people of color, LGBTQ people, 

people with disabilities, and others with marginalized identities 
to be incarcerated in the United States. Unmistakably, people 
with these characteristics are among those who are most likely 
to spend time in jail or prison and are also among the crime 
victims least likely to access services. By and large, people 
who end up incarcerated tend to have characteristics that calendar
United states outline map
handcuffs


In a day 
This is just a one-
day snapshot;
One quarter of the more than 10 
world’s prisoners are 
in U.S. correctional million peoplefacilities churn in and out 
of local jails yearMore than 2 million after year people are living inthe country’s jailsand prisons 1,700 people leave prison 
in the United States 


constitute a minority in U.S. society; they also tend to be more 
socially and economically vulnerable.23 Perhaps most glaringly, 
people of color are widely overrepresented in the country’s 
jails and prisons.24 Using data from the U.S. Census and the U.S. 
Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) for 
2017, the Pew Research Center reported that African Americans 
represent 12 percent of the U.S. population but 33 percent of 
the country’s prison population. Latinos account for 16 percent 
of the population but are 23 percent of sentenced prisoners. By 
contrast, white people make up 64 percent of the U.S. population 
and only 30 percent of those in prisons nationwide.25 
Researchers have found other groups are also at a 
disproportionally high risk for incarceration. Strikingly, 
lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people in the United States 
are incarcerated at more than three times the rate of all adults 
nationwide.26 And a large study of more than 6,500 transgender 
people found that 16 percent of participants had been held in 
U.S. jails or prisons—an incarceration rate five times higher than 
the national average.27 Researchers have also found that people 
in prison have disabilities at rates four times higher than the 
national population.28 Significantly, these figures do not include 
psychiatric disabilities or mental health issues (such as anxiety 
disorders or schizophrenia), though it is well established that 
many incarcerated people have mental illness.29 Finally, adults 
age 55 and older are one of the fastest growing groups of people 
imprisoned in the United States. People serving long sentences 
are aging behind bars, but older people are also being sentenced 
to prison more frequently than in the past. From 1993 through 
2013, the number of people sent to prison in this age group 
increased 400 percent.30 








three men sitting and talking in a room to each other

west asian woman with make up and a blazer, serious
The stigma of 
being “formerly 
incarcerated” is 
a formidable 
barrier to healing. 

hrough the various activities 

of the needs assessment, we 

repeatedly heard that crime victims 

who were once incarcerated are 

not accessing victim services. 

Participants cited a number of 
reasons and explanations for why 
this population of survivors is often 
overlooked and underserved. These 
ranged from internalized stigma and 

shame that can prevent people from 

seeking help to external barriers 
and pressing material needs that 
put addressing trauma on the back 
burner. This section explores these 
factors in greater depth. 


Perceiving someone as either a “victim” or an “offender” often 
keeps service providers from seeing formerly incarcerated people 
as victims and keeps survivors from seeking help for trauma. 

Service providers may not perceive people who have a criminal 

history as “victims.” Throughout the assessment activities, we 
repeatedly heard service providers and formerly incarcerated 
victims of crime struggle to see beyond the firmly rooted 
societal categories of “victim” and “offender” to recognize how 
an individual can embody both of these identities. This struggle 
may be particularly acute when it comes to male victims who 
have been incarcerated. Many mainstream providers often 
have trouble viewing someone who has been incarcerated as a 
victim, and this can impact everything from how an organization 
does outreach and engagement to the partnerships it develops 
and the services it provides. Each of these decision points and 
activities can ultimately lead to excluding survivors who have 
previously been incarcerated from the organization’s services. 
The false binary of victim/offender and the stigma of having a 
criminal record can also manifest in other, less formal signaling 

About the Victims of Crime Act 

Congress passed the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) in 1984 and established a Crime Victims 
Fund, which is financed by fines and fees paid by those convicted of federal offenses. In 
1988, Congress established the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) to administer this fund and 
oversee programs nationwide that support victims in the immediate aftermath of a crime 
and over time as they rebuild their lives. OVC accomplishes its work through grants programs 
to the states and territories in two categories: victim assistance and victim compensation. 
State administering agencies receive this funding and make victim assistance subgrants to 
organizations that provide direct services to survivors. Although the same agencies usually 
administer victim compensation, these funds and victim assistance grants are dispersed for 
different purposes. Victim compensation grants support reimbursement for out-of-pocket 
expenses that survivors may have incurred as the result of a crime. 


that people involved in the justice system are not welcome, such 
as through body language and other nonverbal cues that indicate 
discomfort—or asking “What did you do to become incarcerated?” 
rather than “What trauma have you experienced?” 

We heard from many advocates and survivors that initial negative 
interactions with service providers can have a chilling effect on 
a person’s willingness to seek help at that site or elsewhere. One 
survivor of prison rape told us that it was extremely difficult 
to get help in the community once she returned home. She 
spoke about going to see counselors who would “tense right 
up” the moment she said she’d been in prison, and that made 
her think, “These services aren’t for me.” Several people spoke 
about how these interactions can trigger trauma survivors who 
have previously been incarcerated, by bringing to mind negative 
interactions they have had with other systems as well as internal 
beliefs of shame and unworthiness. 

Correctional agencies’ efforts to implement the requirements 
of the PREA standards have helped connect incarcerated sexual 
abuse victims with crisis services and victim advocates. In 2016, 
the lifting of the restriction on VOCA funding that prohibited 
those funds from being used to serve incarcerated victims helped 
pave the way for more community-based programs to use their 
funding to support these survivors. But during our assessment 
we learned that some advocates and crisis counselors still have 
reservations about working with incarcerated sexual abuse 
victims, making it clear that greater efforts are needed to direct 
VOCA dollars to programs that support healing behind bars. 
Beyond PREA implementation, a number of resources have been 
developed to help service providers support women who have 
survived domestic violence and are involved in the justice system.31 


Young Black man with a winter hat, standing on a train, serious.

