Carbon County officials are working with a Lehigh Valley based company to continue and expand a program that will help incarcerated female offenders as they re-enter society.

On Thursday, the county commissioners approved a memorandum of understanding with Pinebrook Family Answers of Allentown for a program to support a jail-based project for effective re-entry programs and practices. There is no cost to the county.

Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said the action allows for the continuation and expansion of this existing program at the county correctional facility. The program, “Leaving Jail: A Comprehensive Regional Re-entry Program for Women in Rural Communities,” covers correctional facilities in Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties and is overseen and funded through Pinebrook.

According to the agreement, the “primary goal of this program is to reduce recidivism among women coming from and returning to rural communities.”

The program is designed to begin during incarceration and ends when the woman has been successfully reintegrated back into the community.

The target population are women who are at moderate to high risk of recidivating after incarceration.

The services are now being enhanced by additional programming, including parenting and therapy courses, as well as engaging the woman’s family throughout the program.

Carbon County prison staff will work with Pinebrook staff to implement the program.

Carbon County began working with Pinebrook on this initiative in 2017 when Pinebrook submitted an application for the $1 million federal grant for the program on behalf of the three counties.

At that time, the prison had been seeing an increase in the number of women being incarcerated.