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Inmate Peer Support Program Helps Justice-Involved Women Get Back on Track

inforum; Meredith Holt, 2/7/2015

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Jenenne Guffey’s job has an unusual prerequisite: a criminal history.��After years of involvement with the North Dakota and Minnesota corrections systems, Guffey worked hard to rebuild her life. Now, through her position with Mental Health of America North Dakota, she’s helping others rebuild theirs.

Guffey, whose convictions were drug-related, is the sole peer support specialist for MHAND’s Inmate Peer Support program, which connects her with inmates getting ready to make the transition to treatment centers, halfway houses or on their own.

“When I self-disclose, the goal is that it will help make an immediate connection,” the 50-year-old Fargo woman says. “Many people will tell me, ‘I’m so glad to talk to somebody who’s been there and understands.’ ”

Inmate Peer Support (IPS) uses experience, resources, networking abilities, support and encouragement to help justice-involved men and women overcome challenges to full reintegration into the Fargo-Moorhead community. Goals include securing housing and employment and improving health and social interaction.

“I’m not their case worker, I’m not the law, I’m not a threat in any way. We’re peers,” she says. “I help guide them through the process, but they get to decide what that looks like, what their goals are, and we just try to strategically work on them.”

One of the young women Guffey’s working with, 23-year-old Cyndle Rennecke of Fargo, says it’s “tough out there” for women with criminal records trying to get back on their feet, but that it’s possible.

“I’m further in my life than I’ve ever been. I have my own home, I have a job, I’m paying bills,” she says. “Money’s tight, but I’m making do, and I have a lot of support,” much of which comes from her IPS relationship with Guffey.

Rennecke’s legal problems were also drug-related.

“I used it as a coping skill because it was the only way I knew how to cope. It spiraled out of control and took everything from me. I didn’t know how to live any other way, and eventually I got caught,” she says, adding that she’s been sober for 10 months.

Hers is a familiar story. According to a Dec. 31 count, half of the women in North Dakota’s various correctional facilities were there on drug or alcohol charges.

While Rennecke was still in jail last spring, Guffey helped her by making calls about treatment, housing and jobs. Now she helps with rides, and they meet for coffee to discuss her progress.

“She’s got great advice, and she cares, and that’s more than I could ever ask anybody,” Rennecke says.

Guffey, who’s been sober for 11 years now, says she was a lot like Rennecke after her first sentence, making all the right choices. But eventually she relapsed and didn’t receive credit for the time she spent doing well in the community.

“What little I did have I was afraid of losing,” she says. “I was petrified to reach out for help, and once I was back into the addiction cycle, I couldn’t get out of that, either. So I just kept pushing the envelope until I got caught.”

For probation violation, she was given 21 months between 2004 and 2006 at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee, where she completed a rigorous early-release program called the Challenge Incarceration Program.

“It’s boot camp,” she says. “Six months at boot camp, six months in the community. If you mess up, they send you back to the facility to start over.”

During her stay in Shakopee, she only saw two of her six children once.

“You’re removed from your family, you’re cut off from all support systems, and you’re extremely vulnerable in the system as far as predators go,” she says.

Guffey considers herself lucky. After her release in 2006, a former employer hired her, and someone she knew before her incarceration was willing to rent to her. Most women face more rejection seeking housing and employment.

She went right back to school at Minnesota State University Moorhead and graduated in 2009 with a social work degree.

“Many, many people throughout my journey believed in me long before I had any confidence in myself, and if I hadn’t had that, I don’t know that I could have mastered anything,” she says.

Despite their efforts to change their lives, Guffey and Rennecke say the effects of justice involvement are long term.

For example, they’re presumed to be dangerous, even though they’re not.

“I have never been convicted of a violent act in my entire life, and I can’t carry pepper spray because I’m a convicted felon. So now, as a woman, I’m not even allowed to protect myself,” Guffey says.

She recognizes that not everyone will change their minds about felons or give them the second (or third) chances they need to become productive members of society, but she’s going to keep trying to be an advocate for them.

Though she had misgivings about sharing her story with the public, she decided it was more important to be a voice for others like her.

“The first thing we talk about (in IPS) is stigma, which we’re working to eradicate. I can’t do that if I’m silent,” she says.

Rennecke, too, wants to use her experience to help others, whether it’s as a licensed addiction counselor, an advocate between treatment centers and insurance companies, or a peer support specialist with IPS.

“If I stay in recovery, share my story and show people that it’s possible, I’d love to do that,” she says.

Guffey says it’s difficult for addicts and felons to ask for help, often because they’re scared to, like she once was, and some don’t know how.

“Somewhere along the line, we were given the message that it’s a sign of weakness,” she says. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s very brave to ask people for help. We all need help.”

WOMEN IN PRISON: STATISTICS

As of Oct. 31:

• 33 – average age of women in the North Dakota corrections system
• Less than a year – average length of stay
• 71.43 percent – female inmates serving one to three years

As of Nov. 6:

• 68 percent – inmates surveyed who experienced sexual or physical abuse as an adult or child
• 79 percent – who had children

As of Dec. 31:

• 204 – women in the North Dakota corrections system
• Half of which were drug or alcohol offenders

• 51 of those were for possession
• 44 were for manufacturing/delivery/intent to deliver
• 7 were alcohol-related

• 50 percent have a behavioral health diagnosis in addition to substance abuse disorders
• 14 percent were diagnosed with a severe and persistent mental illness
• 34.4 percent of the women released from prison in 2011 were returned within three years of their release

• Of that 34 percent, 23.9 percent were returned for technical violations only;
• 10.4 percent were returned for new crimes.

Sources: North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

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