The stigma of having been incarcerated can keep people from 
seeking help. Advocates who have relevant lived experience 
repeatedly told us that the terminology providers use—and the 
deep beliefs undergirding those words—creates a barrier to 
seeking help. Most people who have been incarcerated have 
experienced trauma, yet very few of them identify with the 
term “crime victim.” Many internalize the deep societal stigma 
of being a “perpetrator” or an “offender” and believe society 
cannot view them as victims because they have spent time in a 
correctional facility. Others view the term “victim” as a “weak” 
label that has negative connotations in neighborhoods and inside 
jails and prisons. Some may view themselves more as “survivors,” 
“veterans,” or “victors” as a way to combat that stigma and regain 
their power and self-image. In informational interviews, several 
service providers spoke about how people who have an extensive 
history of trauma and are involved in the justice system want 
to be seen as strong and autonomous when they return to the 
community. As one provider said, “In 20 years I have never met 
someone who wasn’t a crime victim, but [people] don’t identify 
that way. The words we use are not the words our clients use.” 
Someone else described people’s inability to recognize trauma 
and victimization in their own lives because those types of 
experiences have been so pervasive around them; 
a person may think, “This is just life.” 

What’s more, people with a history of incarceration often 
anticipate rejection, and this may keep them from even attempting 
to access services. As one reentry service provider explained, 
many of those who have been incarcerated see themselves— 
and perceive society’s judgment of them—as part of a “pool of 
undesirable people.” Another provider said, “These people are 
so used to losing, they don’t understand they can win.” Another 
described instances when clients of hers were rejected from 
domestic violence shelters because of previous convictions: “If 
you have a conviction, it’s like everyone is the judge or the jury 
throughout your life.” 


Side profile of a south asian man, serious

Society does not see men who have been incarcerated, 
especially those who have committed acts of violence, as 
trauma survivors, and men may not see themselves that way 

either. More than 90 percent of people who are incarcerated 
are men, so the vast majority of people who fall under the 
umbrella term “formerly incarcerated” are too. Given this reality, 
a significant portion of the people who have experienced both 
incarceration and victimization are men. However, as one 
male advocate with related lived experience told us, there is 
a perception that “men need jobs, not programming.” Several 
people said that it is more common for men to end up in anger 
management programs than trauma recovery programs, despite 
the fact that men—especially black men—often have a history 
of trauma that is broad and pervasive. Their trauma often stems 
from adverse childhood experiences such as parental neglect, 
sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abandonment, or exposure to 
community violence. As one service provider observed, “We— 
men of color—haven’t even had the space or opportunity to 
acknowledge victimization. We always have to be in survival 
mode, but we have no ongoing sense of safety as men of color.” 

“If you have a conviction, it’s like everyone is 
the judge or the jury throughout your life.” 


One interviewee described how formerly incarcerated men often 
have a deep need for mental health counseling, which can be 
viewed as stigmatizing in itself. He suggested that seeking out 
services related to victimization is often viewed as even more 
shameful. This person noted that pride and denial often get in 
the way of men getting the help they need to heal, including 
help with trauma and learning how to forgive themselves. He 
suggested that as more men admit that they need help and 
actually get it, the more they will find pathways to heal and 
move forward from the anger, shame, anxiety, and depression 
associated with their trauma and incarceration. 

holding hands on the table, arms have braclets

side profile of a young gender nonconforming person outside with trees in the background
Reentry poses 
challenges to 
healing from 
trauma. 

hen people leave jail or prison, 
they face many challenges 
to meeting their basic survival and 
material needs, and these challenges 
often overshadow their emotional 
and psychological needs and create 
barriers to healing from their trauma. 
People returning to the community 
face many pressing needs. 


After release from jail or prison, they face the immediate and 
pressing needs of securing food, housing, transportation, 
employment, and sometimes medical care. For people who were 
living in poverty before their incarceration, they are likely coming 
home poorer than when they left.32 A prevailing theme we heard 
throughout the assessment was that people typically cannot 
seek help for trauma if they are living in survival mode. As one 
interviewee put it, “If a person doesn’t know where he’s going 
to sleep tonight, he’s not going to be thinking about how to deal 
with his past trauma.” The experts we spoke to also pointed out 
that therapeutic services are not likely to have an impact if the 
client is struggling with other consuming issues such as hunger, 
mental illness, or homelessness. As someone else said, “A lot of 
things need to happen concurrently; you can’t do the trauma 
work without also doing the housing work.” 

“If a person doesn’t know where he’s going to 
sleep tonight, he’s not going to be thinking 
about how to deal with his past trauma.” 

Many advocates said that when people who have been 
incarcerated move through the world with unaddressed trauma 
and anxiety stemming from violence, they may experience a range 
of serious negative outcomes. If they are anxious or depressed 
and cannot get out of bed in time for an appointment with a 
parole officer, for example, or are self-medicating their symptoms 
with alcohol or other drugs, their actions may constitute a 
technical violation of their parole conditions that sends them 

The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


back to jail or prison.33 If they are sometimes triggered by 
large gatherings and their job requires them to be surrounded 
by people, they may quit or behave in ways that lead to their 
termination. This in turn could sabotage their reentry success and 
put them at greater risk for recidivism. Several advocates stressed 
the need for trauma-informed reentry services and post-release 
supervision that allow people to make mistakes and be imperfect. 
Throughout the assessment we heard that making room for 
people to fail, giving them opportunities to learn from peers and 
others, and providing support for healing could lead to better 
chances for positive outcomes (such as housing and employment 
stability, abstaining from substance use, and family reunification). 
Finally, most people returning home experience collateral 
consequences stemming from their criminal conviction, which 
make it harder for them to access healing services.34 Collateral 
consequences like public housing restrictions, temporary 
or permanent ineligibility for food stamps, and employment 
restrictions can make it extremely difficult to find housing and 
employment and can be psychologically and emotionally taxing 
reminders of one’s criminal conviction. Denial of basic services 
and public benefits can reinforce feelings of unworthiness and 
discourage help-seeking behavior, particularly if people are 
struggling to find stable housing or reliable transportation. 
Formerly incarcerated women face additional challenges. 
Women returning home are often more economically 
disadvantaged, are primarily responsible for the care of children, 
and typically have access to less consistent employment.35 Many 
need help with civil legal matters (such as child custody cases) and 
do not always have access to legal representation. Significantly, 
the interviewees who spoke about currently or formerly 
incarcerated women noted that almost every woman they had 








