JANUARY 2026
Nebraska’s Bold Step Toward Family-Focused Reentry
TRANSFORM NEBRASKA Network Advances a Unified Vision for Families, Communities, and Second Chances
From left: Dawn Renee Smith, Deputy Director, Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS); Katie Thurber, Commissioner, Nebraska Department of Labor; Dr. Alyssa Bish, Director, Division of Child & Family Services, Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services; Matthew Ahern, Deputy Director, Nebraska Medicaid; Dr. Steve Corsi, CEO, Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services; and Bob Denton, Deputy Administrator, Nebraska Adult Probation.
Nebraska is redefining what it means to support returning citizens—and the families and communities who stand beside them. Through the TRANSFORM Nebraska Network, state leaders are aligning missions, data, and strategy to build a coordinated, family-centered reentry system that strengthens both public safety and community well-being.
A panel discussion on the theme “Transforming Corrections” took place during the Correctional Leaders Association’s Midwest Directors conference, held from October 7 to 10 in Omaha, hosted by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.
Moderated by Dr. Carrie Pettus, founder and CEO of Wellbeing and Equity Innovations (WEI), convened Nebraska’s top state agency leaders for a forward-looking conversation on transforming reentry through collaboration, innovation, and family engagement.
Dr. Pettus—a national expert in reentry science and systems change—guided the discussion with precision and empathy, drawing out practical insights and highlighting how Nebraska’s leadership is setting a new national benchmark for family-centered justice reform.
Director Rob Jeffreys and the Four Pillars of Correctional Transformation
At the core of Nebraska’s reentry vision is Rob Jeffreys, Director of the Nebraska Department of Corrections (NDCS), whose leadership emphasizes human dignity, accountability, and collaboration.
Jeffreys has articulated four strategic pillars that anchor Nebraska’s approach to corrections and reentry:
1. Staff Empowerment and Wellness – Investing in correctional professionals as agents of change through leadership development, safety, and wellness initiatives.
2. Rehabilitation and Reentry – Aligning services and evidence-based programs to individual needs, ensuring that people are prepared for success before release.
3. Infrastructure and Technology Modernization – Leveraging data integration and digital tools to promote efficiency, transparency, and continuity across agencies.
4. Stakeholder and Community Engagement – Building strong partnerships with families, employers, community groups, and service providers to expand opportunity and trust.
Jeffreys’ four pillars align seamlessly with WEI’s trademark Five-Key Model for Reentry, creating a shared blueprint for progress that begins during incarceration and extends into the heart of Nebraska’s communities.
Families and Communities at the Center
Throughout the discussion, panelists reinforced a clear message: reentry is not only about individuals—it’s about strengthening families and restoring communities.
• Dr. Alyssa Bish, Director of the Division of Children and Family Services, stated that “family well-being is the bedrock of what we do.” She emphasized that when families are supported, children are safer and reentry outcomes improve for everyone.
• Bob Denton, Deputy Administrator of Adult Probation, noted that “stabilizing one person means stabilizing a whole household.”
• Dr. Steve Corsi, CEO of the Department of Health and Human Services, called attention to the often-overlooked role of extended family members, who provide care and housing during incarceration but rarely receive formal support.
Under Dr. Pettus’s guidance, the conversation highlighted the growing consensus that family well-being is not peripheral—it is foundational to long-term public safety, equity, and health.
Aligning Missions Across Agencies
Each participating agency is advancing its mission within a shared framework of family-centered collaboration:
• Katie Thurber, Commissioner of the Department of Labor, emphasized employment as the key to reducing recidivism: “A good job changes everything for a family.”
• Matt Ahern, Deputy Director of Medicaid, underscored the importance of continuity in physical and behavioral health care during and after incarceration.
• Dr. Bish reaffirmed her division’s vision, “Good Life. Safe Families,” as central to Nebraska’s transformation.
Together with NDCS, these leaders are implementing WEI’s Five-Key Model for Reentry, which prioritizes:
1. Healthy Thinking Patterns – Reliable, mutually beneficial relationships between two people that range from brief to enduring in duration within formal or informal social contexts.
