Second Chances, Public Safety & Idaho’s Prison Crisis with Dr. Bree Derrick | Ever Onward - Ep. 126

In this episode of Ever Onward, Dr. Bree Derrick, Director of the Idaho Department of Correction, joins the conversation for an important discussion on public safety, incarceration, rehabilitation, and second chances in Idaho.

Idaho’s correctional system is facing significant pressure, with a growing prison population, capacity challenges, and more individuals preparing to transition back into communities across the state. But this conversation is about more than numbers. It is about what happens when people leave incarceration and begin the difficult process of rebuilding their lives.

Dr. Derrick shares insight into the realities of Idaho’s correctional system, including prison capacity, reentry, rehabilitation programs, mentoring, education, staffing, community reentry centers, and the role of probation and parole. She also explains why most people who enter prison will eventually return to the community—and why helping them succeed is directly connected to public safety.

The episode also explores how businesses, churches, nonprofits, and individuals can play a meaningful role through employment, mentoring, housing support, and community connection.

A thoughtful and human conversation about accountability, opportunity, and what it means to give people a real chance to move forward.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Second Chance Goal

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Ever Onward Podcast. Really excited for a topic that we're going to get to today. We will be having several of these topics related to kind of second chance and those those folks that are transitioning from incarceration back into our community. I've been involved with Molly Lenty and a group that we're putting together of trying to get businesses more aware to help with that transition when folks come out of the system and get integrated back into this uh the community. As part of that, um meeting uh these meetings that we're having monthly, uh trying to bring business together to help in this effort, uh been able to meet some really incredible people. And so over the next um few weeks and months, we'll we'll have some of them come in to talk about this topic of of um re or really of having the business community and the community at large trying to help a problem that is that is pretty hard. Um So Bree Derrick um is our guest today, and she is the director of the Idaho Department of Corrections. Um she is a wonderful, wonderful director, and it's been fun to get to know her recently. Um I'll tell you a little bit about her bio and then we'll give some facts uh associated with the Department of Corrections and just what we're up against as a state. Uh Dr. Bree Derrick was appointed the director of Idaho Department of Corrections in April of 25. Um she's dedicated to improving public safety through purpose-driven operational improvements. She served as the IDOC direct deputy director since 2019, uh, overseeing all the prisons, probation, and parole, and management uh services. She is a nationally recognized expert in evidence-based practices, and you will see today, she is just wicked smart and understands these uh issues and what we are facing. Uh really excited to have her on today, uh, Dr. Bree Barrick.

Idaho Corrections By The Numbers

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Uh before we get there, though, I wanted to talk a little bit about um the Department of Corrections and some of the data surrounding our state. One of the things I wanted to do today before um our guest comes on is go through some of the statistics. So the the budget for the Department of uh Corrections 387 million. One of the things that I thought was interesting in two thousand, so in 2000, we had 3,555 um was the total prison population. It's now at 10,101. And the capacity is 8,232. So we are 1,800 people above capacity, 1,900. There's been a 4.5% increase since January 2025. Um so the population is soaring um since 2024. I DOC's population has surged by 458 people. Um that is uh another 14.2 million in additional costs. It costs eighty-five dollars per person per day uh to incarcerate someone in Idaho. And I thought this was crazy too. The average length of stay, here it is, average people stay incarcerated for seven years. So in in 2025, the median fixed term of incarceration is seven years. Uh here's another crazy statistic. 72% of people come in or returned to the Idaho Department of Corrections on new charges. 72%. So our recidivism rate is 72%. That's crazy. Um 28% of people enter IDOC with only a technical violation of supervision. Um, so this is a this is a big deal. I wanted to mention this too. Drug crimes account for 24% of statewide crimes, about 50% of the people in the Department of Corrections custody. Again, I already said this, but prison population is at all-time high. That means that 1800 of our our our folks go out of state because we don't have any more room. Uh so I again, um just getting the awareness out there of how big of an issue this is for the state right now. There's a lot of things going on, but understanding what this means as citizens and taxpayers, and then again, my real passion and what we'll talk about here is how do we help. Um, I had a personal experience where I was able to help someone uh getting out and and and a first hand view of just how hard it is and what people are are up against. I that's why I'm not really surprised by that 72% number because I think um, you know, when you talk about getting out, you know, financial things are more expensive than they've ever been. You look like what it costs to come out, a job, a place to live, transportation. Um, it it's no wonder that um recidivism is so high. And so, how can the community be helpful in that? And there's some really great efforts going on that we'll talk about in uh future podcasts. Um, with all that said, uh very excited for our guest today, um, director of the Idaho Department of Corrections, um, Dr. Uh Bree Berrick.

Meet Director Dr Bree Derrick

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Director, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

This will be fun. Um, have you done any podcasts?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

I've only done a couple of podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

They're more popular now than ever. I've been doing them for like six years, but I've I've been on a like a lot of them lately, and a lot of people are doing them. They're really a great way to get information.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

So thank you. I I love them myself. I love listening to them, so happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Well, it's great. It's great to have you. Um, I was able to meet you and uh we're have our meetings we're doing right now with the second chance efforts that we're uh involved with with Molly Lenty. We're gonna have her on here in a few months, but trying to figure out ways to help people that are getting out.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Um, kind of find jobs and get into a lot of the challenges that they have getting getting back into the the normal swing of things. It's not easy.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

