USF team partnering with Pasco County Corrections to offer rehabilitation services

LAND O' LAKES, Fla. - A team of students and professors at USF are partnering with Pasco County Corrections to fill a need in the community.

Dr. Edelyn Verona said she and her students started a research study with the detention center to study the risks and needs of the men and women incarcerated there.

Verona explained how they saw a need for more rehabilitation and re-entry services at this level.

"We said, ‘You know, we think that we can implement some programs here to help address those needs and risks that we've just assessed,’" Verona shared.

Undergraduate students study the results while graduate students provide resources.

Verona said they decided to start a program with the detention center to provide some of these resources to people while they’re in jail.

"We're always looking at new trends in the field of reentry as to what works and what doesn't work," Jillian Uhl, the inmate program supervisor explained.

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USF undergraduate and graduate students, along with professors started the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy program. Verona said her graduate students will provide many of these resources, while her undergraduate students study the results of the program.

The program is aimed at breaking down the walls many people put up when they’re behind the walls of a jail, and reaching them before they end up in prison for a longer period of time.

Zachary Johnson is currently in Pasco County Corrections and just completed 21 courses of this program.

Zachary Johnson says he doesn't want to repeat the same cycles.

"I want to change," Johnson said. "I don't want to be the same person coming back in here 20, 30 times."

Johnson said he learned about the DBT program from another man who was in the detention center. He wants the nine months he’s spent in the detention center to be his last.

"You know, we got to change our behavior to stop coming in jail all the time," Johnson explained. "We keep on doing the same stuff, and we don't change our behaviors, we’ll keep on coming back."

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Verona said the participants in the program learn emotional, social and interpersonal skills that can be used while they’re incarcerated and when they re-enter the community.

"Issues with kind of acting on emotions and having a lot of kind of emotional problems that kind of led to their behavior," Verona said. "So, you know, emotion, regulation, impulse control."

Verona says they also work with participants to develop re-entry skills related to searching for employment, housing and financial stability.

During a research study, students and professors saw a need for re-entry services for people at the detention center.

"It won’t make you come back to jail," Johnson said. "You get an altercation out there in the world, and you put what you practice in the DBT program out there, it'll have a totally different outcome. Instead of you just going off and doing something illegal, you can think about it. ‘Let me use my emotions. Let me use the things that I learned, and put in play and practice.’"

Verona said a lot of people don’t get access to these resources until they end up in prison.

"This is a good point of interception in an individual's life," Uhl said. "You know, unfortunately, they are detained here at the facility, but this is a good time that they're able to reflect."

Uhl explained how it’s easy for people to fall back into the same situation when they’re surrounded by the same people and environment, so this program helps teach people how to control their own behavior and reactions to situations.

USF and Pasco County Corrections partnered for the program.

The goal of the program is to lower the recidivism rate and to keep people from coming back to jail.

Verona said they’ve been very happy with the feedback they’ve gotten from participants of the program. She said they have upwards of a 90% attendance rate to the course sessions in the detention center.

Johnson feels like this program brought out the best in him, and has helped him dream of goals once he gets out of jail.

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"I envision myself helping people out," Johnson said. "You know, I'm tired of taking. I want to be a giver. So I want to help people out. Mostly, I want to help out people who have been incarcerated for a long time, who get out and don't really know what to do when they get out. They get stuck."

The team at USF and at Pasco County Corrections hope to see the success from the program in recidivism rates over time. They also hope to see programs like this find a more permanent place in detention centers.