2. Positive Relationships – Reliable, mutually beneficial relationships between two people that range from brief to enduring in duration within formal or informal social contexts.
3. Positive Social Engagement – Social experiences organized for beneficial social purposes that directly or indirectly involve others, engaged in during discretionary time, and experienced as enjoyable.
4. Meaningful Work Trajectories – Sustainable compatibility of an individual’s goals and abilities and the demands of that individual’s occupation (obligations/job paid or unpaid) is sustainable.
5. Effective Coping Strategies – Adaptive behavioral and psychological efforts taken to manage and reduce internal/external stressors in ways that are not harmful in the short or long-term.
Collaboration and Innovation in Practice
The TRANSFORM Nebraska Network exemplifies how intentional collaboration can change systems. Bob Denton described it as “moving from cooperation to true integration.” Commissioner Thurber proposed embedding employment specialists directly into reentry and family programs. Matt Ahern and Dr. Bish emphasized pre-release coordination, starting Medicaid enrollment and family planning before release to ensure continuity of care and income.
Dr. Pettus facilitated the dialogue by connecting these insights to national best practices—demonstrating how Nebraska’s integrated approach aligns with cutting-edge research on interagency reentry ecosystems. She highlighted how the state’s leadership reflects a growing movement toward evidence-based, family-centered transformation across justice systems.
Looking Forward: A Statewide Vision of Success
When asked to define success five years from now, Dr. Steve Corsi envisioned a Nebraska where “families experience support instead of fragmentation, and returning citizens have clear pathways to health, housing, and work.”
Commissioner Thurber and Dr. Bish offered bold ideas for the Network’s future:
• A seamless IT system connecting returning citizens with jobs, training, housing, and health services.
• A father engagement initiative, equipping fathers with parenting and employment resources before release to build stronger families from day one.
Dr. Pettus closed the discussion by emphasizing that system transformation begins with shared values—a belief that families, not programs, are the central unit of change.
A National Model on the Horizon
Through Director Jeffreys’ four pillars of correctional success, Dr. Pettus’s research-driven leadership, and the collective vision of Nebraska’s state agencies, the TRANSFORM Nebraska Network is setting a new national standard for family-centered reentry.
By linking correctional innovation, health access, family engagement, and workforce development, Nebraska is demonstrating what’s possible when systems unite around a common purpose: empowering families, strengthening communities, and redefining reentry as a pathway to belonging.
SUPPORT 4 FAMILIES Enhances Public Safety
Public Safety Begins at Home
America’s public safety debates tend to follow a familiar script. One side calls for tougher enforcement; the other emphasizes decarceration and second chances. What both sides routinely miss is where public safety actually holds—or collapses—after prison: inside families.
Nearly everyone released from prison returns not to independence but to relatives. Parents, partners, siblings, and children provide housing, money, transportation, emotional regulation, and daily structure. They are, in effect, the country’s largest reentry system—largely unpaid, untrained, and unsupported. When families remain stable, communities are safer. When families fracture under strain, the risk of relapse, violence, and reoffending rises.
This is not a moral argument. It is a public safety one.
The research of Carrie Pettus-Davis, a leading scholar of reentry and wellbeing, reframes the issue in plain terms: recidivism is often the downstream consequence of family instability, not simply individual failure. If safety is the goal, then family wellbeing is not peripheral—it is foundational.
Reentry Is a High-Risk Public Safety Moment
The weeks and months after release are among the most volatile in the criminal justice lifecycle. Employment is uncertain. Mental health symptoms surface. Old social networks reassert themselves. Stress accumulates faster than stability.
Families are expected to buffer all of this. They provide accountability, encouragement, and a form of informal supervision—often while managing their own economic insecurity, trauma, and exhaustion from years of separation. Unsurprisingly, research shows that even strong family support tends to erode within the first year after release. When that happens, people often drift back toward networks that demand less and enable more.
What looks like individual backsliding is frequently family overload.