No. There are all sorts of challenges for people who are coming out of our incarceration.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah. I mean, I I had a very personal story with someone that I knew well and and have been able to help him, and he's done great. Um, but boy, it was an eye-opener for me, just like how hard it is to housing, transportation. I didn't realize they they they have to pay for so many of the services that they continually need. I think uh the testing and the parole and the counseling, and so there's those bills, and then you gotta find a job.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yes. And you gotta be able to afford housing because even if you get some sort of transitional assistance, it's short term. And then pretty quickly you've got to turn around and figure out how you pay for a down payment on an apartment or whatever. So, yeah, all sorts of financial challenges for sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Anyway, I was able to meet you and it with with you and be part of that deal. And it's been, I think that group's really excited. I get more people excited about that than almost any other effort I'm into. So I think people are very willing to like be helpful. So it's amazing. It's been great to get to know you. Can you start by telling us just a little bit about you and your background?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Sure. Um, so I've been the director here for only a year, I think just coming up on my anniversary, actually. Um before that I served for six years as the deputy director. And so as the deputy director, you sort of oversee prisons, probation and parole. And then later in in my term, I started overseeing management services, which is all our back of the house, budget, fiscal IT, that sort of stuff. So a lot of the agency I was kind of overseeing as a deputy, but certainly this has been a big transition and it's much more external facing, as you can imagine.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Um, but before that, I mean I've been in corrections for a total of probably almost 25 years now. And so I started in a system on the East Coast, actually in Rhode Island. Work there for about a decade. I've done it.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

In Rhode Island, actually.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

And and and it's an interesting career path, isn't it? So tell us how you tell us what you studied and how you how you started.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Yeah, it's it's interesting because I meet with new employees all the time and I ask how many people thought they'd be a correctional officer or work in corrections and no hands go up. Never. So um It's not like the career day, like probably You want to be an astronaut, or yeah, nobody wants nobody picks I want to be a CO. Um, but we're glad people do when they're older.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Um for me personally, I it's really it is a very personal story. So have um uh sexual abuse in my family, um, not personal, but in my family, and really saw the impacts of that and and so questioned why why does some people harm other people in that way? And then what happens to those people who survive that? You know, you see people who turn internal and have mental health problems and substance use problems, and just left sort of thinking, how do we prevent that and how do we help people who have experienced that turn their lives around so that they're not stuck in that that trauma? So I studied psychology, I studied criminology, I got a degree in counseling, and I worked first as a researcher and then um as a really as a counselor in prison since I worked with men and women, incarcerated and worked on sort of their stuff, if you will, whatever's going on for them mental health-wise. And I really just realized that the system, you know, there first of all, there's a lot of overlap. The people who I I went into the work thinking there's good guys and there's bad guys. And what I came to realize is the lines aren't always so clear that a lot of the people who we would call bad guys, and yes, they've done bad things, also had their own story, their own difficulties. And so I saw a lot of people that I was working with who were like really trying to change their lives, and yet they were stuck in a system that felt really pretty broken. So when I left that work uh in the Rhode Island system, I went to do more national work, um, consulting, spent about seven, eight years and worked all around the country, which just really helpful in terms of getting perspective, yeah, seeing really different things. Um, yeah, and then I found myself here in Idaho about seven years ago. Seven years ago. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Wow. And the and the and moving to the directory you said is very much more public-facing. I know you're interacting with the legislature and budgets and kind of big stuff now that probably is the what a year to what a year to be your first year with the with the big beautiful bill and conformity and the mandatory budget cuts. Did you guys get hit with that?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Um so it was like I'll say jumping in the deep end of the pool. Yes. Um so we ended up not having to, we were exempted from a lot of the cuts. So early on in the year, we were subjected to them, we were planning for them, we were making those cuts, we reverted funding, and then um later on there was some support, great support from the governor's office, and then later the legislature to actually actually exempt us because our population's growing out of control. And as that's growing, it just costs us much more to do business. So trying to make cuts in that time just not possible.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, in preparation, I was looking at some of your literature and like you're at you're over 10,000 now inmates, and um the capacity is eight thousand. It's about eighty, two hundred. And so your overcapacity, um, and the that just has its has its uh uh costs, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Yeah. I mean, and you know, we all know what inflation feels like personally, you know, how much things cost at the market, and then you multiply that by all those people. Um and you know, we're mostly not operating in beautiful brand new buildings, we're operating in infrastructure that's got a lot of we'll say liabilities. Um there's a there's a lot of work to do just to keep it up and operational. And when the population grows, it's more mouths to feed, more people to clothe, more more beds you need to have. Um so yeah, it just exacerbates the challenge.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

I read through the statistics um and the you know, the population, the amount of inmates you have, just what's going on right now.

Why The Prison Population Is Rising

SPEAKER_01 11:58

What's the thing you wish everyone knew about that part of it? Like the just why why so like I was I was actually a little surprised.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Just the number?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

The number.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Um well, you know, what's tricky is we don't have a good answer to the why. Like what's happened? Um we keep looking at that, and there are a lot of factors that that are contributing, but there's no one thing that we can say, oh, this is this is why. Um so it's it's a complicated picture to start. But when we've reached out to our county partners, you know, our sheriffs and folks at the front lines, they're telling us, you know, more people moving in, they're getting more calls for service, more arrests. We're hearing from prosecutors and defenders, more cases. So everything about the the front end of the system is widening.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

And then, you know, we're not seeing yet really dramatic changes in the people who come into prison in terms of we haven't seen specific crimes, specific sentences. We're seeing the you know, length of stay just kind of an even distribution, just more of it. Yeah, just more. And then we're seeing on the back end that you know, parole is one way that a lot of people get out. And the parole commission, who is a separate agency, but they they can only process so many cases, right? They're a volunteer board. Um, and and so those folks work themselves as to the max capacity, but you've got more inflow and then the same on the back end. So all that's just causing us to stack up.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

I was surprised when I looked at the statistics. One of the things that surprised me was that the in 2025, the median fixed term of incarceration is seven years. I don't know why I thought that was long, but I thought that that's a long time for the median, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yeah. I mean, and so we you've got in there, you know, the median is yeah, it it is what it is. Um it hasn't changed that dramatically in time. I think the average, if you just look at the mean, is a little bit lower than that. Um, and so that might be what you're thinking about. But yeah, it's been pretty still.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

I see this is median. And so the mean might be a little bit lower. Well, that it's it's it's it's interesting. What are about what are the some other statistics that people would be just surprised with with our correction system in Idaho?

