Calendar

Legislation Provides Addiction and Mental Health Services Training, Including Crisis Intervention Team Training, Mental Health First Aid, Implicit Bias Training and Naloxone Training READ MORE >

The Treatment Not Jail Act, proposed in Albany, can start to change how individuals are cycled through our criminal courts, never getting the help they needed, only a short-term jail sentence and a criminal conviction that would make it harder for them to get a job, housing, or any kind of meaningful stability. READ MORE >

Leaving incarceration doesn’t necessarily mean a return to normal life, with barriers, both officially sanctioned and systemic, preventing access to basic needs like housing or restricting job opportunities, even if it has been years since the formerly incarcerated have been released. READ MORE >

Community Resources for Justice will open a 42-bed community-based residential reentry program in Buffalo early next year, expanding its services for individuals transitioning from incarceration to the community into Western New York. READ MORE >

Advisory coordinating committee calls for hub on W. Eagle Street in Buffalo to improve coordination of services, decrease further involvement in criminal justice system. READ MORE >

A new reentry program called Project Blue is a first-of-its-kind partnership to help formerly incarcerated individuals in Erie County transition back into society. READ MORE >

Staff from the Erie County (NY) Jails Co-occurring Enhancement Reentry Initiative—a partnership between the Erie County Sheriff’s Office and BestSelf Behavioral Health that is supported by Second Chance Act funding—discuss the unique ways that peer recovery support specialists can enhance reentry programs. READ MORE >

Erie County plans to create a new jail that brings the holding center and correctional facility under one roof in the City of Buffalo. READ MORE >

Thousands of people released from prison in New York go directly to homeless shelters. Among all releases to community supervision in New York state during 2021, about 23 percent went directly to shelters, according to the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision; another 8 percent were “undomiciled,” or went to places like halfway houses. READ MORE >

A group of House members introduced? a bill? to provide Medicaid coverage to people in the last 30 days of their sentence in prison or jail. The Medicaid Reentry Act would give states a powerful tool to reduce the drug overdose deaths ravaging the country.? READ MORE >

The Clean Slate Act would automatically seal convictions for crimes other than sexual offenses if the person has no subsequent arrests. For felonies, that step would be taken seven years after sentencing or release from incarceration if it lasted longer than a year. READ MORE >