This resource's creation was supported by the 2025-2026 APAF Justice Fellows Workgroup.
Carceral settings are high-violence environments and leave individuals vulnerable to repeated victimization. A study focusing on Illinois state prisons found that 24% of incarcerated males met criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the United States, carceral settings are the largest providers of mental health services. In these settings, the rates of mental illness are 3-12 times higher than in the general population.[1] Conversely, certain prison environments offer some positive opportunities such as vocational training, GED courses, and college courses. The Maine Department of Corrections is leading the way with programs that allow some incarcerated individuals to work remotely.[2] These courses and programs offer the opportunity to challenge the "prisoner identity" which often becomes ingrained for those who have been in carceral settings.
This second post of three focuses on the experiences of our three storytellers in carceral settings.
Rooted in the Brown v Board of Education Era
Mr. Jefferson: I think my first offense was around 1963 or 1964: stealing a car and burglarizing a clothing store, myself and another young man. We got busted, and that was my first incarceration.
Mr. Jefferson: I went to what they call the Receiving Home for Children. That was an eye-opening experience. Now I'm around all the other younger guys and older teenagers. There was sexual pressure, fights. At that time, you've learned to grow up real fast. If you're going to be a man, you've got to stand up. You're going to fight; there's no question about it.
Mr. Jefferson: The way the system treats you, the judges in the courts, nobody's really soft on a young Black man during those years. I went to the National Training School for Boys. You need to study the Receiving Home for Children and the National Training School for Boys. It was one of the one or two juvenile prison facilities that were federal.
Mr. Jefferson: I got two years for car theft and burglary. Typical young crimes, usually the start of a criminal career. But it's the first time in my life, other than my neighborhood, that I've seen so many white boys around. There was a lot of racial prejudice within the institution.
Mr. Jefferson: One thing about American institutions, jails and prisons: if you want to see carved-out roles of racial prejudice, visit the United States Bureau of Prisons. Everybody gravitates to their own race. When you go into a prison dining room, you'll see the white guys sitting in one section, the Hispanic guys in another, the Black guys in another. Constant racial segregation, and in this case, it's self-imposed by group culture. This sets the tone of the institution.
Mr. Jefferson: When I became a valedictorian upon completion of my paralegal certificate, I asked ‘How many people here have heard of the National Training School?’ The audience was full. You know how many people raised their hand? One person. To me, it's like an unwritten part of history that is just washed away to the side. But it would give an understanding of how people in my generation wound up the way they did.
Mr. Jefferson: If you were from federal land, they hated you. I'm from federal land and confined in federal land, but the majority of the staff was probably 90-some percent white guards from all over. If you were in any way a thorn in their side, or if they thought you were breaking a rule, you got shipped off to the major federal prison system. Around 1966 or 1967, I was transferred to a Federal Reformatory, after being locked down because they said I was involved in a plot to escape.
Mr. Jefferson: They pulled me out of the strip cell, which is another thing that's been outlawed. That's where they take your mattresses and everything. You don't have anything except a cement floor. That's how you're being punished.
Mr. Jefferson: We rode in the car down to Virginia, I see these gun towers, and I'm maybe 16 or 17, not an adult officially by age, and this is where I go.
Mr. Jefferson: This is how they dealt with me. He didn't offer me a seat. I'm standing at the door, a young kid in a major prison, still a juvenile. He says, 'What's your name? Where you from?' Once he heard where I’m from, I'll never forget his words: 'You're from there? Let me tell you something. We don't like boys from down here. Get on out of my office.' That was my classification.
Mr. Jefferson: So I'm on the compound, and this is when I got familiar with the white racial groups: the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Brotherhood, Skinheads. Everybody's trying to fit in their own way. This is when I'm introduced to my first race riots that break out in the yard, and guards openly saying they've got their Klan sheets in their pockets.
Mr. Jefferson: I did the two years. I maxed out. I don't think I got any good time. And when I left, I think that was the turning point in my life. I left out an angry young Black man, maybe 18 or 19 years old. They gave me five dollars and a bus ticket.
Mr. Jefferson: I didn't even go home. What I did was meet up at a pre-designated spot with a group of other young guys. The majority of them are dead now. We decided that we were going to make our own way, be together. I knew that I had already brought hardship and pain to my mother. My path had already been determined by the system. Those who wrote the reports had written me off at a young age. I was like their self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mr. Jefferson: We got together, and that's when I graduated into armed robbery. The criminal behavior escalated.
