AUGUSTA — Two women sentenced Friday for various offenses will be among 11 women starting a newly revamped CARA program at the Kennebec County jail.

The specialty program, Criminogenic Addiction Recovery Academy, aimed at helping people break the cycle of rearrest by dealing with their substance abuse and criminal thinking, has been dormant recently because of a lack of funding.

But it’s now restarting with $120,000 provided by the Legislature and a hand from Augusta officials.

Justice Robert Mullen, the judge at Friday’s hearings in the Capital Judicial Center, told each of the women, Danielle L. Hayden and Nichole M. Pranes, that he hopes they can succeed in the newly re-launched program.

“It’s a completely new program,” District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said, adding that a program for men will begin after the initial women’s program has been operating for 12 weeks.

Those in the CARA program spend an initial 5½ weeks involved with programming inside the jail before being placed on home release for another 5½ weeks under an intensive outpatient program run by Crisis & Counseling Centers personnel. The participants are followed by Maine Pretrial Services for a year with conditions that require calling in daily and reporting weekly in person.

The participants are subject to frequent random drug testing and prohibited from using alcohol and from illegal possession and use of drugs.

“We have statistics that it has proven successful,” Maloney said, citing numbers from Sheriff Ryan Reardon that show a re-offending rate of 18 to 20 percent for new criminal conduct among those who complete the program. “We’re hoping the changes can bring those numbers even lower.”

Recidivism data from the National Institute of Justice show that two-thirds, or 66 percent, of prisoners are rearrested within three years of release.

Maloney said a need for managed sober housing became apparent when some CARA participants were released from jail and returned to the drug scene they had been in before.

“Clean/sober housing in the community will give the CARA graduates a greater opportunity for success,” she said, noting that even without it, those who are participating in CARA live in the community after their jail sentence is complete.

“This is not changing the amount of time they spend in jail,” Maloney said.

Both Reardon and Maloney praised Augusta Mayor Dave Rollins for his work in helping to identify possible sites for sober housing.

 

Copy the Story Link