Above photo: The newest cohort of NuEntry Opportunity Specialists celebrate the completion of their training program. Camden County.
In New Jersey’s Camden County, people with lived experience with incarceration meet people leaving jails and prisons at the gate with the support they need to reenter the community.
When Antonne Henshaw was released from a New Jersey prison in 2018, he walked out alone.
His sister had planned to pick him up, but she got the time wrong. She made it a few hours later and brought him to stay at her home — but just a few months later, she had to sell her home and move away for a new job, leaving Henshaw alone once again.
Henshaw had managed to save $13,000 during the 30 years he was in prison. It was a sizeable sum, considering the paltry pay for prison jobs, but he soon discovered it wouldn’t be enough to get him the apartment he now needed.
“Having no credit is worse than having bad credit, because at least with bad credit you exist,” Henshaw says. And despite taking part in a reentry program that was meant to help with such difficulties, he ran into issues proving the source of his income: “I had the New Jersey prison system’s inmate trust account statement as proof of where I got the money and how I saved it…but neither the rental agency or the bank would accept it as verifiable income.”
Today he is part of a team of specialists who help make reentry in New Jersey’s Camden County more effective, helping connect those leaving the system to the resources available to them. To date, the county has trained more than 100 NuEntry Opportunity Specialists who meet people leaving the state’s prison and jail system at the gate with exactly the support and services they need.
Reentry programs like the one Henshaw went through when he was released are supposed to help equip people leaving prison to manage life on the outside. But because most programs aren’t informed by previously incarcerated people’s perspectives and experiences, they often miss the mark. In Henshaw’s experience, his reentry program was largely a reiteration of everything he had already learned while in prison in preparation for seeing the parole board. “It was a duplication of services and a waste of taxpayer money,” he says.
Launched in 2019, the county’s NuEntry Opportunity Specialists program is peer-led, comprising individuals who have lived experience with the carceral system. The idea is that those like Henshaw know what’s been helpful to them and what hasn’t, so they’re in the best possible position to be able to help others following in their footsteps.
The NOS team’s goal is to meet people in person when they’re released from jail or prison, which is accomplished by connecting with them beforehand. To do so, the county jails refer people who are soon leaving to the NOS team, who are cleared for entry into the jail system. The NOS team goes into the jails to connect with people prior to release to determine their needs.
Once the individual is released, someone from the NOS team is there to meet them with what they need: a bus ticket, a pair of pants that fit, support for managing drug addiction, help with getting an ID, assistance sourcing furniture, and beyond.
The NOS team also connects with people leaving the state prison system, but in a different way. Connections on the inside, like those who work in the law library and interact with many of their fellow incarcerees that way, are key. Once NOS connections know someone is getting ready to leave, they communicate with the NOS team through the JPay system to alert them.
When an October 2020 bill mandated that more people be released from New Jersey prisons at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 300 people reentered Camden County the following month. About 100 were released on one day when NOS team members showed up with care packages and transportation assistance.
The NOS team and Camden County also work with the public defender’s office and have relationships with halfway houses throughout the state to help them identify people who could use their services. “We built a network of collaborations in order to get the information to be able to make sure that people don’t come home alone,” Henshaw says.
The NOS team also influences how Camden County manages reentry more broadly. “Our NOS team is embedded in all the work we’re doing — sitting in our reentry committee meetings, helping to set the agenda, and working with us on our strategic plan,” explains Sharon Bean, Camden County’s jail population manager.
Bean explains that the county began its work to reenvision the reentry experience around 2016. After a couple of years, it became clear that in order for their effort to be successful, it would have to be peer-led by those like Henshaw who intimately understand the challenges of reentry.
“In terms of government and systems, we have for a very long time created policies and practices that sometimes really don’t achieve the goal that we’re looking for,” Bean says. “We don’t know what’s really best for our community and for the individuals we’re going to serve if we aren’t listening to them.”
Henshaw explains it this way: “It’s not a lot of work. You just have to have a passion for it. You have to care, you have to build relationships and collaborations.”