Interviewer: When you were first in, it was for stealing a car, right? And then armed robbery.
Mr. Jefferson: Yeah, stealing the car and burglary, housebreaking, breaking into a store. No violence or anything like that. But then I got the National Training School experience and then the Federal Reformatory in Petersburg, Virginia. I was assigned to the electrical shop because in training school everybody had to get a trade.
Mr. Jefferson: But I'm the only young Black guy in the electrical shop. They don't know what to do with me. The white guys are getting tools and going out to do real work, and I'm just sitting there being ignored by the two white supervisors. After maybe a month or two, I'm asking, 'How come you're not teaching me anything?' I knew what it was: pure racial discrimination.
Mr. Jefferson: They gave me a job fixing headphones. I had to learn how to do that, and I got good. Everybody on the compound would say, “Give it to him”. Then they started teaching me a little bit and found out I could learn. Although it was a volatile environment, wherever I wound up in life, I've always tried to gain some amount of knowledge, make some good out of it.
Mr. Jefferson: Right, and then hitting the street, where do you go from there? That was my introduction to justice involvement. I didn't go into the military, and that's another point. In the 60s, a lot of young Black men were able to go to college and be successful, but there were basically three areas you went to. You either went to Vietnam because of the draft. A lot of my friends went to Vietnam, came right back with legs blown off, PTSD. Some of them that I still see have never been right since. Or you were able to get out through some type of program and get to college and get a job. And there was a big thing with skin complexion. Some people that are real light, they could pass.
Mr. Jefferson: My family was so afraid for me, and I really hate this part of the story, but it shows how indoctrinated they were, especially on the women's side, and so much fear for a young boy growing up in that environment. They wanted to protect that young seed and have him grow, not become a victim of the system like I did, or get killed, or not be able to get a good job.
Mr. Jefferson: Even within the Black community, there was a lot of skin color discrimination. Some members of my family didn't like my dark-skinned friends. I didn't understand that or like it, because I'm more connected with the spiritual part of a person. They would say, 'Why aren't you friends with so-and-so up the street?' But those people were always light-skinned. That made me even more rebellious against my own family, wanting to get out of the house, because they weren't raised in the 60s. I was living in the 60s as a young man, and I didn't want to have a mindset like that.
Interviewer: Did you ever see the path towards college being possible for you? Did you ever see another path than the one you took actually being achievable?
Mr. Jefferson: Yes, I did. And I saw it while I was doing one of my prison sentences, because that's where I got the main part of my college education. I have an undergraduate degree in human resource management.
Mr. Jefferson: I was in a federal institution at that time. I had both federal and state sentences. But I was serving a virtual life sentence: 79 years total on the aggregate. So it was like a no-hope type sentence, but even during this, I was fighting my case. I never let the dream go of being free again. I stayed in the law books.
Mr. Jefferson: Now your status is going up. You are going in for a long time. The judges are saying, 'We want you to die in prison, so I'm going to give you so much time.' And I wasn't even 25 years old. Written off again.
Mr. Jefferson: We were treated so badly that we were the ones who stood against the staff: the food, the haircuts, being able to grow a beard, filing litigation, speaking up, being out front. Guys out of my hometown were not a docile group of young men.
Interviewer: Can you help me understand why there was so much discrimination against guys from there? What was driving that?
Mr. Jefferson: My hometown had a reputation at that time. We were a 60s generation, the time of social upheaval and rebellion. Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, SNCC. I lived through that era and met some of those people, in the street and in prison.
Mr. Jefferson: It's because they couldn't understand how we stood up to them. Vocally, with our mouths. And also, if you needed to, with homemade shanks, to survive. We were so young, and it goes back to National Training School. That was the pipeline. If you messed up there, they could automatically shoot you right off into Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, or Atlanta, or Petersburg. By that time, you're moving all over the federal system with a small group. We had to band together to survive.
Mr. Jefferson: We felt as though we were going to fight back in the best way we knew. It's either fight back or become docile and accept it. How can you feel good about yourself? As a man, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. We developed a camaraderie within the prison system to survive. The Bureau of Prisons didn't like that.
Mr. Jefferson: The guys from the South, or from New York, or from different parts of the country, when they saw how we operated, they respected us. They'd say, 'If something happens, we're gonna roll with you guys, because y'all take a stand.' Not only against the racist groups in the population, but also against the administration. Otherwise, you're going to be eaten alive.
