Life Skills Project: San Francisco Sheriff's Department

• NCJ Number: 210709
• Journal: Journal of Correctional Education Volume: 56 Issue: 2 Dated: June 2005 Pages: 115-123
• Author(s): Sunny Schwartz
• Date Published: June 2005
• Length: 9 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article describes the features and presents the evaluation findings for the San Francisco Sheriff's Department's Life Skills for Prisoners Program (LSPP), which was implemented under a grant from the Life Skills for State and Local Prisoners Program of the U.S. Department of Education.

Abstract

The LSPP was intended to enhance and broaden the existing program called the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP), which had operated successfully for 3 years in the San Francisco County Jail. The LSPP provided additional life-skills training needed to help program participants successfully re-enter the work force and community after release. The primary population served by the LSPP consists of violent offenders who have been incarcerated in the county jail. The LSPP added the following services to the RSVP: in-jail and postrelease case management, exit planning, a fatherhood class, employment services, mentoring, probation, and an internship program in group facilitation and peer counseling for a select group of participants. The third-party evaluation measured whether RSVP was able to break the positive-feedback loop between the violence-causing patterns of culture and personality that reinforce one another. The evaluation assessed the frequency of violent acts in a cell block of 62 male inmates convicted of violent crimes during the first year of the program, compared to the frequency of such acts in the same cell block during the year preceding the program. Findings were also compared with the frequency of violent offending in another cell block with a comparable group of violent offenders who were not exposed to the new program. The evaluation examined recidivism rates for violent crimes during the year following release compared to a control group. Both in-jail violence and violent offenses during 1 year after release were significantly lower for program participants.