The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 

adult Black man with long natural hair and beard, smiling 

worked with had a history of sexual violence, domestic violence, 
or both.36 One service provider emphasized that our society 
needs to better understand that women who are incarcerated are 
usually mothers and victims—and in some cases were coerced 
to commit the crimes that landed them in jail or prison. This 
interviewee stressed the importance of providing services while 
women are still incarcerated—including opportunities for oneon-
one counseling—because they sometimes end up in coercive 
relationships with other incarcerated women that resemble 
the power and control dynamics of relationships they had with 
abusive partners on the outside. Programs serving women in jail 
or prison need mechanisms to spot those patterns and check in 
with each individual. 

“Programs serving women in jail or prison 
need mechanisms to spot patterns of 
abusive relationships and check in with 
each individual.” 

Another interviewee noted that if service providers want to reach 
more formerly incarcerated women, they need to think about 
their clients’ childcare needs. This person suggested that online 
support groups may be promising for women who have children 
at home. During one of the listening sessions, an advocate 
with relevant lived experience told us, “We are not recognizing 
or supporting women with children who are justice involved. 


They can’t move on with their lives because they don’t have 
the support [to access services] when they have children.” This 
woman noted that many young mothers are unable to attend 
classes or programs if they have childcare needs and no way to 
meet them. 

Reentry programs usually focus on helping people find jobs 
or housing, not healing from trauma. We heard from a number 
of people that reentry programs do not typically integrate 
trauma care into services. Some said that reentry programs do 
not routinely assess for a person’s history of victimization or 
experience with victim services. They may assess for behaviors 
or factors related to causing harm (if men have a history of 
committing domestic violence, for example, they may be 
referred to an intervention or anger management program), but 
assessing any type of trauma history or use of victim services is 
not universal among reentry programs. One person told us, “If 
you don’t assess for it, you can’t identify it.” Another said that 
integrating trauma services into reentry planning “is not a thing” 
at this point. She suggested that some kind of public awareness 
campaign or targeted assistance to help reentry service providers 
start these conversations with therapeutic partners would be a 
necessary first step to making trauma-informed care a standard 
feature of reentry programs. 

Others underscored the need for trauma-informed reentry 
programs by pointing out that gaining employment, finding 
stable housing, and healing from trauma ideally should happen 
concurrently. As one service provider put it, “You can’t do trauma 
work without housing—and you can’t put off trauma work until 
someone’s life is back together.” Some reentry service providers 
expressed a real interest in learning more about how to access 
victim services and victim compensation. They acknowledged 


that they and their colleagues “never even talk about victimization in this field.” 
Instead, people come out of jail or prison and, more often than not, are simply 
given a list of parole requirements and programs to complete. 
A lot of people are navigating the challenges of reentry on their own, so 
trauma takes a back seat to other, more immediate needs.37 Unfortunately, 
the resources and services available to people during reentry vary significantly 
across counties and states. Some rural communities, for example, may have 
no reentry services at all. Without any support during the transition from a 
correctional facility to the community, newly released people will likely be even 
more consumed by meeting their immediate material needs, and healing will 
take a back seat. In other places, reentry services may be available but depend 
on a highly motivated individual system actor or community volunteer to assist 
with navigation. Advocates with relevant lived experience have also expressed 
a desire to see more culturally specific reentry services that feel welcoming 
to people of different races and ethnicities, people with limited English 
proficiency, LGBTQ and nonbinary people, and people with disabilities and those 
who are Deaf. 
Even when reentry services and resources exist in a person’s community, 
meaningful reentry planning that considers housing, family reunification, and 
employment often does not start early enough. If it is available at all, planning 
usually starts at the end of a person’s jail or prison sentence (often during the 
last 30 to 180 days) and typically does not include victim services or emotional 
support for trauma and anxiety. For incarcerated survivors of domestic 
violence, this planning and support may be particularly crucial to ensure that 
they have safe, stable housing options. Otherwise, as noted earlier, they may 
end up returning to abusive partners to meet their housing needs. And people 
who briefly pass through a jail face particular challenges; even a few days in 
jail can bring a cascade of collateral consequences, push someone further into 
poverty, and retrigger trauma, yet these people are often an afterthought in the 
reentry sphere. 






white woman with short blond hair and tattoos with a cup of coffee, serious. 

close up of an older latino man with glasses and a baseball cap, serious. 
Services and 
compensation 
are lacking for 
crime victims 
with a history of 
incarceration. 

ictim services and compensation 
aid are sparse for crime victims 
who have a history of incarceration. 
Victim service agencies are rarely 
located or promoted in the communities 
where many people return from jail 
or prison. 


As discussed earlier, many victim service providers have trouble 
viewing people with a history of incarceration as “victims”, which 
affects how they conduct outreach and engagement and where 
they provide services. We heard from a number of formerly 
incarcerated people and several victim and legal advocates that 
many people return home to communities severely affected by 
violence and poverty. Many of them do not know what services 
are available or believe they will be rejected because of their 
criminal records or their probation or parole status. Through our 
assessment, we were not able to determine whether policies or 
regulations explicitly exclude people from services if they are 
involved with the justice system or if this is merely perception 
among staff and potential clients. We also heard about the 
general lack of services in many of these communities. One 
advocate with a history of incarceration told us, “We need to 
bring the services to the neighborhoods, but people [service 
providers] don’t want to go to these communities because they 
don’t feel safe in them.” Without options for support in their 
communities, many survivors lack real choice about where to get 
help. They may end up at victim service agencies that don’t feel 
comfortable or trustworthy to them. One legal advocate summed 
up that sense of mistrust in this way: 

The other issue is a lack of trust—and that lack of trust is 
completely rational because most of my clients have had 
lengthy interactions with systems that say they’re there to 
help, but they don’t—or in some cases they make their lives 
worse. [Obtaining] high-quality services is a barrier. Our clients 
encounter a revolving door of underpaid professionals and 
are very often being seen by students who are overseen by 
professionals. . . . Most of the people doing this work look 
nothing like our clients. Most of our [clients] are poor people 
who are black and most of our therapists are white. 