Shaped by the War on Drugs
Interviewer: When and how did you first get involved in the justice system?
Skip: Using drugs. I dropped out of school at 15. At 17, I learned how to manipulate. I used to work for Chase in my early youth. And I learned how to do fraudulent checks. I got arrested for that but was given probation. Then I started working for Avis and figured out how to rent fraudulent cars. That's what really got me locked up the first time, but I was still considered an adolescent. I was selling these fraudulent cars to drug dealers because I was starting to use. I quickly realized that this was a way that I can use and not have to spend none of my money. This is when I got my first misdemeanor time; it was a felony, but it was misdemeanor time, and it was the first time I went to Rikers Island.
Interviewer: What was it like for you in the justice system?
Skip: Because I grew up in a justice system, I don't know how to answer that. My mom always said she ain't coming to see none of her kids in jail. So, for the 25 years after that I was back and forth in jail, my mom never once came to see me. My dad was always there until he passed. I had support with my dad. Once my dad passed, it's like the rest of the family just wrote me off, and I had no support.
Skip: I had no real reason to get clean, because nobody wanted me in that house, nobody would offer me to get out and come live with them. I used to come out and go into the shelter system. And that's not conducive to somebody wanting to do the right thing. I'd always get led back into the system. I always say I did my time on the installment plan, which meant every year for 25 years, either I was getting released or I was getting arrested, or I was violating parole while I was in the street doing something that was gonna get me arrested.
Interviewer: It sounds like both environments were rough, either being in the jail or being in the shelter system. How did you experience those two environments?
Skip: I didn't have a plan, but I was contemplating suicide. They had me in this correctional facility that was a farm. I was tending cows. This was one of my first few times Upstate, and I just had to get out of there. So, I kind of faked it. But it was true, I was really feeling despondent. And because this was like a prison camp, there were no psychiatrists or mental health services. So, if you look like you needed mental health services, they quickly transferred you out. And I got transferred out so I could access services, which is ultimately what I wanted. I didn't know if I wanted services, but I knew I had to get out of that place.
Skip: I built resilience and independence. I learned how to take care of myself. Did that mean doing crime? Yes, it did. Did that mean hustling? Yes, it did. Did it help me take my intelligence and put it on things maybe I shouldn't have? Yes, indeed. And I grew up in that system. When you're in the system and don't have nobody looking out for you, there's things you need, things you have to get, and ways you learn how to get them. You have to understand, I was the baby of my family. And I was spoiled. I got whatever I wanted.
Skip: Then I had my first son, and he became the baby. But my place has been spoiled and getting what I want; I had to learn how to do without.
Interviewer: When did that happen?
Skip: Well, I have three sons, and I was literally pregnant with all three of them at one point or another in jail. But I had my oldest when I was 21 or 22.
Interviewer: Did you have any involvement with any specialty courts within the system?
Skip: No, and this is why I'm part of several coalitions and legislative actions today, most notably the treatment court expansion program. In all my times going in and out, I was always arrested, visibly addicted, suffering from an unchecked mental illness, and homeless. Every time I went in, I left the same way, and this is what directs my work today. Because behavioral health issues and a criminal justice system sometimes go hand in hand, and you need to attend to both. So, if I'm coming in visibly addicted to drugs, if you peel away the layers and become trauma-informed, you will see that I would have never been intercepted by the system if I wasn't trying to feed a habit. You'll give me the treatment that I need. But no, back in those days, and we're fighting to fix that now, they didn't look at you as a person, they looked at your rap sheet. And mine is about as thick as a telephone book. I had plenty of “failure to appear”’s. If you arrested me, visibly addicted, I didn't have a place to stay. And then all of a sudden, you tell me to leave and come back to court on this day, and here's a piece of paper. Do you literally think that I'm gonna skip down the courtroom steps and make it my business to come back that next week? No, and see, that's what happened. I would never come back, because I'm too busy in the streets.
Interviewer: I mean, how would you even keep track?
Skip: And then I'd get arrested again. Everything else that I did before would come on me. I would probably have to do state time, but you did the same thing. You sent me upstate to a program that didn't work. Then you release me, because I was a nonviolent drug offender, so I didn't have to do that much time upstate. And I'm gonna come home and get a job, and I'd fight with you over the job you wanted me to get, because you just knew that I should go down the block to McDonald's or Burger King. I used to tell you, I am far too intelligent to be frying burgers and dipping fries. So I would do what you wanted. Then the minute I got released, I'm off to doing what I want to do, which would eventually lead me back into the justice system.
