WHEELING — West Virginia lawmakers were walked through the many scenarios and steps that those leaving the state and federal prison system have to go through when re-entering society thanks to an interactive simulator.
Members of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority received a briefing Tuesday afternoon on the interactive re-entry simulator on the final day of November interim meetings in Wheeling.
The simulator is a project of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia and Uplift West Virginia, which provides resources for those in marginalized communities, such as those leaving incarceration from regional jails and state and federal prisons.
Much like the Game of Life by Milton Bradley, simulator participants are provided with a fictional ex-offender and scenarios based on a life card, which includes the ex-offender’s current living situation, job, supervised release requirements and other life issues. As the simulator continues, participants are thrown various circumstances that affect their characters, choices to make, and wild cards meant to provide challenges.
Every 15 minutes in the simulation equals one week. At the end of each “week,” participants discuss their circumstances with a program facilitator based on the decisions they made during that week. The simulator includes stations an ex-offender may encounter, such as the DMV, courts, banks, employers, housing and healthcare providers, among others.
The simulator was created more than 15 years ago by Ashley Lough, a re-entry coordinator for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Betsy Jividen, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and the former commissioner of the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation until being forced to resign by Gov. Jim Justice in 2022. Jividen was a founding board member of Wheeling-based HoH Share which includes Uplift West Virginia as one of its projects. Jividen is now a program facilitator for Uplift West Virginia.
“This is about raising awareness and breaking down barriers,” Jividen said. “Part of it is just so that, both from the worker’s perspective and from the participant’s perspective, changing a little bit about the way we view each other.”
“It’s basically a tool by which we can raise awareness, break down barriers, and sort of educate the public, law enforcement, and our community members as to what the barriers are that face people when they’re reentering our communities after a prison term,” Jividen continued.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Bernard said it can be jarring for newly released inmates to re-enter society, going from making relatively few personal decisions to having to make several thousand decisions about their lives in a single day. Without proper access to resources to make their reentry into society a success, many former inmates end up back in the corrections system.
“There are certain individuals and certain crimes that require substantial sentences, but at the end of those sentences, we’ve got to do the job of also helping those individuals to reacquaint with society,” Bernard said. “It’s not just for their benefit that’s important, but it’s also for the community’s benefit as well.”
Bernard said the Northern District U.S. Attorney’s Office has been working with the Department of Justice to create reentry simulation programs across the country. Bernard said 42 states and Canada are using reentry simulation tool kits for their own programs.
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