Mainstream victim service providers often don’t know enough 
about incarceration and reentry to understand how to reach 

and serve formerly incarcerated survivors. In conversations with 
advocates whose work is culturally specific and involves formerly 
incarcerated people who have experienced violent victimization, 
we heard that mainstream services often seem sterile and 
unwelcoming to formerly incarcerated people, particularly people 
of color, Native people, immigrants, people with disabilities and 
Deaf people, and LGBTQ people. Advocates said that people 
with these identities often feel that mainstream victim services 
were not designed for them and do not speak to the norms and 
values in their communities. And as one interviewee told us, 
service providers in mainstream agencies often look nothing 
like her clients and understand little of their lived experience. 
She suggested that too often mainstream service providers 
approach victims with a predetermined idea of what they need 
to heal rather than asking them what they need and responding 
accordingly. 

We also heard that providers may not “know what they don’t 
know” when it comes to survivors who belong to traditionally 
marginalized communities and have a history of incarceration. A 
few advocates said that it is fairly common to hear mainstream 
service providers say, “We serve all victims; identity doesn’t 
matter.” Although this sentiment may reflect good intentions, 
it fails to acknowledge how past—and sometimes current— 
marginalization requires active shifts in policy, language, and 
practices to make sure that providers can serve all victims in a 
welcoming and culturally competent way. 

Other advocates and service providers working directly with 
formerly incarcerated people noted that healing services for this 
population may encompass a range of nontraditional services 
or peer-based programs and may not fit neatly into defined 
categories that federal agencies and private foundations use. 


White woman with freckles, signing to another person

One survivor of prison rape who serves on Just Detention 
International’s Survivor Council told us that “healing is expensive” 
and described how kickboxing classes turned out to be among 
the most affordable and effective avenues for her healing. 
Others talked about the need for more “outside the box” 
services like trauma support groups run by formerly incarcerated 
people for those who are in jail or prison; trauma support groups 
in transitional housing, reentry programs, and public housing; 
and specific services to help LGBTQ survivors during their 
transition back to the community. 

Because they often lack knowledge of incarceration and reentry, 
most victim service providers have not designed services 

with formerly incarcerated survivors in mind. As noted earlier, 
providers often have a hard time viewing people with criminal 
convictions as victims. During the assessment, we spoke with one 
longtime victim advocate and service provider who described her 
own personal journey of “hating offenders and wanting to lock 
them up and throw away the key.” After she became involved in 
delivering victim impact programs in correctional facilities, she 
came to understand that many people in prison have experienced 
“layers upon layers of victimization.” She acknowledged that 
many people in the victim advocacy field and beyond still hold 
the views she had 20 years ago, perceptions likely driven by anger 
at and fear of people who commit violence. Although the anger 
and fear are understandable, these feelings may influence decisions 
about policies and practices including those related to eligibility for 
services, location of programs, and allocation of resources. 


“Too often mainstream service providers 
may approach victims with a predetermined 
idea of what they need to heal rather than 
asking them what they need and responding 
accordingly.” 

To the extent that victim service providers want to be involved in 
the reentry process, it is often to advocate for victim notification 
and other protective measures when someone who committed 
a crime is leaving jail or prison. They may also play a role in 
programming that promotes offender accountability.38 Although 
this advocacy is important, we heard very little about victim 
service providers developing and providing support services 
or outreach with trauma survivors who are leaving correctional 
facilities. During the assessment, we spoke with staff of a few 
culturally specific organizations that do trauma and healing 
work with people who have passed through the criminal justice 
system, but they do not identify as “victim service providers” in 
the traditional sense. They typically view themselves as grassroots 
advocates or community workers. 

Culturally specific victim service providers have the knowledge 
and expertise to help formerly incarcerated survivors heal from 
trauma, but often lack the resources and access to decision 
makers to reach and serve many survivors. To reach more 

people who have been harmed by violence, several interviewees 
discussed the need to have stronger connections among state 
and federal sources of funding, mainstream organizations, and the 
people on the ground doing the work. Some expressed a desire to 


see more people of color and directly impacted people driving the 
agenda for criminal justice reform and improved access to victim 
services. They stressed that people need the tools and training 
to be effective agents of change and also underscored that they 
need meaningful opportunities to be players in local and state 
efforts to address the issues people face when they are involved 
in the justice system. One person we interviewed described a 
need for coaching and mentoring on how white providers and 
advocates can be allies and support people of color who run 
smaller organizations. 
Crime victims with a history of incarceration are often ineligible 
for victim compensation funds. Victim compensation programs, 
which are funded under VOCA, exist in every state to reimburse 
victims for crime-related expenses like medical costs, mental 
health counseling, funeral and burial costs, and lost wages. 
We heard from a number of practitioners and advocates 
with relevant lived experience that many families and service 
providers are not aware of victim compensation programs. 
But people with a history of justice system involvement are 
often rejected when they apply or are restricted from applying 
in the first place because of their conviction. Seven states’ 
victim compensation programs currently have some type of 
restriction related to people with felony convictions; in Arkansas 
and Florida, people convicted of certain violent felonies are 
permanently banned from eligibility for these funds.39 We heard 
from several advocates that even for those who are eligible, the 
application process can be onerous and difficult. Other sources 
have described the process and requirements—such as having to 
report the crime to police—as “toilsome” and “daunting” for many 
survivors who live in neighborhoods where there is great distrust 
of the criminal justice system.40 






adult latino man and woman smiling in front of a house with their arms around each others shoulders

Gender nonconforming person of color facilitating a conversation, an older white man is also pictured. 
Victim services 

and reentry 
programs are not 
working together. 

ictim services and reentry 
programs are typically separate 
and almost never coordinated 
or offered at the same location. 
Reentry programs and victim services 
agencies are not working together to 
support people during their transition 
back to the community. 


