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“Mending the Lives of Brokenness One Life at a Time”
Lynette Jackson, Executive Director
903-908-2730
lj.brokenleaf@gmail.com
www.broken-leaf.com
Broken Leaf Transitional Housing
Who We Are
WELCOME TO BROKEN LEAF TRANSITIONAL HOUSING
Broken Leaf Transitional Housing
is a faith-based non-profit organization which provides
a secure stable environment for single women without
children who have recently been released from Texas
Department of Criminal Justice penal intuitions Our
continuing effort is to equip our clients with skills
needed for reentry into main stream society, reduce the
rate of recidivism and to effect positive change in the
lives of women. Broken Leaf Transitional Housing accepts
clients from various lifestyles and referral sources.
Broken Leaf Transitional Housing
is a 24 month in house residential program which offers
a variety of services geared toward the self-sufficiency
of our clients. Services included but not limited to
employment readiness, dressing for success, individual
and group counseling sessions, case management,
educational assistance, substance abuse counseling,
stress coping skills, time management, spiritual
studies, health and fitness and transportation. The
programs and services in place are designed to meet the
need of women coming out of correctional settings.
Mission: The mission of Broken Leaf Transitional Housing
is to provide a foundation of positive change for ex
female offenders, to assist in the development of the
lives of women to restore them back to their communities.
The Women:
coming into Broken Leaf are there by choice although the
women may be court stipulate to report from state
facilities or county jails on parole or probation they
are not mandated the our specific location. Broken Leaf
Transitional Housing is an alternative housing choice,
especially for women whose home environment is hostile
to their freedom or may not have a home environment to
return to once released. Broken Leaf Transitional House
offers adult women facing economic, physical, or
emotional issues due to recent incarceration the
opportunity to rethink and regroup so that they may
reconnect back into their communities. You are not under
house arrest here. If you chose to leave, we are
required to contact the Texas Department of Parole or
other referral entity. Broken Leaf Transitional Housing
is designed to be self-governing to give the clients
responsibility and self-respect. The transitional house
staff functions primarily to ensure the safety and daily
operations of the house. Upon your arrival, staff will
complete an Intake Assessment with you outlining: (a)
Date plan is developed (b) Services to be provided (c)
Times of services. (d) Your participation in required
house activities (e) Location where services will be
provided.
The rules, policies, and procedures of Broken Leaf
Transitional Housing are to ensure client’s safety,
health and over-all well-being. The house functions as a
place to provide clients the skills necessary for
functioning free from unhealthy environments as well as
alcohol and drugs. The interaction with the staff and
other clients offers you the skills necessary to live a
productive, self-sufficient and drug and alcohol free
life as you transition back into the community.
Broken
Leaf Transitional Housing
Women in
the Criminal Justice System
FACTS
Women are now incarcerated at nearly double the rate of
men in this country, yet they receive little attention
in criminal justice reform measures. This population has
gender-specific needs that differ from men in prison,
primarily owing to the fact that they are often the
primary caregivers of their children before
incarceration and are disproportionately victimized by
emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in their past.
Instead of investing in counseling treatment for such
traumatic pasts and rehabilitative treatment for
substance addiction, the criminal justice system
continues to detain women at extraordinary rates for
primarily nonviolent drug-related offenses.
Below we outline the top facts about women in our
country’s criminal justice system.
1. The number of women incarcerated has grown by more
than 800 percent over the last three decades and women
of color are locked up far more often.
2. There are now more than 200,000 women behind bars and
more than 1 million on probation. Two-thirds are
incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, many of these
drug-related crimes. Women of color are
disproportionately affected: African American women are
three times more likely than white women to be
incarcerated, while Hispanic women are 69 percent more
likely than white women to be incarcerated.
3. Many women enter the criminal justice system with a
disturbing history of emotional, physical, and sexual
abuse.
4. A reported 85 to 90 percent of women who are either
currently incarcerated or under the control of the
justice system in the United States have a history of
domestic and sexual abuse. Risk factors contributing to
women’s criminal behavior include substance abuse,
mental illness, and spousal abuse.
5. It is
estimated that up to 80 percent of women prisoners
suffer from substance addiction.
6. Pregnant prisoners are often shackled during labor
and delivery, risking the health of the mother and
child. While court cases have ruled that shackling women
prisoners to their beds during labor and delivery is
inhumane and unconstitutional, the practice continues in
many state facilities. Women in prison are also
routinely denied basic reproductive health services,
such as pregnancy testing, prenatal care, screening and
treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and
access to abortion services.
7. 44% of women in state prison have neither graduated
from high school nor received a GED. 14% of women in
state prisons have had some college-level education.
Half of women in prison participate in educational or
vocational programming—only one of every five women
takes high school or GED classes. Only half of women’s
correctional facilities offer post-secondary education
Broken
Leaf Transitional Housing
Women in the Criminal Justice System
AFTER RELEASE
Women face
further discrimination after release from prison.