Interviewer: Very circular.
Skip: It was rinse and repeat. You’re sending me home to a shelter, not to any supports or anything. The POs (parole officers) are not supportive. My kids was in the family care system by then when I had a PO tell me, “I don't care what you gotta do for them or anybody else, I only care about what you have to do for me”. A lot of times when you're involved in multiple systems, these systems aren't talking to each other. Nobody's helping with housing, nobody's helping with a program. And the minute I fail, because the stress and everything I'm trying to do is too much, you throw me right back in jail, and then I got to start all over again.
Skip: Today, we call that the criminalization of behavioral health. Behavioral health should not be criminalized. We talk about mass incarceration and how many people are currently incarcerated. If we stopped criminalizing behavioral health and sent them to the treatments and supports they needed, we wouldn't have this big of a system.
Interviewer: What was your healthcare like when you were in the system? Were you getting pregnancy care? Were you getting any care for your addiction?
Skip: There were no drug programs, anything like that on Rikers Island at that time, and that always was the first stop. Now, if you are arrested and end up going upstate to a state facility and you're arrested for drugs, they mandate that you do a program, but it's not a good program. It really doesn't do anything, and it's only 3 months.
Skip: Prenatal care? You got a prenatal vitamin. You're allowed to have an extra thing of milk or an apple. I never stayed on the island long enough to even apply for the nursery. And they wouldn't let me in, because I have too many felonies and warrants. I wouldn't have been accepted.
Interviewer: They based that off of what you had done, not just the fact that you were a mother?
Skip: Yes, and that even follows you to state jail. They also look at the amount of time you have. They prefer to give the nursery beds to people who don't have a really strenuous record and can get themselves together. Like I said, the systems don't talk. The nurseries will only take you if you are scheduled for release within 18 months of your child being born.
Interviewer: So it sounds like you had some experience being on parole and probation; what was that like?
Skip: It's not like it is today. Today we have probation and parole officers who are trained in behavioral health conditions.
Skip: Back then, a parole officer was a parole officer was a parole officer. Things like a dirty urine will send you back to jail. There is nothing about being trauma informed and figuring out not what did you do, but what led you to this point? What can we help you with? And you're in a shelter. You're supposed to be going to a program, then you have your kids, and the family court is asking you to do XYZ, which is not what the shelter is asking, which is not what the PO is asking. So, you're torn into five different pieces from these five different systems.
Skip: Because everybody wants something different. And finally, it becomes overwhelming. Look, I'm out. I'm going back to do what I do.
Interviewer: What do you wish you could change about the court process?
Skip: Number one is to stop criminalizing behavioral health. People deserve a right to access rehabilitation. We need to get people proper care and support with the proper resources and treatments.
Interviewer: Have you been formally diagnosed with any mental health conditions?
Skip: Oh, God, I've been labeled with so many, I can't even remember all of them. I've had paranoid- something, the major depressive disorder, schizoaffective disorder. You've given me every label, but the one label that you should have been looking at was the fact that I was addicted to drugs. You needed to work with the drug addiction and mental illness at the same time. What set me on the right path is I finally got released to a program at the end of my run. And that program connected me with a psychologist who worked with both. And once both of those evils were addressed, I was able to move forward with my life, and this is why I sit here talking to you today.
Interviewer: You talk about these systems being so isolated and disparate and not communicating. I do think that, even though we know that mental illness and addiction run together so closely, there are still ways in which our treatment and payment systems are kind of siloed off from one another. And you're so right that they feed into one another.
Skip: Treatment programs have evolved. They are moving to becoming trauma-informed and really working with the whole person, not just the addiction part. While it's a very big part, I'm still a person, still a human being. I still have fears. Work with me on that, instead of ruminating on the fact that I was getting high. Let's work on why I was getting high.
Interviewer: And what function did that serve?
Skip: Yeah. What do I need to move me off of that path? Not what do you need. But what do I need.
Lessons From the Modern Era
Mrs. Poe: In high school, I got into a lot of fights and I was a very angry and bitter person. I was just a bully. I was a big bully, and… I remember when I was at a bonfire, and… this girl, she was in her car, and I just went right over to her and just started fighting her. I ended up breaking her jaw, and it was just awful. Um, she ended up going to the hospital and pressing charges, and that was the first time I ever got involved with the judicial system.