“You can’t do trauma work without housing— 
and you can’t put off trauma work until 
someone’s life is back together. ” 

As the previous sections described, survivors often do not get 
adequate reentry or trauma support before their release from 
a correctional facility. Whatever services they receive prior 
to release are highly dependent on the resources available in 
the community where the facility is located, motivated staff or 
volunteers, and whether the agency prioritizes reentry planning, 
trauma support, or both. While doing the assessment, we 
occasionally heard about trauma support programs that serve 
incarcerated women or modest reentry planning efforts in state 
prisons, but we rarely heard about any effort to integrate reentry 
and victim services to support survivors of violent victimization 
before their release. The same was true about services offered 
to people during the transitional period back to the community. 
Several reentry service coordinators and providers acknowledged 
a need for reentry programs to be more trauma-informed, but 
some had never thought about the idea of working with victim 
service providers to support their clients. We spoke with a few 
victim service providers who work with incarcerated women, but 
the programs were small, did not work with men, and typically did 
not extend to the reentry process. 

The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


close up of older white man without a beard, serious.
How can crime 
victims with 
a history of 
incarceration 
start getting the 
services that help 
them heal? 

ur assessment brought to 
light a number of obstacles 
to healing faced by survivors 
who have been incarcerated. 
This section outlines the 
priority needs that emerged. If 
addressed, these priorities may 
lead to better, more meaningful 
services for formerly incarcerated 
survivors, increased willingness to 
seek those services, and greater 
healing overall for a population 
of victims that society has 
often overlooked or viewed as 
undeserving. Organizations doing 
and funding this work should 
prioritize the following needs and 
take these steps: 


 • Hire victim service providers 
who are professionally trained, 
trauma-informed, and comfortable 
working with people who have been 
incarcerated—and train current staff 
to develop related knowledge and 
skills. Storytelling (when a person with 
relevant lived experience shares stories 
of their personal history of trauma and 
healing), training, and more exposure to 
people who have been incarcerated may 
help dismantle some of those traditional 
beliefs about who victims are. 

• Hire reentry service providers who are 
trained and comfortable working with 
people who have a history of trauma— 
and train current staff to develop the 
knowledge and skills they need. Training 
and education about trauma, knowledge 
about the range of available victim 
services and local providers, and efforts 
to establish relationships with some of 
those providers may help reentry staff 
deepen their skills and serve their clients 
more effectively. 

• Develop and nurture partnerships 
between victim service providers and 
reentry programs. These providers and 
programs should come together to learn 
more about each other and find ways to 
work together to promote healing for 
people returning to the community from 
jail or prison. 

• Adopt broader definitions and terms for 
victimization. Discussing victimization 
in terms of “people harmed by violence,” 
“anyone affected by violence,” or 
“survivors of trauma or harm” may 
resonate more with people who have 
been incarcerated, especially with men. 
During our interviews and listening 
sessions, we heard and observed that 
trauma survivors with a history of 
incarceration can begin to recognize their 
own victimization when peers or other 
credible messengers describe common 
forms of harm such as witnessing 
domestic abuse or gun violence. 


Foster peer support from people with 
relevant lived experience who have 
been trained as advocates, counselors, 
or other service providers. Peer 

support from trained advocates (such 
as mentors or “reentry navigators”) who 
have related experience can give hope 
to those who are newly returning. As 
one such advocate told us, “They see 
people like them who’ve survived and 
found resilience and they can learn to tell 
their own stories.” Most of the formerly 
incarcerated survivors we spoke with— 
including those who suffered sexual 
abuse while incarcerated—spoke about 
the healing power of telling their story. 

Provide more funding to support and 
expand the capacity of grassroots 
healers and culturally specific programs 
to provide trauma-informed services. 

Funders should work closely with people 
who have relevant lived experience and 
with grassroots service providers, so 
that requests for proposals and grant 
programs use language that resonates 
with people who are working with 
trauma survivors who have spent time 
in jail or prison. 

Develop and provide programming 

inside jails and prisons to help people 

heal and learn skills while they have 
time—before they are overwhelmed by 

the reentry process. Programs should 
be developed in consultation with 
the people serving time, and, when 
appropriate, should integrate those who 
have relevant lived experience to provide 
peer support. 

Provide more help with family 
reunification and support during 

reentry. Family can be a great source 
of support and healing for people 
returning home from jail or prison, but 
only if those bonds and relationships 
are intact and strong. 

Provide training for probation and 
parole officers who provide community 
supervision. Officers may benefit from 
training on motivational interviewing or 
some other type of training that could 
help them provide their clients more 
supportive monitoring. 


man standing facing away from the camera with a backpack on his back

close up of a Black woman with her eyes closed, hugging anohter person who is facing away from the camera
Conclusion 

he vast majority of people in 
our nation’s jails and prisons 
were victims of violence before 
they were incarcerated. Many also 
suffer victimization behind bars 
and some are victimized—either 
for the first time or again—after 
their release. 


