Increasing the Chances of Successful Reentry for Veterans: An Evaluation of a Veterans-Only Housing Unit in San Diego County

• In Event: Prisoners' Pressures, Experiences, Reentry, and Post-release Outcomes

Abstract

While specialized courts for veterans have been implemented across the country, veteran-specific housing units for those already serving time in custody have been rarer, but are starting to appear across the nation. In 2013, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department started the Veterans Moving Forward (VMF) Program and in 2015, SANDAG received a grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to conduct a process and impact evaluation of it, as well as document lessons learned from the practitioner-researcher partnership. . The four primary goals of this project include documenting how a veteran-only housing unit should be implemented; determining if service delivery and inmate management is facilitated when veterans are housed together; determining if veteran re-entry is more successfully accomplished and cost-effective when veterans are housed together; and documenting the challenges and successes of a researcher-practitioner partnership. An overview of the key findings, including the results of the cost-benefit analysis will be presented.

Authors

• Cynthia Burke, San Diego Association of Governments

• Sandy Keaton, San Diego Association of Governments