A lot of people who go to prison in Utah end up back there after they’ve been released. Just over 61% returned in fiscal year 2023 because of a parole violation. New convictions accounted for 20.2% of inmates according to Department of Corrections data.
It’s a problem Republican Rep. Tyler Clancy hopes to address. He’s brought together a working group of state representatives, law enforcement, business leaders and people with lived experience with incarceration to come up with solutions.
According to Clancy, they are “a bunch of individuals that really care about this issue, really care about public safety, and really care about people healing from years and decades and generations of trauma.”
Ultimately they “want to see tangible results” with lowering Utah’s recidivism rate over the next five years.” To meet that goal, Clancy believes they will need to change mindsets when it comes to reentry.
“We heard from our director, we heard from social workers, that the idea in the process of reentry needs to begin when someone enters, not right before they're leaving.” Adding the comparison that “we always think about when someone enters a hospital, what's the plan for them to get better and to leave. And that's the approach that I think was really coalesced.”
One member of the working group, Shianne Anderson, comes with the perspective of advocacy as well as lived experience. She was incarcerated on and off for 20 years because of methamphetamine addiction. In recovery for the last 15 years, it took her a long time to gain access to the resources she needed.
“In order to cure the addiction, I had to fix behaviors and beliefs,” she said. “And I've been able to do that with therapy and medication and skill building. And without all of those things, I would probably still be in my addiction.”
Now Anderson works with the group Access Strategies in the Tooele County Jail. It helps people find resources for things like drug treatment and housing.
“As a person with lived experience who's been incarcerated, I understand how helpful it was to just have somebody say, ‘Hey, let's sit down with a directive and, what do you want to do? You need to go to treatment? OK. Well, here are your options.’”
She and others in the state working group will split up into subgroups to discuss priorities and solutions and to research and draft legislation. They also plan to meet with people statewide to see how these strategies can best support specific communities.
Clancy, who is also a police officer, said that “ultimately, this stems from a bedrock principle of civil society, which is law and order, public safety. But looking at it from the lens of the individual.”