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Well, I think people are always focused on outcomes and they hear they hear wild statistics. And the I guess good news here is about two-thirds of people who get out are successful. They never come back. So um our recidivism rate's 38%. The opposite of that, 62% of our people are out and don't come back to us. Um that's pretty great news, but we think that number could be better. Um, I think other things that are interesting, you know, we like last year alone, we graduated some 200 people with GEDs. I don't think most people know that. Oh wow. So we have a a school that runs inside of our prison facilities. And last time I had checked, it's been a couple years, so you know, take this with a grain of salt, but we had had the most GED graduates of any school in the in the state of Idaho.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Wow, I didn't know that.

unknown 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Um what what uh what what are some other surprising things for like I mean, I'm just curious because this is like until I went through my experience where I actually came out and visited someone for years, and so I experienced going there and going through it and I mean different facilities because they get moved around a lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

I mean, I've been here a long time and I just was kind of oblivious to the whole thing. Like I just knew it happened, I knew where it was, I knew kind of in general terms kind of the budget and what it costs, and I knew it was kind of constrained, but I didn't know a whole lot else about the system until I was there. Um, there's a lot of work that goes on on the inside that you guys are responsible for for lots in lots of different areas, right? Education, you already mentioned, but there's counseling, there's there's the substance abuse side of things, there's social work side of it, and then there's the planning to leave and the courses and everything. I mean, there's just a lot of there's a lot to the, there's a lot of moving parts here.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Tons, tons. And I think you're spot on when you say like it was just sort of over there, it happened, and you and and frankly, a lot of people are glad that it happens kind of behind the scenes. But I think it's a real risk in that people don't understand what's going on, and everybody's got an opinion about criminal justice, right? Everyone, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

I mean, that that's your point is like I had lots of really strong opinions, yeah, but they were probably based on almost no facts. I didn't hadn't seen it, didn't know the program, didn't know what was going on, didn't know a lot of stuff. Um, I'm just kind of happy that it happened, right? I think that's a nice summary of how it was, but very opinionated still. Yes, people are still very opinionated about criminal justice in a lot of ways. Like, um, you know, and and I know there's a lot of these things like mandatory minimums, very, very opinion opinions all over the place. I think we want safe places. So, you know, it's easy to rally people around, hey, we need safety, so we need but but but sometimes there has to be policy around that and results and data, and I don't know any of that data. It's all new to me. That's why I'm really glad you're here today to help educate us. But but it's all new. Everything's been new for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

It's it's fascinating because I have this conversation all the time. Yes, I was saying it before we started. Um, you know, I feel like in a in my role, like a lot of it is education, just trying to demystify what is going on. But even with that, you feel like you you really can't make everybody happy because there are always gonna be people who say the punishment isn't hard enough and you've, you know, got to make it worse. And then there are people saying, you know, this is my loved one, you're being way too harsh, and you've got to give them more

Rehabilitation And Public Safety Mindset

SPEAKER_00 17:27

opportunity. And so I think our work, first of all, we don't view our work as the punishment. The punishment is the deprivation of liberty, the punishment is the sentence, the court does the punishment. Our job, we see, and is legislatively coded this way, you know, is the safe care and custody and rehabilitation of those people. And so all of our thinking is about we know about 97% of everybody who comes through one of our prisons is going to be back in our communities one day. So if that's the case, we just keep thinking and asking ourselves, what kind of neighbor do you want to have? What kind of experience do you want to have when you're in the market and you see a guy who maybe was incarcerated yesterday? Do you want that to be an aggressive interaction or do you want him just to say good morning and walk by? You know? And so if we keep in mind great perspective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

I mean, if you could just bottle up what you just said, that's a what a great perspective. And I like right there, I'm like, you're right. 97% are coming back. And and your job is to get them ready for that and be successful because everyone wants that.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Yeah. We don't want more victims.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

We don't want yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

We want people who are taxpaying or taking care of their kids, like their families, right? Like I think we all want the same things, but we sometimes lose sight that that's the goal. And when we think about prisons and you think about, well, just make it hard, just lock them up, don't give them any opportunities. It's like, well, if we do that, we're gonna teach them to be kind of a caged animal, and they're probably gonna behave like that when they get out. Yeah. And if we teach them to get up and work and earn money and take care of their business, they might do those same things when they get out.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah. Oh, wow. That's that's that's powerful. Um, talk to us a little bit about, because I I find a lot of this fascinating. I it's just fun to have someone on with an issue that I just don't know very much about at all. Um

What Works In Criminal Justice Reform

SPEAKER_01 19:10

when you look at surrounding states and kind of best practices and the research, which I'm sure this is a big part of what you do, is like this is probably very well studied, like what works, what doesn't work, what programs should you have, what are the cost-effective programs, and what are the examples of that around the country? Uh, tell us kind of where the hit the future of criminal justice reform is going and kind of where it's at and where Idaho sits in the midst of that.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah, so it's that's a really interesting question to unpack. I mean, it's where I spend a lot of my brain space. But um so I'm, you know, fortune and I get to sit around the country with other directors. And what I hear is a lot of folks saying, we feel like, first of all, when we talk about things in terms of recidivism, that's inadequate because what other business measures itself by failure, right? And and that's that's been our primary measure of outcome for as long as we've been tracking. So that's one big thing. And we we hear people more and more talking about we've got to look at other things, and that we know that the process that people take to get out of the criminal justice system is not straight, right? It's not linear, there's a lot of bumps, there might be relapse, there might be reincarceration. It might take somebody some time to get there. And so I'm hearing the conversation shift from just prevent re-offending to how do we get people out of these cycles, this like desist from crime. So desistence is one of the big themes. But I think, you know, in terms of how we compare, we we hear a lot, kind of losing these. Um, we hear a lot about rehabilitation and the there's a whole body of literature and research around what works to reduce re-offending. And so I think more and more states are trying to implement programs that are that are known and shown to reduce recidivism. And fortunately, we've had them here in our state for, gosh, I think more than a decade now. So I think in that way, we're probably ahead of the curve. One of the other things I'm seeing emerging is definitely more interest in higher ed. So with Pell Grants got turned back on about two years ago at the federal level, and that pays for people who are incarcerated to they can take some classes, and their obligation is to the feds, not to us and our system. And that's been really kind of generating a lot of interest in higher ed. And I think we've got we have over a hundred. I think we might be around 200 people who are now enrolled in some sort of college course while they're incarcerated. So you're seeing a lot more of that around the country.