Why Wellbeing Is a Public Safety Metric
Traditional public safety metrics focus on whether a new crime occurs. A wellbeing lens asks what happens before that point. Are households calm or chronically stressed? Are expectations realistic or combustible? Is daily life structured enough to reduce impulsivity and conflict?
These are not soft variables. They are protective factors long recognized in criminology. Pettus-Davis’s 5-Key Model for Reentry organizes them into five domains: healthy thinking, coping skills, social engagement, work engagement, and routines. Each directly affects behavior; none can be sustained by individuals alone.
Public safety does not emerge from surveillance after release. It emerges from stability before crisis.
Expectations Are a Safety Issue
One of the most corrosive—and overlooked—drivers of post-release conflict is mismatched expectation. Families often hope incarceration has produced immediate transformation. Returning citizens are adjusting to freedom, supervision, and lingering psychological effects of confinement.
When expectations collide, conflict escalates. Arguments increase. Trust erodes. Stress spikes. These are precisely the conditions associated with poor decision-making and elevated risk.
Helping families understand what reentry actually looks like—slow, uneven, fragile—reduces conflict and stabilizes households. That stabilization is not therapeutic window dressing; it is preventive public safety.
Stress, Coping, and the Quiet Prevention of Harm
Family-focused wellbeing interventions treat coping as a skill, not a personality trait: emotional regulation, boundary-setting, problem prioritization, and self-care. When families cope better, households are calmer. When households are calmer, escalation—verbal, emotional, physical—is less likely.
This is how public safety is often built: quietly, upstream, and without fanfare.
Nebraska: Family Stability as Crime Prevention
Nebraska offers one of the clearest demonstrations that family wellbeing is not an abstraction but a durable public safety strategy. There, Support4Families took shape alongside broader reentry reforms as a response to a simple problem: family support was essential, but unsustainable under pressure.
Rather than assuming families could indefinitely absorb the costs of reentry, the Nebraska model worked directly with family members—teaching communication, boundary-setting, problem-solving, and emotional regulation. The logic was disarmingly practical. When families remain cohesive, expectations realistic, and daily life predictable, the conditions that drive people back into crisis diminish.
Nebraska’s experience suggests that the most reliable form of public safety is not intensified supervision after release, but family stability sustained long enough for reintegration to hold.
Reentry Is a High-Risk Public Safety Moment
The weeks and months after release are among the most volatile in the criminal justice lifecycle. Employment is uncertain. Mental health symptoms surface. Old social networks reassert themselves. Stress accumulates faster than stability.
Families are expected to buffer all of this. They provide accountability, encouragement, and a form of informal supervision—often while managing their own economic insecurity, trauma, and exhaustion from years of separation. Unsurprisingly, research shows that even strong family support tends to erode within the first year after release. When that happens, people often drift back toward networks that demand less and enable more.
What looks like individual backsliding is frequently family overload.
Why Wellbeing Is a Public Safety Metric
Traditional public safety metrics focus on whether a new crime occurs. A wellbeing lens asks what happens before that point. Are households calm or chronically stressed? Are expectations realistic or combustible? Is daily life structured enough to reduce impulsivity and conflict?
These are not soft variables. They are protective factors long recognized in criminology. Pettus-Davis’s 5-Key Model for Reentry organizes them into five domains: healthy thinking, coping skills, social engagement, work engagement, and routines. Each directly affects behavior; none can be sustained by individuals alone.
Public safety does not emerge from surveillance after release. It emerges from stability before crisis.
Expectations Are a Safety Issue
One of the most corrosive—and overlooked—drivers of post-release conflict is mismatched expectation. Families often hope incarceration has produced an immediate transformation. Returning citizens are adjusting to freedom, supervision, and lingering psychological effects of confinement.
When expectations collide, conflict escalates. Arguments increase. Trust erodes. Stress spikes. These are precisely the conditions associated with poor decision-making and elevated risk.
Helping families understand what reentry actually looks like—slow, uneven, fragile—reduces conflict and stabilizes households. That stabilization is not therapeutic window dressing; it is preventive public safety.