Interviewer: How old were you at that time?
Mrs. Poe: Gosh, I want to say like 15, 16 years old. I was in high school. I had to go to anger management class, the judge referred me.
Interviewer: So, it sounds like that was the first time that you got involved with the justice system. Were there further involvements after that?
Mrs. Poe: Yes, I got kicked out of the schools in my county. So, I ended up going to a special high school program through a local company. Which was really good. I ended up graduating. However, it led me to more drugs and alcohol and partying. By 16, I was doing heroin and pills and drinking and cocaine. During that time, I had a miscarriage and an abortion. And then I graduated. That summer, me and my sister got into a big fight. They called the cops, and we both went to jail for domestic violence, for battery.
Interviewer: How long were you in jail?
Mrs. Poe: For like a week, not even, probably. But my sister got out first, my mom took my sister out first, which I was very mad at my mom about, I felt like she chose her over me.
Interviewer: What was it like while you were in the justice system?
Mrs. Poe: It was scary the first time. It was really scary. I didn't know what was going on. I knew that we were both in jail. I knew that they separated us. I knew that they had to put me in one room and her in the other, but…It was scary.
Interviewer: How did you cope with that at the time?
Mrs. Poe: I don't think I really did. I was just going through it. I was angry. I was mad. I was, I was very upset at my family; I felt like they chose her over me.
Interviewer: Were there other times that you were involved with the justice system as well?
Mrs. Poe: Yep. As I continued down this path, I started drinking more and popping pills and having kids. And then it was, it was, gosh, 2012 when I really, really got involved with… getting arrested a lot. For… Petty theft, paraphernalia. Petty theft is a misdemeanor until you get arrested so many times and it becomes a felony. So, and during that time, I went to jail several times. I think the last time that I got arrested, I got arrested for introducing contraband, too.
Interviewer: Understood. When would you say was the end of your involvement with the justice system?
Mrs. Poe: Wow. So, I got into drug court. It was about 2012 when I entered drug court because of all of the charges that I had. During that time, I was excited about doing drug court. Oh, it'll be no prosecution, it'll be great, you know. But that still didn't stop me from doing what I was doing. I continued, and I tried to beat the system by doing drugs. And then, drinking things to try to get my urine negative.
Interviewer: Any other involvement with other specialty courts?
Mrs. Poe: Nope, that's it. But, my family committed me three times. So that was involved with the court too. I graduated from drug court in 2013, and I got sanctioned all the time. It was at my last sanction before they kicked me out. They would kick me out. So, once that happened between 2013 of me graduating to 2015, my family petitioned the court because I still didn't want to get sober and clean.
Mrs. Poe: By then, I was doing meth. I was shooting up meth and heroin at the same time. And my house, well, my mom's house because I manipulated her into… letting me live at her house. My house got raided by the US Marshals.
Interviewer: And what year was that?
Mrs. Poe: I think it was 2015, January and February.
Interviewer: And were you on parole or probation at any point?
Mrs. Poe: I wasn't on parole or probation or anything, but CPS had been involved too. Cause this whole time I had kids.
Interviewer: What was it like to be involved with CPS?
Mrs. Poe: Crazy. It was bad. I mean, I wouldn't say it was bad. I mean, they get their job. At that time, I thought they were just picking on me, but they weren't picking on me. They were doing their job.
Mrs. Poe: And unfortunately, because of my addiction and my thinking, my distorted thinking, and trying to get away with everything. I was taking my daughter's urine to pass the test, so my kids wouldn't get taken away.
Mrs. Poe: I gave up temporary custody for my kids. My sister had them, so I gave up temporary custody, and I finally got them back. But I was still not doing the right things.
Interviewer: Is there anything that you wish you could change about the court process?
Mrs. Poe: As far as drug court goes, I would want to change all the times I didn't feel heard. I loved my case manager; she wanted me to get it right. And I know that sitting in her office, she's like, “oh, you're getting sanctioned again,” and I'm like, “ugh.” She was always so kind and so loving, and I'll never forget Michelle. She was just awesome throughout that process, but I feel like I was treated poorly regarding my community service. I did my community service where I was living. And the woman stood there and lied. And they believed her over me, and it was very bad for me. I'm grateful that it happened. However, it did send me back to jail. I could not believe she sat there and said “no she didn’t do her hours” and they believed her over me. To this day, I have to work through it because I still have a little resentment towards it. I worked very hard at the house.