How The Community Can Help Reentry

SPEAKER_01 21:34

That sounds great. And um, so I I want to I want to pivot a little bit to just what we can do as a community and how we can help. Because I think clearly we love this place, we love our community, we want it to be safe. But um the effort we're trying to help with is okay, how can the business community be more involved and help people? So I go back to you know, you know, our church with we we have kind of lay ministry, and you are able to serve and help people. And I I had this wise old guy one time tell me his name was Bill Hawks. Um Hawks Motors here and he was just this really good guy, just helped people. But he he sat me down one time and he said, you know, in order for any person to kind of feel good about themselves and be successful in life, they need a purpose, they need a job, and they need someone to believe in them, right? I mean they just like that those are kind of the basics. So I look at look at the persons that I the person I've been able to help, and then and then I was I've got a really good friend named Dwayne Sessions who um who works at um uh the what's the Dennistillan. Yeah, Dennistillan. And he's been doing this for 20 years. And so we we went to lunch one day and I said, Hey, I know you've been doing this for a long time, but what do you do? And he kind of gave me the same speech, which is like, what I've found is like if you have purpose and a job and someone that believes in you, that's half the battle for for for a lot of these guys getting out because it's just so hard, right? It's new, it's it's different, you want to succeed. No one, no one wants to go back in and lose their freedom again, but they're just up against all these challenges. So, you know, we're trying, and and I I think the first few meetings we've had, I mean, there's just so much to do. It feels like the community can do. Um, but talk about what factors you think are like the the kind of the ingredients that you teach and train and what are some of the programs that help them as they leave. Um, and then maybe the second part of that is, you know, what are the places people can plug in and be helpful?

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Yeah, really good question. I mean, I think the re-entry process is like there's a lot going on in that, right? I mean, you're talking about basic needs, you're talking about obligations that people will have, whether those are financial conditions of supervision. So there's a lot going on for people as they transition from prison back to the community. I think having a community to return to is huge. I think that's one of the places we haven't done as good a job as correctional officers, as collect correctional staff, is you know, we put together these little plans and we're sort of like, figure it out. Here you go. You know, meet with your pro officer and and it'll be great. And, you know, we have amazing staff who are trying to connect people to treatment and all these things. But at the end of the day, we also do a lot to say, don't hang out with anybody you used to know or get in trouble with. Sometimes that's everybody they used to know.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Um, and so I think for a lot of people getting out, having a new group of people to be around, whether that's church, you know, faith-based, it's uh civic groups, whatever it is, yeah, finding spaces where they can be around people who are doing the right things and get engaged, I think that's that's a huge help for everybody.

Mentoring That Changes Prison Culture

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Um, because in addition to the things you lifted, you know, purpose and mattering, I I would add just connection.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

And and a lot of people don't have that. Um we have a program inside right now, um, one program on mentoring, and it's it's pretty much spread throughout our prisons. But I'll tell you, that's one of the most interesting things that I've seen in my career in terms of what it's doing for people. So, you know, we've had all this good program uh programming, whether that's substance use, anger management, like you name it, we've probably had programs about it that are very well researched. But this mentoring work is is really just kind of leveraging that peers have a lived experience, they've they've been in the shoes of the people who are currently incarcerated. I haven't, our staff generally haven't. And there's something about that that it seems really powerful.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

When you when you hear this is how I did it or this is how I failed, this is what I learned, yeah, where my wisdom came from, right? And it's actually happening, and that's different than reading a book, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yeah. And so we're seeing that we have mentors now deployed inside of our prisons at all of our prisons. And it was a program that was actually started by folks who were incarcerated. They said, like, hey, I came in when I was really young. I wish somebody had told me these things. I wish I knew this 20 years ago, and I'm still here, and I feel like I could give back. And so we felt like that was really valuable, and we've worked to find support for that, and and we've seen it literally help change the culture because what you're seeing is people are getting that purpose you were talking about from serving those who come behind. And and so we're just seeing it make differences in in the population we supervise, in the actual culture of the facilities, so they're less antagonistic. Um, you know, we think about from a staff perspective, like there's there, you know, us, the staff, them, the client, the the person who's incarcerated or on supervision. But what we don't ever think about is they think the same thing. They think you're just the cops. Wow. Right. And so this is helping them see that, yeah, you know what, the cops actually have feelings too. They actually have family that they're missing because they're here doing an overtime shift. Like it started to humanize the people who are incarcerated, our staff. Um, and the benefit is they're less likely to do, you know, violent bad things towards our staff. So it's it's kind of wild. Um, yeah. So really powerful. And I would say you asked me um how could the community plug in? Yeah. I think there are mentoring opportunities. We have a program called Free to Succeed.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

I'm I'm gonna uh Maddie, you want to hold pull this up because I I you have some great programs I didn't know about until we started having our meetings.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

And so we'll pull them up here and we'll get we'll share these URLs. But the first one was Um Free to Succeed. So free to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Hopefully it comes up on our website.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

It usually does.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

So so people we're surprised once. Yeah. So free to succeed. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

So it's a community mentoring program. So anybody in the community who's interested in mentoring somebody who's incarcerated or getting out can go ahead and do that. They can reach out and become a volunteer. So there are lots of volunteer opportunities. We have several hundred.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Oh, that's cool. So so it comes right up. So you're you're basically a mentor for someone to come out.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Yep. Help them get connected.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Big brother, big sister for a person getting out, which they're probably you said this before, but all probably pretty unique situations, unique crimes reasons are in, probably unique family situations out, unique personalities. And so they're mentoring to try to help get them, get them what they need when those needs may be varied, right? That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Yeah. So that's one way. And volunteering generally, if you have a special skill, somebody in the community, and we've had volunteers come in and teach financial wellness class or you know, just how to manage your money, like somebody from the banking industry. So we we get people who have special expertise who come in and volunteer and teach classes. That's always a way to be helpful. But I think, you know, when we've talked about in the second chance group, I think where business can really plug in is we have an untapped labor market.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah. And so I love this.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