Stress, Coping, and the Quiet Prevention of Harm
Family-focused wellbeing interventions treat coping as a skill, not a personality trait: emotional regulation, boundary-setting, problem prioritization, and self-care. When families cope better, households are calmer. When households are calmer, escalation—verbal, emotional, physical—is less likely.
This is how public safety is often built: quietly, upstream, and without fanfare.
Nebraska: Family Stability as Crime Prevention
Nebraska offers one of the clearest demonstrations that family wellbeing is not an abstraction but a durable public safety strategy. There, Support4Families took shape alongside broader reentry reforms as a response to a simple problem: family support was essential, but unsustainable under pressure.
Rather than assuming families could indefinitely absorb the costs of reentry, the Nebraska model worked directly with family members—teaching communication, boundary-setting, problem-solving, and emotional regulation. The logic was disarmingly practical. When families remain cohesive, expectations realistic, and daily life predictable, the conditions that drive people back into crisis diminish.
Nebraska’s experience suggests that the most reliable form of public safety is not intensified supervision after release, but family stability sustained long enough for reintegration to hold.
Indiana: Public Safety Before Incarceration
That same logic is now being tested further upstream in Marion County, Indiana, where a Support4Families-informed diversion initiative targets nonviolent parents with minor children before incarceration occurs. Funded through a federal grant and driven by public defender referrals, the program offers a structured alternative to prosecution—combining individual programming grounded in the 5-Key framework with intentional family support.
Participants, many in their twenties and thirties charged with survival-related offenses, can earn dismissed charges through completion. The public safety payoff is straightforward: prevent the cascading damage of incarceration—lost housing, lost work, family destabilization—before it begins. Early demand has been strong despite minimal staffing, a signal not of leniency, but of unmet public safety need.
Indiana’s experiment underscores a basic truth: the safest jail cell is the one never needed because families were stabilized in time.
Atlantic County: Prosecutors Redefining Accountability
A parallel experiment is unfolding in Atlantic County, New Jersey, where prosecutors are redefining what accountability looks like when trauma and wellbeing are taken seriously. The Alternative Prosecution for Positive Outcomes (APPO) program replaces traditional prosecution with a structured, trauma-responsive pathway that combines therapeutic intervention, case management, and family support.
Since launching in 2024, the program has enrolled dozens of participants with indictable charges; the overwhelming majority are either actively engaged or have graduated successfully, with only a small number of non-completions. Charges are dismissed or reduced only after participants demonstrate emotional regulation, stability, and forward momentum in work and family life.
APPO’s lesson is not ideological. It is prosecutorial: accountability paired with wellbeing prevents future harm more reliably than conviction alone.
Toward a National Public Safety Model
Taken together, Nebraska, Indiana, and Atlantic County point toward a different—and more serious—public safety model than the one that currently dominates American debate. It is not a model built on leniency, nor one that romanticizes rehabilitation. It is a model grounded in risk reduction, behavioral science, and a clear-eyed understanding of how harm is actually prevented.
The throughline is simple: public safety improves when systems stabilize families rather than exhaust them. Whether the intervention occurs after release, before incarceration, or at the prosecutorial stage, the mechanism is the same. Reduce chronic stress. Clarify expectations. Build coping capacity. Strengthen daily routines. Anchor people in work, family, and community long enough for change to hold.
This is not a call to abandon enforcement. It is a call to redefine seriousness. A serious public safety strategy invests upstream, where prevention is still possible, rather than downstream, where damage has already occurred. It recognizes that trauma, instability, and isolation are not excuses for crime—but they are powerful predictors of it.
For policymakers, the implication is unavoidable. Monitoring can detect failure, but it cannot prevent it. Families, when prepared and supported, can. The question is not whether we can afford to invest in family-centered, wellbeing-oriented justice strategies. It is whether we can afford not to.
If public safety is truly about preventing harm, then the lesson from these early models is clear: the strongest infrastructure we have is not the jail or the courtroom, but the family—provided we are willing to support it.