For the many reasons discussed in this report, most incarcerated 
and formerly incarcerated survivors of violence never get services 
to help them heal. Many internalize the label of “offender” and 
do not perceive themselves to be “victims,” nor do they think 
that service providers will view them that way, much less as 
“deserving victims.” As one formerly incarcerated survivor put it, 
“No one asks, ‘What happened to you?’ They only ask, ‘What did 
you do?’ ” 

OVC’s National Resource Center for Reaching Victims is working 
on an array of initiatives to remove barriers to services and to 
challenge the binary understanding of crime and victimization. 
We are committed to lifting up and supporting work at the 
intersection of incarceration, reentry, and healing; fostering 
connections and collaboration among reentry and victim 
service programs; and raising awareness among mainstream 
victim service providers and funders about the needs of these 
survivors. Our goal is to help create lasting change so that the 
overwhelming majority of victims—including those who have 
spent time in jail or prison—have access to culturally relevant, 
trauma-informed services that help them heal and thrive. 

“No one asks, ‘What 
happened to you?’ 

They only ask, ‘What 
did you do?’ ” 

The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


Endnotes 

1 See Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole 
Pie 2019,” www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html, (Northampton, MA: 
Prison Policy Initiative, March 19, 2019). 
2 Caroline Wolf Harlow, Prior Abuse Reported by Inmates and Probationers 
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999, NCJ 172879), 1, www.bjs.gov/content/ 
pub/pdf/parip.pdf. 
3 Rachel E. Morgan and Jennifer L. Truman, Criminal Victimization, 2017, 
Bulletin (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice 
Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2018, NCJ 252472), 8, www.bjs.gov/ 
content/pub/pdf/cv17.pdf. 
4 See the first ten individuals listed in the Acknowledgements section on 
page 58 for the experts Vera assembled. 
5 See the Acknowledgements section on pages 58-59 for a list of the groups 
Vera engaged for listening sessions and a list of individuals who contributed 
their expertise to this assessment. 
6 Among men in jail or prison or on probation, 6 to 14 percent reported 
being physically or sexually abused prior to age 18; among system-involved 
women, 23 to 37 percent reported the same. By contrast, citing a review of 
several studies, the authors estimate that approximately 5 to 8 percent of 
men and 12 to 17 percent of women nationwide had experienced childhood 
sexual or physical abuse. See Harlow, Prior Abuse, 1999, 1. Other studies 
have found higher rates of abuse among incarcerated people; a study 
supported by the National Institute of Justice and published in 1998 found 
that 68 percent of the men incarcerated at a prison in New York State had 
experienced some form of childhood victimization. For a summary of this 
research, see Jeremy Travis, Early Childhood Victimization Among Incarcerated 
Adult Male Felons: Summary of a Study by Robin Weeks and Cathy Spatz Widom, 
Research Preview (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of 
Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, 1998), 1, www.ncjrs.gov/ 
pdffiles/fs000204.pdf. 










7 Nancy Wolff, Jing Shi, and Jane A. Siegel, “Patterns of Victimization Among 
Male and Female Inmates: Evidence of an Enduring Legacy.” Violence and 
Victims 24, no. 4 (2009), 469-484, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ 
PMC3793850. 
8 Ibid. 
9 Shannon Lynch, Dana D. DeHart, Joanne Belknap, et al., Women’s Pathways 
to Jail: The Roles and Intersections of Serious Mental Illness and Trauma 
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 
2012), 32,www.bja.gov/Publications/Women_Pathways_to_Jail.pdf. 
10 Bruce Western. Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison. (New York: Russell 
Sage Foundation, 2018), 67. 
11 Western, Homeward, 68. 
12 Many researchers and scholars have sought to understand the impact 
of modern imprisonment on human psychology and behavior dating 
back to the 1950s, when the sociologist Gresham Sykes published the 
book The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (which 
Princeton University Press republished in 2007; see https://press.princeton. 
edu/titles/8390.html). For a discussion of the psychological effects of 
incarceration and how they can lead to increased aggression and violence, 
see Craig Haney, The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications 
for Post-Prison Adjustment (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health 
and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and 
Evaluation, 2001), https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-
incarceration-implications-post-prison-adjustment#II. 
13 U.S. Department of Justice, National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and 
Respond to Prison Rape (Washington, DC: 2012), https://ojp.gov/programs/ 
pdfs/prea_final_rule.pdf. 
14 Western, Homeward, 67. 
15 Wolff, Shi, and Siegel, “Patterns of Victimization,” 14, 2009. Note that the 
word “inmate” is used here to reflect the language in the 2009 study. 
16 Allen J. Beck, Marcus Berzofsky, Rachel Caspar, et al., Sexual Victimization 
in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2011-2012: National Inmate Survey, 
2011-2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice 
Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013, NCJ 241399), 8, www.bjs.gov/ 
content/pub/pdf/svpjri1112.pdf. Note that the word “inmate” is used here 
to reflect the language in the BJS report. 











The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


17 Allen J. Beck and Candace Johnson. Sexual Victimization Reported by Former 
State Prisoners, 2008 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of 
Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2012, NCJ 237363), 8. www. 
bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svrfsp08.pdf. 
18 Western, Homeward, 67. 
19 Sawyer and Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019,” 
www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html, (Northampton, MA: Prison 
Policy Initiative, March 19, 2019). Also note that the majority of people 
sentenced to prison (93 percent) are men. See Jennifer Bronson and E. Ann 
Carson, Prisoners in 2017, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 
Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2019, NCJ 252156), 
3, www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p17.pdf. 
20 Bronson and Carson, Prisoners in 2017, 2019, 12. 
21 Ram Subramanian, Ruth Delaney, Stephen Roberts, et al., Incarceration’s 
Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 
2015), 4-5, https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/ 
Publications/incarcerations-front-door-the-misuse-of-jails-in-america/ 
legacy_downloads/incarcerations-front-door-report_02.pdf. 
22 See Zhen Zeng, Jail Inmates in 2016, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of 
Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2018, NCJ 
251210), 1, www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji16.pdf. 
23 Ruth Delaney, Ram Subramanian, Alison Shames, et al., Reimagining Prison 
(New York: Vera Institute of Justice, October 2018), 16-18, https://storage. 
googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/reimagining-prison-
print-report/legacy_downloads/Reimagining-Prison_FINAL3_digital.pdf. 
24 The information presented focuses on disparities among African American 
and Latino people in the United States. Less is known about the numbers 
of Native Americans involved in the criminal justice system nationwide. 
For example, the Bureau of Justice Statistics does not regularly report 
information regarding the number of Alaska Natives or American Indians in 
state and federal prisons. 