I love this because this is this is where I think like um, and I think there's, you know, I I think some businesses are more concerned about this than others. And I what I love about the group we've assembled that it's it, you know, there's restaurants, there's car dealerships, there's businesses, there's all sorts of things. And I think listening to the peers in that group say, here's how we you know accomplish this, here's what made our program successful. Here's but it's super rewarding. Yeah. I mean, it's like the stories just in our little group has been amazing. So I think um, and you have some resources for potential employers too, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Um, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

I I think I think you have well you have don't you have a program that helps kind of place them or the the So we have a uh community re-entry centers. Yeah, community re-entry center. That's it.

Reentry Centers And Second Chance Hiring

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Yeah, tell us about that. Because I that was new to me too.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Yeah. So when people are incarcerated, they sort of, if if all goes well, they're working towards more privileges, more opportunities because they're behaving well. And they go from higher custody level to lower custody level. At the lowest end of the spectrum, we have community re-entry centers. So that means they're minimum custody, they can be in the community, and they essentially get furloughed out for periods of time during the day to go to work, usually. Um in certain circumstances, it could also be to attend counseling classes or you know, uh family therapy or something like that where there's a specific reunification effort. But generally it's for people to go out and work in the community and then they come back in. And the benefit of those is this happens towards the end of somebody's sentence, usually within the last year of their sentence. So we know they're getting out soon, and this helps them get a job and and it's at you know, prevailing wage in the community. It allows a lot of accountability. So as an employer, you have the the fact that they're still incarcerated. Yeah, they are being checked on, they are being dropped off and picked up. So they're a reliable employees.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Dwayne has said these are some of the best employees he's had just because they're right out, they're model citizens because they they need to be, but but he said it's it's like an untapped resource for for helping people for sure, but also it's labor sitting there with most of these people are they're trying to get out, they're trying to do the right thing. And so those those uh those community resource centers, um, I I I was surprised. Dwayne knew everything about them. Yeah, he knew how to contact them, how to so that's just another thing I wanted to get out there on on the podcast. And then um the last thing is when they do come out, they're gonna be looking for jobs, right? Yes, many of them have skills that are that are ready to go, and just being tapped into that potential source of I I know Darren College is a good friend, and he's really excited about this because he's like, You can you think about in my kitchens, in all my restaurants I have, there are gonna be people that are that have got affinity for culinary arts and like being part of that. And he's like, I'm gonna figure this out. I'm gonna figure out a way to really do this because it's always a place we're looking for help, and and and and then I've and it's been interesting listening to some of the inmates when they're out thing, it it also gets in that social thing, right? So it it it serves a couple of functions, right? They have a job, yeah, earning money, two, they're in a different social situation with people that are hopefully lifting them up and giving them, you know, structure and a reason to stay clean and do the right things. Um and you can see how important a job is.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Oh yeah. I mean, just to be able to pay the bills, take care of yourself, your family, yeah, hugely important. And yeah, I mean, I think you know, when I think about opportunities like restaurants, you know, we teach serve safe in some of our facilities, and we have kitchens that are operated by they're overseen by staff, yeah, but they're inmate workers in all of those kitchens. And so they're they're cooking for thousands of people in some cases a day.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

You know food safety, all the they've done it all.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah, so we have we have lots of those like hidden opportunities inside.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. And and um, and so then I want to get to the harder one.

Housing The Biggest Reentry Bottleneck

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Housing.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Ooh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

It's tough, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Super tough.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

So, so yeah, I mean, I think I I you know I've been here a long time, but one of the beautiful things that we used to have here was every it was just affordability. I mean, when we were recruiting physicians to come work for us and stuff, it's just like, oh, it you'll come here, it's beautiful, you'll love the people. There's no better place in the world to live, and it's affordable. Well, those days are gone. Um, it's crazy not affordable now, uh whether you're renting or trying to figure out so so that's been the hard thing lately, I think, right, for people. Because you got to come out, you may or may not have a family, you don't have a job yet, you got to figure out transportation, you what are your obligations financially, and then okay, oh, by the way, find a place to live. Speak to a little bit of that and how the community might be helpful.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, I uh it you laid out the challenge really well. Um, I think the the community, we rely on the community for transitional resources. So, you know, we fund some transitional housing for people getting out because that's a better tax investment than keeping them incarcerated longer unnecessarily. But that's usually 30 days. It may be a 60 days in some cases. And so again, it doesn't leave a lot of time for people to accumulate enough money to have a down payment and get their you know first month's rent together. And so the more that we have resources to do short-term housing, the the better we'll be. We're always looking for new providers who are in the business of running clean, safe, and sober houses because our folks getting out, you know, they should be clean, they should be, you know, getting tests, drug tested regularly. Um and so we want to make sure the environment is safe, that we're not putting them in a place where drugs are rampant and all sorts of sketchy things are going on. So that's one place if people are interested in being in that space that that could be hugely helpful. Um, I will just say on the housing front, it's not only a challenge for the people we serve, it's a challenge for our staff.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Right? And and so, you know, we think about like just our wages and and recruiting and how difficult it is for our staff to to make ends meet. And and a lot of them unfortunately have second jobs as a result. So I know that's outside of the the podcast a little bit, but no, but it's it's it's challenged reality, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Of and and recruiting. Well, anytime you do a hard job, I would say there are hard jobs.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

And your your pay level is probably, you know, good, but not great excessive. And you've got to deal with inflation and cost of housing and transportation, and the prison's not in the middle of, you know, you're driving quite a bit of 30, 45 minutes, 45 minutes back and forth every day. Um, I can only imagine those um those challenges. How how uh how are you like like right now?