That is not a soft conclusion. It is a hard one. And it may be the most pragmatic path forward for a country that can no longer afford to confuse punishment with safety.
If you’d like next steps, I can:
- prepare a submission-ready version with headline options and a tighter lede,
- adapt this into a policy brief for DOJ, governors, or prosecutors, or
- create a one-page executive summary highlighting public safety ROI for funders and legislators.
Celebrating Second Chances: WEI and Atlantic County Honor Graduates of the Alternative Prosecution for Positive Outcomes Program
Atlantic City County Prosecutor
William Reynolds
APPO Project Director
Rachel Fulmer
Executive Assistant Prosecutor
Rick McKelvie
WEI Community Liaison & Case
Manager Khadijah Muhammad
ON OCTOBER 15, 2025, families, community partners, and justice leaders gathered at Stockton University’s Atlantic City campus to mark a milestone in reimagining what justice can look like. The occasion was the Fall 2025 graduation of the Alternative Prosecution for Positive Outcomes (APPO) program — an innovative collaboration between Wellbeing & Equity Innovations (WEI) and the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office (ACPO).
The event celebrated nine graduates who completed a program designed to replace traditional prosecution with a trauma-responsive path toward healing, accountability, and opportunity. APPO offers an alternative for individuals with pending indictable charges, providing intensive therapeutic support and wraparound services that promote emotional regulation, self-awareness, and long-term stability.
L-R: Rachel Fulmer – Project Director, WEI, Michael Rodgers – Legal Intern, Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, Lynn Heyer – Chief Assistant Prosecutor, Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, Rick McKelvey – Executive Assistant Prosecutor, Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office,
Khadijah Muhammad – Community Liaison, WEI
The Power of “Yes”
APPO Project Director Rachel Fulmer opened the program by welcoming everyone and introducing Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds, who delivered opening remarks that captured the program’s spirit and transformative potential. He reminded the audience that APPO “never existed before,” emerging from a simple yet revolutionary question: What if prosecutors could say yes to rehabilitation rather than conviction?
“It’s very easy to say no,” Reynolds told the audience. “When you say yes — when you choose to give someone an opportunity — that takes more work. But that’s the work that changes lives.”
Since the program’s official launch in 2024, 27 individuals have entered APPO. Twelve have already graduated successfully, 13 remain actively engaged, and only two did not complete the program — results that far exceed most diversion initiatives in the county. Reynolds credited the success to the synergy between WEI’s trauma-informed clinicians and his office’s forward-thinking legal staff, led by Executive Assistant Prosecutor Rick McKelvie and Chief Assistant Prosecutor of Diversion Lynn Hire.
“As long as our administration is in Atlantic County,” Reynolds pledged, “we’ll do everything in our power to get to yes — to help as many people as possible find their way back into the community as contributing members, parents, and neighbors.”
A Partnership Rooted in Hope and Empathy
The APPO initiative grew from WEI’s broader mission: to promote well-being, equity, and human potential through science-based approaches to justice reform. The partnership began in 2023, when WEI founder Dr. Carrie Pettus and national justice reform leader John Koufos connected with Atlantic County officials to pilot a model that acknowledges trauma as a core driver of criminal behavior — and wellbeing as a necessary condition for public safety.
“Nobody in New Jersey was talking about trauma as a factor in crime,” noted Prosecutor McKelvie during his remarks. “Everyone was focused on substance use or mental health. WEI introduced trauma as the missing piece — and it’s changing how we think about justice.”
McKelvie underscored the program’s legal significance. Successful completion leads to dismissal or reduction of charges, often resulting in expungement — a genuine clean slate. “For most job applications,” he said, “it’s as if the case never happened.”
A Trauma-Responsive Approach
WEI Project Director Rachel Fulmer described the heart of the program as “expanding each person’s window of tolerance” — the psychological capacity to remain calm and resilient in the face of stress. “People who’ve experienced trauma often live in survival mode,” Fulmer explained. “Our goal is to help them build safety, connection, and coping skills so that challenges no longer trigger crisis responses. That’s when lasting change begins.”