After being released from prison, many women face
barriers in effectively re-entering society and
providing for themselves and their children. Women of
color, who are disproportionately poor, find themselves
restricted from governmental assistance programs, such
as housing, employment, education, and subsistence
benefits. Many states even impose statutory bans on
people with certain convictions working in certain
industries such as nursing, child care, and home health
care—three fields in which many poor women and women of
color happen to be disproportionately concentrated
Despite the fact that crime has continued to decline in
this country, our incarceration rates for nonviolent
drug offenses have spiraled out of control, and nowhere
is this clearer than in the population of women—women of
color in particular. The treatment of women in our
criminal justice system, and the large-scale abandonment
of children that it generates, are serious issues for
all of us to contend with as we think about the role of
women in today’s society.
1.
Only 4 in 10 women are able to find employment in the
regular labor market within one year of release.
Low-income women often need transitional income to
increase their access to employment and educational
opportunities that will help raise their socioeconomic
status.
2.
Also in 1996, the government passed the Housing
Opportunity Program Extension Act. Under the law, PHAs
may request criminal conviction information from law
enforcement to screen applicants for housing or tenants
for eviction. PHAs are given broad discretionary power
to deny public, Section 8, and other federally assisted
housing to anyone who has had any involvement in a
drug-related or violent crime, regardless of time passed
since the offense.
3.
Section 115 of the federal 1996 Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) imposes
a lifetime ban on receiving cash assistance and food
stamps for people convicted of a drug-related offense
but grant states the right to opt out of its provisions.
A number of states have chosen to fully or
partially opt out of the ban, but those that continue to
impose its sanctions are likely to experience long-term
social and economic costs resulting from the denial of
critical transitional income needed for housing,
education, and employment opportunities.
Julie
Ajinkya is a Policy Analyst with the Progress 2050
project at the Center for American Progress.
The Sentencing Project Research and Advocacy for Reform
Women in the Criminal Justice System Briefing Sheets
Broken Leaf Transitional Housing
History
BROKEN LEAF TRANSITIONAL HOUSING HISTORY
Lynette Jackson, Executive Director:
My story is not an unfamiliar one, probably one that has
been heard time and time again in today society. But
like countess other when a dramatic change took place in
my personal life I made a decision to help change the
lives of others. I am a survival of a domestic violence
relationship of five years. For that period of time I
was trapped in an ongoing struggle to escape and live.
That relationship led me to drug addiction,
homelessness, physical scares and mentally wounded. Once
delivered from that I found I did not know how to live
outside my abuser although the physical danger was gone
the mental wounds still took its toll. I married has a
broken women.
The Ministry:
I have since divorced and remarried had children
and homes but I was still broken. It was not until God
gave me Broken Leaf Transitional Housing, which was once
Domestic Violence Shelter that I began to heal from my
past. What the Lord has assigned to my hands is hurting
woman. Women who have suffered some of the same type of
sufferings I’ve experienced. To minister to them, to
their pain, to their secret hurts that’s been destroying
their lives from the inside. My live will help some
other women to not just survive but live to not just
fight but win through the mercies and grace of God. To
His Glory Broken Leaf Transitional Housing has been
given for that purpose.
Education:
Lynette Jackson has over 24 years’ experience dealing
with brokenness of women. I’ve ministered at the
BI-State Justice Building to the women. Women Sunday
School Teacher in Detroit, Michigan , an Associated
Degree in Behavior Science from Texarkana College and is
currently pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Christian
Ministry at Wayland Baptist University Plainview, Texas.
Currently: I am 45 years old working for the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice has a Correctional
Officer at the Telford Unit in New Boston, Texas.
I’m excited about what God has done, what He is
doing and what He will do through Broken Leaf
Transitional Housing, its Ministry and Me personally.
Broken Leaf Transitional Housing “Mending the
Lives of Brokenness One Live at a Time”
Thank You,
Lynette Jackson
Executive Director
Broken Leaf Transitional Housing
We Need
Your Help
How Can You Help?
Broken Leaf Transitional Housing is in need of your
support. There are varies way in which help can be
render.
Being a new home we are in need of clothing for the
women we service, hygiene items, kitchen ware, house
hold supplies, cleaning, supplies, bedding/linen,
furniture, curtains/drapes, computers, office furniture,
office supplies, contractors, designers, appliances,
wall decor, vehicles, for transporting the clients,
panty items, food, storage, and funds. Please consider
joining our other supporters.
Mt. Grove Baptist Church
2801 Arkansas Blvd.
Texarkana, AR 71854
Dr. Kenneth Reid, Pastor
Golden Lady Soul Food
1721 E. 9th St.
Texarkana, AR 71854
Randy Sam Shelter
402 Oak St.
Texarkana, TX 75501
Texarkana Radio Center
615 Olive St.
Texarkana, TX 75501
Barbara Rochelle
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