Staffing Lessons From The COVID Era

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Do you know how many open positions you have right now? How how how bad is it right now for like recruiting and retention?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yeah, I don't know the count today, but we we've been running under 10% vacancy, which is has been huge. I mean, and we've had months where we've been 1%, 2%. I mean, we've been in really good shape. We we just switched up a little bit of our hiring cadence, so we have a bit of a dip um right now. But we, yeah, coming out of COVID, we were stuck. We we were really hurting. We had about 30, almost 35% vacancy of our correctional officers.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

So running prisons with a third of your staff missing is not good. Um I mean, it means you end up locking down the facilities, you you don't have the opportunities, you just can't facilitate programs, movement, all the things that actually rehabilitate people. Um and you know, the staff that are working are working their tails off and they're just getting called in overtime.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

COVID was a rough time being there, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

And and it seemed like it seemed like um also like just like the opening and kind of it was probably staffing, but just the ability to visit and do stuff just kind of lagged behind just because everything was just like shut down, right? Tough. That had to be tough.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Really tough, really tough. Um, I mean, yes, everything was shut down because partly we didn't have the staff to facilitate some of the things. And the other thing was we were really afraid like we're trying to prevent COVID from coming in, and we knew it would come in from our staff.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Um, because our resident population doesn't get to get out.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

You got people congregated together in settings like that. I mean, that's that's the that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

You just you literally couldn't pull off all of the things that we were trying to do. I mean, the the physical plant does not allow for you know everybody to have a six-foot bubble. Yeah. Uh it just doesn't. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Oh, I can't even imagine. You were and you were the deputy through that whole thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:32

I was, yeah. Yeah. So it was it was very challenging for us as it was for everybody else. Um, but you know, we're we're past that. But the the reason I even brought it up was like we came out of that, we we stayed fully staffed during that, which was kind of amazing. But coming out of that, I think people had really re-evaluated, you know, how they spend their time, the opportunities obviously for work from home skyrocketed, and we just saw our numbers kind of tank after that. And so we, it was about 2021, fall of 2021, we we were really um in bad shape and we worked very hard over about a year and a half period to to write that chip. And we we've been successful at that, which has been amazing because when I talk to my peers around the country, some of them are still in the 30%, 35% vacancy. And so we're in really good shape, but I keep being told don't count on that, like it's not gonna last. And so I think for us, we're always thinking about what's the culture we're building and how do we retain people so that we're we don't face that again.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Yeah, we talk a lot about culture on this podcast, and and you think about um a difficult public entity business, right? Yeah, competing with now the microns of the world, everyone else. I mean, it's all same employee base, right? Yes. And and now you gotta you got culture that is probably king in a lot of ways because you're gonna have pay scales that are kind of max out and you can't compete with that when it's private industry. I've I where it comes up for us is oh, the cities and a lot of their planners and people behind the scenes end up being who we poach when we you know what I mean? That I complain that it's so hard to get my plans reviewed. They're like, hey, you do know the reason you stole my guy. So anyway, it's it's an it that's an interesting thing. Um one of the other things I wanted to maybe talk about is I think um one of the things for me that was a you know, I I wouldn't have my headspace wouldn't have been there unless I went through it with this person that I I really love was the family piece of this.

Families Visiting Stress And Support Gaps

SPEAKER_01 38:30

I I think for most of us that just kind of ignore this and say, well, it is what it is, deal with it. You got families that, you know, over periods of time are trying to figure this out during sentencing while they're there, and then as they come home. And that dynamic is is gotta be one of the most tricky ones for for both sides to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Absolutely. And, you know, we hear from families all the time. I receive tons of emails from families asking about, you know, a loved one who maybe has moved or had an opportunity, and it seems like that opportunity's gone away. And, you know, people are always invested and interested, which I I appreciate their support for loved ones. I think one of the things that I was surprised at um as an agency, we had been meeting with some family members and asking about their experience even in visiting. And they described to us how how hard that was, how intimidating that process was the first time they came into one of our facilities. I don't I don't know if that was your experience, but they they were really nervous and they said they kind of learned things by getting told they weren't doing something right. Like you're not supposed to be talking to that person.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

I was freaked out.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Well, I went um the first time I went, um, the person I was visiting wasn't wasn't serving in maximum, but he was there as a worker. So that's what I went into the first several months I was visiting him. But but like I I can tell you, I was mortified. I was like, oh, this is like a movie I've seen somewhere. It's my first time ever anywhere. And you walk in and you don't know what to do, and you walk up to the big gates, you know, yeah. Do I push the button? Do I don't? I'm I'm on camera. Yeah, I walk in. It and then you get into the room, and then you're just not wanting to do anything wrong. And I don't know. It it was very intimidating. And I'm not usually thinking, I usually go with the flow pretty well, but I was intimidated.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

I remember leaving going, oh it's yeah, it's an intense environment. And if you're not in it all the time, I mean I work in it and I still find parts of it intimidating. And so, like on feedback from we we met with a couple moms and they just said, like, this is awful. Like, we we were scared, and you know, now I've been doing it a long time, I know, and I kind of guide people in the line, and you know, they pass down advice. And so we actually had them work with our staff to create a video around the visiting process. Like, let's just demystify the whole thing and and show people like what they can wear and examples of what you can bring in and what you can't. Um, so then hopefully, you know, those things we're trying to listen to families where we can to make the process a little easier for them too.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Yeah. Are there support services for the families? Um probably not, right? Because that's not a not within the scope of the Department of Corrections.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Yeah, not provided by us. I know that there have been groups um around, you know, families of folks who are incarcerated. I've I've seen Facebook groups and heard about other kind of get-togethers, but none that we formally support from the Department of Correction.

Out Of State Beds And New Facilities

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Um switching gears a little bit, uh I know we send, so we probably send, looking at the numbers, we probably send what is it, fifty seventeen hundred people out of the state because of capacity?

