Federal Halfway House Opens In NH
New Hampshire’s newest correctional facility is a three-story brick walk-up that looks like any other along Manchester’s upper Elm Street. But step inside Hampshire House and enter the highly structured and supervised world of a federal prison inmate. This report from the Manchester Union-Leader.
The newly renovated townhouse … is a locked facility laced with surveillance cameras. Here federal offenders serve out the final two to six months of their sentences. Inmates must submit to random and routine drug testing, thrice nightly head counts, spot room checks, pat downs and, once employed, rigorous staff oversight. “Everything they do is structured,” Hampshire House Director John L. Sullivan explained during a tour of the building yesterday. “They are still technically inmates. If they fail our program, they go back to prison,” he said.
The first inmate arrives tomorrow. By June, there should be a waiting list to get one of the 30 beds — 20 for men and 10 for women, Sullivan said … Up until now, the only halfway houses available to federal inmates convicted of New Hampshire offenses were in Boston …
Inmates first undergo a skills assessment and training for employment readiness, money management, parenting and other life skills, Sullivan said. They then must get full-time work and connect with counseling or other social service programs. Inmates gradually earn more freedoms — such as a pass to briefly visit with family or go out to dinner — as they prove they can handle them, Sullivan said. “When they leave here, they will have a pretty good chance of making it in a community,” he explained …
There aren’t enough halfway houses to accommodate every returning inmate, Sullivan said. But every inmate isn’t suitable for a halfway house …”The Bureau of Prisons does not send out serious, violent criminals and serious sex offenders,” he said.