Homeboy Industries' Mental Health and Wellness Program for Justice System-Impacted People

Mental health

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Homeboy recognizes that mental health and substance use disorders (SUD) pose significant barriers to stability for our formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated clients. Evidence shows that individuals with mental health concerns are more likely to be incarcerated, active incarceration exacerbates mental health conditions, and without sustained treatment, justice-involved individuals are more likely to recidivate. CA's Board of State and Community Corrections found 25% of prisoners reported serious mental illnesses. Equally concerning, a CA Healthcare Foundation survey found 60% of CA inmates experience SUD. Many remain untreated because mental care is stigmatized, especially in communities of color, due to lack of access to culturally competent therapeutic support. LA has 50,000 gang members and 45,000 people exiting jail and paroled annually, making our work to provide effective and culturally competent mental health and substance use disorder treatment more urgent.

Homeboy’s Mental Health and Wellness Program advances health equity through trauma-informed, culturally competent mental health and well-being services at no cost with low barriers to entry. Advancing mental health and mental well-being is core to our approach to healing for formerly incarcerated or gang-involved people, and we have dramatically scaled up this work over the past several years. We impact 400 trainees annually through: SUD Services: We operate as a full-service model that hosts internal outpatient SUD supports to help our population move toward recovery, such as substance use testing/screening, referrals, monitoring participants' progress in rehab/ in- or out-patient treatments, facilitating participants' return, and providing guidance to prevent relapse. Therapeutic Services: Homeboy offers in-house, individual and group therapy based on a number of evidence-based best practices, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; this is an in-demand service at Homeboy that currently has a waitlist. Mental Health and Well-being: Mental health support classes include Wellness & Recovery, Parenting, and Relationship Counseling. We are expanding our offerings by surveying clients to identify gaps in offerings.
Domestic Violence (DV): Homeboy’s DV services are grounded in a holistic therapeutic model and prevention for prior offenders and survivors. Our DV team addresses day-to-day crises combined with targeted therapy work aimed at preventing future DV events.

Homeboy’s Mental Health and Wellness Program upends an ineffective and harmful paradigm that emphasizes punishment as the de facto strategy for addressing mental health and substance use, rather than treatment and holistic healing. We know that low-barrier access to culturally competent mental health and SUD treatment is a powerful strategy for reducing recidivism among formerly incarcerated people. A 2021 report by the LA County CEO’s Office shows that 68% of those with SUD or serious mental illness in LA County recidivate. Research from the Arizona State University School of Criminology and Justice echoes this, showing that “better mental health, both in-person and post release, is related to a decrease in the likelihood of recidivating.” Homeboy’s Mental Health and Wellness program dismantles the systems that fuel recidivism, and ensures that gang-involved and previously incarcerated individuals are able to redirect their lives and become contributing members of the community.

We measure the impact of our program through the following indicators over one year:
35% of trainees (140) participate in individual therapy; 10% (40) participate in group therapy.
Offering 12 hours of on-site psychiatry care/week, reaching 75 trainees.
100 trainees participate in in-house, outpatient SUD programming.
Providing 4 Wellness Days annually, reaching 80 trainees each. 60% of participating trainees demonstrate increased hope within six months of programming and 75% of trainees will demonstrate increased hope within a year of programming, as measured by the Hope Index, a nationally recognized scale to measure recovery from trauma and mental illness.
Last year (2023) was the first full year of our comprehensive Mental Health and Wellness program, and we have tremendous results so far. On average, 276 clients/month received mental health programming in the form of individual and group therapy sessions, addiction and SUD services, and domestic violence support services.