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Not quite. We have a whole host of them are in county jail.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

So right around 1,100 probably are in county jail right now. We just moved some additional folks to Arizona. So for a long time it had been 600, we just moved 240 additional men to Arizona. And we have another move uh coming in the in the next couple of weeks to Arizona. So we'll have all said and done, we'll probably end up with close to 950 out of state. Out of state, and then the rest will be in county jails.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

And does that cost us more to be out of state?

SPEAKER_00 42:01

No. Um so right now the contract out of state is about $85 a day, and then that goes up based on whatever the consumer price index inflationary rates. But um our fully loaded cost on average is anywhere between $85 and $98 a day here. So it's not any more money.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Okay. Uh but it's not convenient for them or for anybody else. And so is there plans for expansion? I mean, that's got to be a big undertaking, but I, you know, as our population blossoms like it is, is is that on the radar for the Department of Corrections for a new facility?

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Yes, we have several new facilities in the works. So right now we have five big infrastructure projects. Um, I shouldn't say they're all big. Some of them are big. Um, one of them is a new women's facility. That will be about 560 beds in the cuna area. Um it will become the largest female facility that we have. Uh, we're building a new unit at our Idaho State Correctional Institute, also in the CUNA area, for 280 men, medium custody men. Um we're building a new unit up in Orofino for 100 men. We're building a new community reentry center in Pocatello for 100 men. And then we have a small project with the Department of Health and Welfare to build a facility for folks deemed dangerously mentally ill, so a really specialty population and folks with advanced cognitive decline who might be at risk in our population.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

So all that's in the works to try to keep up with all this. What are the timelines on those? Are they relatively soon, next few years?

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Yeah, so Pocatello should come online, should it's built, and they're just uh the like the structure is built and they're working on the inside now. I think our timeline on that is about November or December of this year. And so everything that I've mentioned go from late this year through mid 28 comes online and it's just over a thousand beds when they're all combined.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

That's right. That'll be great, great for the capacity, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Yeah, yeah. It'll I mean it'll put a huge dent. It should allow us to bring folks back from out of state. That's certainly the hope.

unknown 43:59

Um

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Um and then we just have to watch if we continue on the growth trajectory we're on because by the time those open, we might have more people coming in. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

What is your uh what what is your relationship with the the county jurisdictions and gels and I mean how how does that work?

Working With Sheriffs On Shared Solutions

SPEAKER_01 44:15

I mean I I'm just thinking like is there interaction or how does how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 44:20

It's actually been working really well. I I smile because um, you know, I think the a lot of the shares sort of Yeah, we have a friendly banter, I'll say. Uh there's there's some teasing and some haranguing because our folks are people we have a jurisdiction over are stuck in their facilities and they're like get them out of here. And so there are some sheriffs I hear from weekly uh with you know very helpful lists of people that need to be moved. Um, but I appreciate the situation. Like they're overcrowded, they've got people on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

I'm sure you never hear from Sheriff Donahue now in.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

You know what? I dig that guy.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Um He's a great guy.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

We um I will say this the the sheriffs this year, we have really partnered on some stuff that I am excited about. So we've talked about like I appreciate their needs and their struggles, and I think they appreciate mine. We've talked about coming together and creating some statewide solutions for like visibility into who's on the transport list and where they're happening. We've talked about sharing some intelligence uh software because we've got people, you know, obviously in jails who become prisoners and vice versa all the time. And they're always talking to people. And so they've also got in some cases criminal networks, and you know, there's a percentage of our population who continues to do criminal things while they're with us. So we've we've partnered with the sheriffs to try and explore some of those kind of synergies. And so it's it's been a um a fun situation because it's you know, it's a healthy debate about what's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Well, and they're all really I'm just I'm like laughing a little bit just because when I ran for governor, I toured several jails when I was around the state of Idaho. And um those sh you don't realize, I mean, I didn't realize before just that you think of the sheriff, that's the sheriff, right? But you don't realize that they're also over their their county jail, which is a huge part of their job. It's a huge part of their budget, it's a huge part of what they do. And so it was a it was a great eye-opening experience to just go tour all the different facilities and hear their problems and their struggles and how it interacts with the community. And anyway, there's some great, there's some great, there's some great sheriffs, but they are characters.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Yes. Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

I I'm trying to think of the one up in Lewiston. Um, I'm sure it's still the same guy. But he was anyway. We I stayed friends with with several good good people.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

They really are, and I think we both appreciate that we have detention responsibility. So whether it's a jail or prison, there's a lot of commonality. Um, and we can, you know, push back and forth about who pays for whom at which point and all of those things. But the reality is I think we all want those people to be in a place where you know they're housed safely and it's safe for our staff, and that they have opportunities. And I think that's one of the other things that's been interesting, like meeting with like Sheriff Hulse over um in Bonneville. You know, he's really jazzed about getting some programming in. He wants to do programming in jails, which most jails aren't built for.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Um, and so he's getting more into the rehabilitative model. And, you know, I think there are other um sheriffs who are really interested in adopting that too. So it's kind of neat also to see, you know, them kind of doing some of the stuff that in prisons we've had the benefit of being able to do for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Yeah, I'm sure that's tremendously helpful to them, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Yeah, and and to the clients who the their prisoners become our prisoners.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

I think it's so refreshing when the general public hears that our that our public institutions are communicating with each other, working with each other. You don't hear that all the time. Yeah. Right. And so it's just really refreshing, like, oh good, they are talking and working together. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Uh

Unsung Heroes And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_01 47:38

that's great. What's your what's kind of your elevator pitch you give people about what what you wish everyone knew about your job and the Department of Corrections?