One of APPO’s distinctive therapeutic elements is “metta” (loving-kindness) meditation, a practice that cultivates compassion for oneself and others. Fulmer played a short video from Dr. Sharon Salzberg, a pioneer of the technique, to illustrate how compassion strengthens resilience — especially for those recovering from trauma.
“It’s not weakness,” Salzberg reminds viewers. “Compassion and kindness actually make us happier, healthier, and more capable of enduring hardship.”
Beyond clinical sessions, the program includes case management and family support components. WEI’s community liaison and case manager, Kia Muhammad, plays a vital role in connecting participants to employment, education, and social resources.
“I’m boots on the ground,” Muhammad said. “My job is to bridge the gaps — to help participants address the socioeconomic barriers that can pull them back into instability. For many, this program is their first chance not just to avoid a conviction, but to heal from pain they didn’t even know they were carrying.”
Fulmer and Muhammad called each graduate forward to receive their certificate, pausing to highlight their milestones — educational pursuits, employment gains, and personal growth. Family members and community partners applauded as each name was read, many wiping tears from their eyes.
“Our participants learn to be more connected to who they are,” Fulmer said. “They come to understand their goals and their worth — and once that happens, change is no longer theoretical. It’s a lived experience.”
A Model for the Nation
The Alternative Prosecution for Positive Outcomes program is among the first in the country to formally integrate trauma science into prosecutorial decision-making. Participants are referred by prosecutors, defense attorneys, or even family members. Eligibility is limited to residents with open indictable charges, and completion may result in the dismissal or reduction of charges at the prosecutor’s discretion.
By centering human dignity and scientific understanding of trauma, the program challenges conventional assumptions about crime and punishment. “We are proving,” Fulmer said, “that accountability and compassion are not opposites — they are partners in public safety.”
“When we talk about public safety,” Fulmer said, “we’re really talking about public wellbeing. People who are supported, connected, and well are less likely to reoffend — and more likely to thrive.”
This approach aligns with WEI’s belief that addressing trauma is essential to breaking cycles of violence. The organization’s trauma-responsive framework trains participants to recognize their triggers, practice self-regulation, and rebuild healthy relationships — all within a supportive network that includes prosecutors, clinicians, and community partners.
Voices of Collaboration
The event also underscored the broad coalition behind APPO’s success. Prosecutor McKelvie thanked the Atlantic County court system, defense attorneys, and probation officers for embracing the program despite its novelty.
“They gave us grace,” he said. “They trusted us to try something new — and that trust has paid off.”
He also credited WEI for bringing rigorous behavioral science into the courtroom. “When people talk about trauma now in New Jersey criminal justice, they’re referencing the work WEI has done here,” he said. “That’s the start of something major.”
The Human Impact
Perhaps the most powerful moments of the ceremony came not from speeches but from the stories of the graduates themselves. Many spoke informally afterward about the difference the program had made. Some discovered, for the first time, the connection between past trauma and present behavior. Others found employment, housing, or renewed family bonds.
Muhammad reflected on this transformation with visible pride:
“A lot of participants didn’t realize they had trauma until they started working with us,” she said. “They thought anger was just who they were. Now they have language for what they feel — and the tools to respond differently. That’s healing.”
A Celebration of Possibility
As the ceremony concluded, families and staff gathered and shared a meal. Laughter replaced the tension that often surrounds courtrooms. In its place there was a sense of collective victory — not over the law, but through it.
“This program began with a phone call and a text message,” Prosecutor Reynolds said. “Now it’s changing lives. That’s the power of yes.”
The graduates left with certificates, smiles, and, perhaps most importantly, renewed confidence in their futures.
Looking Ahead
With momentum building, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office and WEI are exploring ways to expand APPO’s reach, including replication in other jurisdictions. Early discussions are underway with state and national partners interested in adapting the trauma-responsive prosecution model to their own communities.
“Our hope,” Fulmer concluded, “is that one day, every county in America will have a program like APPO — one that sees people not just for the mistakes they’ve made, but for the potential they hold.”