25 John Gramlich, “The Gap Between the Number of Blacks and Whites in 
Prison Is Shrinking,” Fact Tank (blog), Pew Research Center, April 30, 2019, 
www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/12/shrinking-gap-between-
number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison. (Note that the author uses data 
from Bronson and Carson, Prisoners in 2017, and 2017 information available 
from the U.S. Census. See https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/ 
jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk.) 
26 Ilan H. Meyer, Andrew R. Flores, Lara Stemple, et al., “Incarceration Rates 
and Traits of Sexual Minorities in the United States: National Inmate Survey, 
2011–2012,” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 2, (2017), 234-
240, https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Meyer_ 
Final_Proofs.LGB_.In_.pdf. Note that this study uses categories of “men” and 
“women” and does not discuss transgender or gender-nonconforming people. 
27 Jaime M. Grant, Lisa A. Mottet, Justin Tanis, et al., Injustice at Every Turn: 
A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (Washington, 
DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and 
Lesbian Task Force, 2011), 163, https://static1.squarespace.com/ 
static/566c7f0c2399a3bdabb57553/t/566cbf2c57eb8de92a539 
2e6/1449967404768/ntds_full.pdf. 
28 Jennifer Bronson, Laura M. Maruschak, and Marcus Berzofsky, Disabilities 
Among Prison and Jail Inmates, 2011–12, Special Report (Washington, DC: 
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice 
Statistics, December 2015, NCJ 249151), 1-3, www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ 
pdf/dpji1112.pdf. 
29 Jennifer Bronson and Marcus Berzofsky, Indicators of Mental Health 
Problems Reported by Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011–12, Special Report 
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2017, NCJ 250612), 1-4, www.bjs.gov/content/ 
pub/pdf/imhprpji1112.pdf. 
30 E. Ann Caron and William J. Sabol, Aging of the State Prison Population, 
1993–2013 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice 
Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016, NCJ 248766), 1-3, www.bjs. 
gov/content/pub/pdf/aspp9313.pdf. 











The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


31 See The National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, 
Working with Battered Women in Jail: A Manual for Community-Based Battered 
Women’s Advocates (Philadelphia: National Clearinghouse for the Defense 
of Battered Women, 2009), https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XkCVNW 
2jPmjdVAXtkwhc5Te2ojM8aNJk/view; Erika Sussman, Criminal Records 
and Employment Rights: A Tool for Advocates Working with Survivors of 
Domestic Violence (Washington, DC: Center for Survivor Agency and Justice, 
2013), https://csaj.org/document-library/EmptRights_CriminalRecords_ 
AdvocateTool.pdf; and Andrea Bible, Issues to Consider When Facilitating 
Groups with Battered Women in Jail and Prison (Philadelphia: National 
Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, 2011), https://drive. 
google.com/file/d/13WlOnEROfErFWe2VahmNitUk9YX7gnqa/view. 
32 A number of studies have documented that fines, fees, and costs 
associated with the criminal legal system saddle people with crushing debt. 
Other research has examined how incarceration has a negative impact on 
employment opportunities and lowers people’s earning potential. For a good 
summary of these issues, see Douglas N. Evans, The Debt Penalty: Exposing 
the Financial Barriers to Offender Reintegration (New York: City University 
of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Research & Evaluation 
Center, 2014), https://jjrec.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/debtpenalty.pdf. 
33 A “technical violation” occurs when people under community supervision 
do not comply with their supervision conditions—such as violating a curfew 
or missing supervision appointments—as opposed to committing a new 
criminal offense. Depending on the jurisdiction’s policies, sanctions for 
technical violations can range from a lighter punishment, such as being 
placed on a higher level of supervision, to very serious sanctions, such as 
being sent to jail or prison. See Public Safety Performance Project, When 
Offenders Break the Rules: Smart Responses to Parole and Probation Violations 
(Washington, DC: Pew Center on the States, November 2007, Public 
Policy Brief 3) 4, www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_ 
assets/2007/%20when20offenders20break20the20rulespdf.pdf. 
34 See Ram Subramanian, Rebecka Moreno, and Sophia Gebreselassie, 
Relief in Sight? States Rethink the Collateral Consequences of Criminal 
Conviction, 2009-2014 (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2014), 
https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/ 
relief-in-sight-states-rethink-the-collateral-consequences-of-criminal-
conviction-2009-2014/legacy_downloads/states-rethink-collateral-
consequences-report-v4.pdf. 