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Oh, I don't think I have an elevator pitch for everything I wish people knew. Um, I, you know, I think what's important to remember about corrections is people often, like you said, have strong opinions based on very little fact. So getting to know a little bit about all that's going on behind the scenes to really uh take care of people and help them learn the skills that they're gonna need in the community to be successful, I think is is really important. And I would be remiss if I didn't say, like, we have some really hardworking staff who spend every waking hour thinking about how they can help ensure the public is safe by teaching new skills, reinforcing them, holding people accountable. And that's both in our prisons and out in the community. And I I sometimes think we're kind of the black sheep of the law enforcement family. We get kind of left off to the side, but like our work in corrections, I say this all the time at new employee orientation, is like we get to work with people for years. We get to see people who are who are, if they're willing, able to make a change and we can reinforce that change, we can help them practice that change for a period of time safely with guardrails. People in other parts of the justice system, they don't get that benefit. They get, you know, if you're making an arrest and you're you might work with somebody for half an hour or a couple hours writing your report, you don't know what happens with that case necessarily. You know, you think about um attorneys and judges, they all see people for a sliver in time.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

We get this long period of time to really make an impact. And so I think we might be the unsung heroes in the criminal justice system.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Yeah, that will that was a heck of an elevator spitch. Sorry, it was long. No, no, it was like for like it was very, very that was very, very spot on. Thank you for doing that. And as you're talking, I'm I'm just thinking about like how meaningful it is too, because you know, as a as an ER doc, I used to have a line I used to say, people say, What is it like being in the ER? And I'm like, well, you're you're really taking care of people in their grade of time, their time of greatest need. I mean, most of the time when you're there, either something really bad medically has gone on or something really bad in your social life has gone on that you've wound up in an ER.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

And so I always just say it was just kind of a privilege to be there. And if you think about the Department of Corrections, you are serving people at their time of greatest need. I mean, many of them made really, really bad choices to be there, but they now have the rest of their lives to live.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

And they've got families, and figuring that out has got to be one of the most rewarding things you can do. Um, and I I will say personally, for me, I've been able to serve a lot of people over my lifetime. I'm 58, but um, I'll tell you the one person I've been able to help is probably the single most rewarding thing I've ever done.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

Period.

SPEAKER_02 50:31

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Um I take him to lunch on his anniversary date every year. And um every once in a while I'll just walk in my office and there'll be a there'll be a note on the on the desk and I'll like, oh I wonder who this is from, and I'll open it up. And he just will say, Hey, I was watching the sunset last night and looked around at my kids, and I just want to let you know that um I can't I can never repay you. And I think just freedom and liberty to do stuff and and and thrive. So to watch him thrive and know that I I mean it was all him. I mean, one of the things I always tell him is like, dude, like you've done all the work. I mean, I I provided you the hand up. It wasn't a handout. You've busted your tell and you've done all this, but but um to watch that happen, I think, boy, I want to do more of this because it's kind of the ER all over again. It's like, how can I help the person in their time of greatest need? This is their time of greatest need. Um, and then when I ran for governor, one of the guys that was most impactful for me is uh Re Reverend Tim Remington up in North Idaho, and he made it his life's journey to get the hardest of the hard that come out. And he created these little houses that he would put them in, and there were these little communities, and they would come in and he he had this great um rate of success. But they would learn about God, they would get a job, they'd get retrained, they would have a community to come back to. And um, I was able to, when I was in North Idaho, go visit them and like I would have Bible study with this group and sit there with them for a couple of hours every day, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is this is the some of the hardest stuff that happens out there. But most of these people have the rest of their lives to live.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

Yes. And most of them will live that outside of prison.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

And most of them live that and that's what I keep telling my friend. I would I'd be like, dude, like literally, you it may not feel like it now, but two years from now it'll feel like a forever ago. Five years from now, it'll feel like, and there will be a time, 10, 20, 30 years from now, when you're gonna like go, oh my gosh, it was it was a blip in time. I got a hand, I got a hand up, and and I had the rest of my life to live and raise my kids and do all this stuff. So anyway, sorry for the tangent, but I I think it I think it's important because I really hope that people that listen to this will go and and look at ways that they might volunteer or help or be part of groups to employ. I mean, I think there's housing opportunities. I think as we go forward, and I can promise anyone listening that if you're able to help in any way, it will be some of the most rewarding service you ever provide. Hard stop.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Absolutely. Yep. That's what keeps me doing it.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

I'm sure you I mean, what a great job. Right?

SPEAKER_00 53:09

Yeah.

unknown 53:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

You get to do this full time.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

Yeah, I mean, it's not all just that, let's be honest. But no, but it is it it it's those the moments where you've seen somebody change, you've seen somebody turn it around who maybe was working on it for a long time and all of a sudden it clicks and they're they're on a different trajectory. Like those are the moments that stick with me. Those are the things that do keep you coming back.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Well, and the last story I'll tell because I I think that for people that do this, they do it again and again because it's rewarding for the people on the outside. So when I took my friend, we had to get a work truck, so I took him over to Dennis Dillon. This is how I knew I knew I knew Dwayne Sessions really well, but I didn't, I hadn't I had no, I wouldn't say, Hey Dwayne, you know, do you ever help people that are you right? It's just not a topic, right?

SPEAKER_02 53:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

But I pull up into the parking lot and I get out and he jumps out and he immediately is like, hey, and he runs up and gives this guy a big hug, and they're sitting and talking, and it was the salesman for the truck.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

And we get back to that in the truck, I'm like, how did you know that guy? And he's like, Oh, well, we played basketball in in prison together for a couple years and got to know him, and he's out. So then I immediately called Dwayne. I'm like, hey, I gotta tell you this great story. And it's like, yeah, dummy, you didn't know I this is like one of the greatest things I do. So I think awareness, uh, it will become contagious. And I'm sure there's going to be setbacks, and it's not always great stories, but man, Dwayne, when I sit with him, he's got story after story after story after story of like, hey, you know, these people, they they want to succeed, they want their life back. Yeah, they've learned, they've been punished, and it's time to grow. And and uh anyway, I hope I hope we can continue helping you. And I hope that uh you're awesome, by the way. I want to tell you, in those meetings, you have like the presence you have and the way you interact is awesome. So we're we we got a great chance of doing great things together because of your leadership, and thank you for all you do.

SPEAKER_00 55:00

Well, I appreciate it. I really appreciate the opportunity. Love talking about the work and the the second chance group is amazing. So look forward to what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

Thanks. Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

Yeah, thank you.