Interviewer: So she just said that you didn't do any of your community service. That's awful.
Mrs. Poe: It was pretty bad. Yeah, it was a really bad place.
Interviewer: I'm so sorry that you had to deal with that.
Interviewer: Have you been formally diagnosed with any mental health conditions?
Mrs. Poe: Yes, they… They diagnosed me with PTSD, severe anxiety, and bipolar.
Interviewer: How do you think that may have contributed to being arrested?
Mrs. Poe: Being arrested was due to my drug use. I feel like I was diagnosed when I was coming off of drugs. So I don't take anything anymore. I haven’t for many, many years. So, I can see my PTSD. But not the other things. I believe I had severe anxiety because I was coming off of drugs and I didn't know how to deal with my emotions.
Interviewer: Understood. So all those diagnoses came when you were abstaining from using recreational substances, not psychiatric medications?
Mrs. Poe: Right. Yep. They did give me medication, and I was taking them, and I just decided after a couple months, I wasn't going to do anything anymore.
Interviewer: Okay. And any substance use disorders that you were formally diagnosed with.
Mrs. Poe: Substance use disorder? Yes, I definitely was a, you know, an addict. I was an IV user, you know. And I couldn't stop.
Interviewer: Did you get any formal treatment for substance use disorders?
Mrs. Poe: When I got involuntarily committed, I went to rehab. I went to detox a couple of times, and then I went to rehab. However, in the summer of 2015, I decided to get clean. I got clean on my own. I do not recommend it, but I knew that if I went back to a program, I would just learn more things. I learned how to drink and get high off of things that I should have never been using at a program. So… I decided this time to do it at home. Because I honestly wanted just to feel everything. Every time I went to detox, every time I went to rehab, it was so easy for me that I just went back out. And this time, when I got clean and sober, I decided to do it at home. I was sick, very, very sick.
Interviewer: Were you living with your mom at that point? Where was home for you?
Mrs. Poe: I was living at my mom's house, and it was me and the kids there.
Interviewer: Following involvement with the judicial system, what was it like adjusting back to life outside?
Mrs. Poe: I was in jail for a couple of months. I feel like it was a very long. However, I was there for a lot, you know, in and out, especially with sanctions. It was very hard for me because it defined me. People looked at me like I was just… this person that went to jail, and I'm never going to get my life together, and I'm always going to be that person that goes to jail. Sitting in jail was very hard for me; it was just heartbreaking. But then again, I still didn't want to get sober and clean. And so, once I would leave there, I just felt like that's who I was. Even one of the COs (corrections officer) told me that I will always be in the system. And right there I was like, “Okay, now I'm that's who I am. So that's who everybody's going to see me, and that's who I'm going to become.”
Mr. Jefferson’s carceral experiences were harsh, racially segregated environments that fostered both overt and internalized discrimination. Skip experienced the intersection of behavioral health and the criminal justice system when it was not designed to provide support or rehabilitation, leaving individuals in the same carceral cycle without addressing underlying concerns. Mrs. Poe’s story demonstrates the carceral system’s potential for change; she was allowed to participate in a specialty court (drug court), acknowledging the role of mental health and substance use in her repeated involvement with the system. Each individual’s involvement with the carceral system shaped how they saw themselves and how society saw them, posing challenges to their reintegration and their desire to change.
The APA Foundation’s mission is to create a mentally healthy nation for all – where we live, learn, work, worship, and play. To learn more and become involved in the APA Foundation’s Justice branch of work, visit the Judges and Psychiatrists Leadership Initiative homepage. To support the early identification of ACEs and change outcomes for individuals like Mr. Jefferson, Skip, and Mrs. Poe, you can make a gift to the Foundation by texting APAF2026 to #44321.
References
- Morrison, M., Pettus-Davis, C., Renn, T., Veeh, C., & Weatherly, C. (2019). What Trauma Looks Like for Incarcerated Men: A Study of Men's Lifetime Trauma Exposure in Two State Prisons. Journal of Traumatic Stress Disorders & Treatment, 8(1), 192.
- Maine Department of Corrections. (2025, October 3). Adult resident remote work (Policy No. 25.7 (AF)). https://www.maine.gov/corrections/sites/maine.gov.corrections/files/inline-files/25.7%20AF_0.pdf