Support on wheels: Mobile center helps meet needs for formerly incarcerated people
By Rachel Crumpler
Last November, Kerwin Pittman drove hours to Peachland, North Carolina — a town in Anson County — to buy a bus.
On the drive back to Raleigh, he said, he was just hoping it wouldn’t break down. After all, he had a big dream for it.
Three months later, he has transformed the once “old and dusty” bus into the state’s first Mobile Recidivism Reduction Center.
Inside are two seating areas, a media station with a tablet and printer, and shelves stocked with hygiene kits, cold-weather gear and harm reduction supplies. There’s even a bathroom and a microwave to heat food. Positive affirmations adorn every wall.
On board, people with histories of incarceration — who have become specialists on how to reenter their communities after being in prison or jail — are eager to help connect people to benefits like Medicaid and Social Security, mental health and substance use treatment, housing options, education and much more. The goal is to provide the support people need to make a more successful transition from incarceration to the community.
On Jan. 17, the center made its first stop at Moore Square in downtown Raleigh.
A man who’d gotten out of prison days earlier was the first person to walk into the mobile reentry center; the only identification he had was a prison ID card. Pittman said he and his team immediately helped their first client start the process of obtaining a state ID. They connected him with free mental health services — something he said he needed to help him cope with the fact that his son died while he’d been in prison. They also found him housing, which allowed him to move out of a shelter.
Pittman said the recently released man left the bus smiling, headed to an appointment with his probation officer. It was a stark change from the tears he had shed when he first walked in with the weight of re-establishing his life in the community sitting heavier on his shoulders.
Within the first two hours on the bus that first day, Pittman and two other reentry specialists served more than 50 people.
By the end of the day, they’d served close to 100.
“When we go to these communities, instead of kicking you down, we want to uplift you,” said Ciara Levy, a reentry specialist who works in the mobile center. “We want to let you know we see you. We care. We’re here to assist you.
“A lot of recidivism ends up happening because they’re scared.”
The mobile reentry center will travel the state and deliver services to communities with high needs for reentry support — hoping to help people overcome common barriers to getting re-established in their communities.
By the end of the year, Pittman hopes to have three more mobile centers deployed across the state. He said the response to the first day in the community makes him want to reach that goal even faster.
“I’m definitely going to need more centers like this because there’s so much need, and I want to be as impactful as possible,” Pittman said.
He has some initial grants from foundations to get things up and running, but making this an ongoing service across the state will take more, and more consistent, funding — something that’s not always guaranteed from foundations.
An innovative approach
Since his own release from prison in 2018, Pittman, now executive director of the nonprofit Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services, has been working to enhance support for people recently released from incarceration. He knows that timely connections to resources are crucial to improving reentry success and to lowering recidivism rates in North Carolina.
An April report released by the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission found that from a sample of 12,889 people released from North Carolina state prisons in fiscal year 2021, 33 percent were sent back to prison within two years of their release.
Pittman is on a mission to change that. From his own reentry experience, he knows that lack of transportation can put resources out of reach. That was his motivation to take services directly to people in need.
“The mobile aspect is extremely important because when individuals are in directly impacted communities, it’s hard to go to different facilities and receive help,” Pittman said. “We wanted to quite literally meet them where they are and bring the help directly to them.”
After Pittman purchased the bus in November, he hired formerly incarcerated people to help him renovate and transform it.
Benjamin Gear, Orange County’s Local Reentry Council coordinator, attended the unveiling of the mobile unit on Jan. 14 in Raleigh. Gear said having a more flexible, mobile reentry option is a big deal, and he’s eager to see the difference the center will make.
“I just appreciate that we keep developing, because the atmosphere around us does not facilitate services,” Gear said.
The center will be open about four days a week, moving from community to community, Levy said.
The mobile reentry center’s schedule will be posted on Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services’ website and social media channels.
The most frequent needs that people have sought help for so far are housing, employment and mental health services.
Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services has a database of more than 800 resources across the state — from housing options to “second chance” employers to mental health professionals — that reentry specialists can point people to based on their needs. But they are doing more than simply providing contact information: Reentry specialists are making calls on the spot. They are helping people fill out applications. They are printing resumes on site for interviews.
Pittman said people are leaving the mobile reentry center relieved to have gotten help. For example, as the team was winding down their first day of service, Pittman said a mother and father — who had both been incarcerated — came aboard with their two small children and said they didn’t have housing.
The Mobile Recidivism Reduction Center changed that. Pittman said he helped the family find temporary housing and apply for a long-term housing option.
“I was glad we were able to do that for them at that moment and during their time of need and also provide wraparound support services for them at the same time,” Pittman said.
Levy said the team will follow up with people who visit the mobile center to see if they need anything else, and to help prevent them from falling through the cracks.
“When we serve the area, we’re not just going to … forget you,” Levy explained. “We’re going to be revisiting those areas. We want to take that stress off to make you feel like you can go somewhere where you feel comfortable. We want to make sure all the resources are here and we can get you started to be successful in life for the next journey.”
In addition to this resource on wheels, Pittman launched the Recidivism Reduction Call Center in April. The hotline provides on-demand reentry support to callers who are struggling to reenter the community. More than 3,700 calls have been answered to date, Pittman said.
Pittman said these two new methods of reentry support go hand in hand and have been effective in reaching people who need assistance.
“Now is the time to think of new and innovative ways to tackle recidivism reduction and think about reentry as a whole,” Pittman said.
State focused on improving reentry support
The Mobile Recidivism Reduction Center comes at a time when North Carolina is increasingly focused on boosting reentry support for the roughly 18,000 people who leave North Carolina prisons every year — and the thousands more leaving county jails.
In January 2024, former Gov. Roy Cooper signed Executive Order No. 303, which kicked off North Carolina’s focused effort to bolster support for this population. North Carolina leaders on the state’s Joint Reentry Council have since outlined a strategic plan with steps the state will take by 2030 to reduce obstacles for formerly incarcerated people. They realize that’s crucial, since about 95 percent of the state’s incarcerated population will one day return home.
Secretary Leslie Cooley Dismukes, who took the helm of the N.C. Department of Adult Correction this month, told NC Health News in an interview that she will keep prioritizing efforts to expand reentry support, calling reentry “a public safety issue.”
Dismukes attended the mobile center’s ribbon-cutting ceremony and praised it as a “great idea.”
“I’m excited to see these services deployed,” Dismukes said. “I am hopeful that it will make a true difference in our shared mission of creating safer communities for our families.”
Pittman said it’s clear the mobile reentry center already is.
“It’s amazing to witness the tears of the spirit turn to tears of joy, witnessing the frowns of individuals’ faces as they walk up to the center and then them smiling as they’re leaving,” Pittman said.
“I literally witnessed people coming in hopeless and leaving out with hope.”
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