35 For a fuller examination of these issues, see Elizabeth Swavola, Kristine 
Riley, and Ram Subramanian, Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform 
(New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016), https://storage.googleapis.com/ 
vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/overlooked-women-and-jails-
report/legacy_downloads/overlooked-women-and-jails-report-updated.pdf. 
36 Every person we spoke with about incarcerated men also told us that men 
have extensive trauma histories. But this section highlights some unique 
challenges faced by women who are returning home. 
37 “Reentry services” refers to any program or activities that help someone 
returning to the community from jail or prison in one or more of the 
following areas: employment assistance, substance use treatment, housing, 
family programming, mentoring, victim support, and other social services. 
Community-based nonprofit organizations, other local groups, and 
government agencies may provide such services. Post-release community 
supervision is part of someone’s criminal sentence and is not considered 
a reentry service, although probation and parole officers often refer or 
mandate that the people they supervise participate in certain reentry services. 
For more on reentry, see the Council of State Governments Justice Center’s 
National Reentry Resource Center at https://csgjusticecenter.org/nrrc. 
38 See, for example, Anne K. Seymour, A Community Response Manual: The 
Victim’s Role in Offender Reentry (Lexington, KY: American Probation and 
Parole Association, 2001), www.appa-net.org/eweb/docs/appa/pubs/ 
VROR.pdf; the National Center for Victims of Crime, Bringing Victims and 
Victim Service Providers into Reentry Planning in New Jersey (Washington, DC: 
The National Center for Victims of Crime, 2005), https://victimsofcrime. 
org/docs/Reports%20and%20Studies/NJ%20Victims%20Report%20 
Final.pdf?sfvrsn=0; and the National Reentry Resource Center, “How 
Victim Advocacy Improves the Work of Reentry Staff,” webinar (New York: 
Council of State Governments Justice Center, February 8, 2017), https:// 
csgjusticecenter.org/nrrc/webinars/how-victim-advocacy-improves-the-
work-of-reentry-staff. 
39 Alysia Santo, “The Victims Who Don’t Count,” The Marshall Project, 
September 13, 2018, www.themarshallproject.org/2018/09/13/the-
victims-who-don-t-count. 
40 See Elizabeth Van Brocklin, “States Set Aside Millions of Dollars for 
Crime Victims. But Some Gun Violence Survivors Don’t Get the Funds 
They Desperately Need,” The Trace, February 12, 2018, www.thetrace. 
org/2018/02/gun-violence-victims-of-crime-compensation. 











The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


Acknowledgments 

The authors wish to extend their gratitude to the many people who 
contributed to the needs assessment and made this report possible. We 
extend our thanks to Just Detention International’s Survivor Council, the 
Fortune Society in New York City, and the JustLeadershipUSA alumni 
network for engaging in listening sessions with us. We would also like to 
thank each of the following individuals, who provided expert guidance, 

information, and insights: 

Quetita Cavero, National 
Clearinghouse for the Defense 
of Battered Women 

James Logan, Converge 
Alison Lass, Homeboy Industries 
Ronald Simpson-Bey, 

JustLeadershipUSA 

Lashonia Thompson-El, Women 
Involved in Reentry Efforts 
Kenton Kirby, Center for Court 

Innovation 

Cynthia Totten, Just Detention 
International 
Linda McFarlane, Just Detention 

International 
Heather Warnken, OVC Fellow 
Peter Pollard, OVC Fellow 
Melanie Conner, Department 

of Community Supervision 
Patricia Jordan, Red Lodge 
Transition Services 
Jen LaChance, Through These Doors 
Afua Addo, Center for Court 
Innovation 
Sandra Barnhill, Foreverfamily 
Janelle Melohn, Iowa Attorney 
General’s Office, Crime Victim 
Assistance Division 
Verna Wyatt, Tennessee Voices 
for Victims 
Kathleen Creamer, Community Legal 
Services of Philadelphia 
Eddie Ellis, One by 1 
Georgia Lerner, Women’s 
Prison Association 
Carmen Pitre, Sojourner Family 
Peace Center 




Jaclyn Kolnik, Illinois Criminal 
Justice Information Authority, 
Center for Victim Studies Research 
& Analysis Unit 

Michelle Garcia, District of 
Columbia Office of Victim 
Service and Justice Grants 

Kathleen Culhane (formerly 
of the Vera Institute of Justice) 

Anne Patterson, STEPS to End 
Family Violence 

Aswad Thomas, Alliance for Safety 
and Justice 

Anna Cho Fenley, Californians for 
Safety and Justice 

Reuben Miller, University of Chicago, 
School of Social Service 
Administration 

Mary Weaver, Friends Outside 
in Los Angeles County 

Kelly Quintana, Friends Outside in 
Los Angeles County, Incarcerated 
Parents Program 
Cheryl Bonacci (formerly of the 
Anti-Recidivism Coalition) 
Juan Gomez, MILPA Collective 
John Pineda, MILPA Collective 
Cristian Franco, Jr., MILPA Collective 
Dolfinette Martin, (formerly of Voice 
of the Experienced) 
Ariel Jeanjacques, Voice of the 
Experienced (VOTE) 
Felice Davis (formerly of the 
Washington State Department of 
Corrections, Washington Corrections 
Center for Women) 
Kristina Ray, Spokane County 
Detention Services, Medical and 
Mental Health Unit 
DeAnna Hoskins, JustLeadershipUSA 
(formerly U.S. Department of Justice, 
Bureau of Justice Assistance) 



The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


About Citations 

As researchers and readers alike rely more and more on public knowledge 
made available through the Internet, “link rot” has become a widely 
acknowledged problem with creating useful and sustainable citations. To 
address this issue, the Vera Institute of Justice is experimenting with the use 
of Perma.cc (https://perma.cc/), a service that helps scholars, journals, and 
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Credits 

© Vera Institute of Justice, National Resource Center 
for Reaching Victims 2020. All rights reserved 

An electronic version of this report is posted on Vera’s website at 
www.vera.org/TK-tkTK-tk. 

The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims is a clearinghouse for 
victim service providers, culturally specific organizations, criminal justice 
professionals, and policymakers to get information and expert guidance to 
enhance their capacity to identify, reach, and serve all victims, especially 
those from communities that are underrepresented in healing services and 
avenues to justice. For more information about the NRC, visit the NRC’s 
website at http://reachingvictims.org. For questions about this report, 
please contact reachingvictims@vera.org. 

The Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Victimization and Safety 
convenes the National Resource Center for Reaching Victims. The Center 
on Victimization and Safety works with communities around the country 
to create healing services and justice options that reach, appeal to, and 
benefit all survivors. Our work focuses on communities of people who are 
at elevated risk of harm but often marginalized from the organizations and 
systems designed to support victims. 

For more information on the Center on Victimization and Safety, please 
contact cvs@vera.org. 

The National Resource Center for Reaching Victims 


The NRC’s vision is that victim services are 
accessible, culturally appropriate and 
relevant, and trauma-informed—and that the 
overwhelming majority of victims access and 

benefit from these services. 

reachingvictims.org