Finding help and hope in a peer-led reentry service hub near a detention centre: A process evaluation

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Finding help and hope in a peer-led reentry service hub near a detention centre: A process evaluation Arthur McLuhan1, Tara Hahmann1, Cilia Mejia-Lancheros ID1, Sarah Hamilton-Wright1, Guido Tacchini1, Flora I. Matheson ID1,2,3* a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: McLuhan A, Hahmann T, MejiaLancheros C, Hamilton-Wright S, Tacchini G, Matheson FI (2023) Finding help and hope in a peer-led reentry service hub near a detention centre: A process evaluation. PLoS ONE 18(2): e0281760. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0281760 Editor: Yandisa Msimelelo Sikweyiya, South African Medical Research Council, SOUTH AFRICA Received: January 20, 2022 Accepted: February 1, 2023 Published: February 17, 2023 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281760 1 MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, St Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2 Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 3 Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada * Abstract When people leave correctional institutions, they face myriad personal, social and structural barriers to reentry, including significant challenges with mental health, substance use, and homelessness. However, there are few reentry programs designed to support people’s health, wellbeing, and social integration, and there are even fewer evaluations of such programs. The purpose of this article is to report the qualitative findings from an early process evaluation of the Reintegration Centre—a peer-led service hub designed to support men on the day they are released from custody. We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews and examined quantitative service intake data with 21 men who accessed the Reintegration Centre immediately upon release. Participants encountered significant reentry challenges and barriers to service access and utilization. The data suggest that the peer-led service hub model enhanced the service encounter experience and efficiently and effectively addressed reentry needs through the provision of basic supports and individualized service referrals. Notably, the Reintegration Centre’s proximity to the detention centre facilitated rapid access to essential services upon release, and the peer-support workers affirmed client autonomy and moral worth in the service encounter, fostering mutual respect and trust. Locating reentry programs near bail courts and detention centres may reduce barriers to service access. A peer-led service hub that provides immediate support for basic needs along with individualized service referrals is a promising approach to reentry programs that aim to support post-release health, wellbeing, and social integration. A social system that fosters cross-sectoral collaboration and continuity of care through innovative funding initiatives is vital to the effectiveness and sustainability of such reentry programs. Copyright: © 2023 McLuhan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Introduction Data Availability Statement: This study reports on qualitative data which by nature is difficult to fully anonymize. Participants were not asked to agree to More than 30 million people experience incarceration annually worldwide, with nearly 11 million people held in custody on any given day [1]. Although nearly all incarcerated individuals will be released, most are rearrested and about half are reincarcerated within three years [2,3]. PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281760 February 17, 2023 1 / 24 PLOS ONE their data being available for other studies, as they experience significant social and health burdens that are highly stigmatized, including criminalization, homelessness, and poverty. Requesting that they agree to share their data more publicly would have deterred some from taking part in the study and would have the potential to significantly alter the data obtained. Ethical approval for this research study was granted by St. Michael’s Hospital Research Ethics Board [REB 17-077] on the basis that participants’ data was only accessible by the research team. The authors believe in the principle of making data freely available but this was not anticipated or specifically approved by the St. Michael’s Hospital Research Ethics Board at the time the study was initiated. However, specific requests received by the authors for data sharing for purposes such as data verification and meta-analysis will be considered by the St. Michael’s Hospital Research Ethics Board on an individual basis under defined and mutually agreed-upon conditions. Funding: FM received project funding from the Ontario Government and the Ontario Trillium Foundation [LP95856]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. https://otf.ca/; https://www.ontario.ca/ Competing interests: The authors have declared no financial or non-financial competing interests exist. Process evaluation of a reentry service hub The consequences and costs of failing to break the cycle of incarceration are not contained to incarcerated populations—they spillover into and reverberate through families, neighbourhoods, communities, as well as justice, health, and economic systems [4–7]. Community reentry has become an important policy, practice, and research concern [8], and reentry programs are often positioned as important tools in the effort to improve postrelease outcomes [9]. Although the reentry movement in corrections has tended to emphasize recidivism-focused program objectives, outputs, and outcomes, there has been increasing recognition of reentry concerns beyond recidivism [10,11]. When people leave correctional institutions, they contend with a variety of reentry challenges. Low levels of formal training and education [12–14], criminal records [15], limited employment opportunities [16–21] and other intersecting factors, including racism and discrimination [22], detail some of the complex socio-economic reentry barriers facing this population [23–25]. Secure housing is often the principal immediate need upon release from custody [4,8,26,27], but poverty and a lack of affordable housing contribute to high rates of homelessness and housing instability. Compounding housing access barriers and, in turn, reentry challenges [28–31] are serious health concerns [16,26,32–34] and inadequate treatment and care [19], which (...truncated)