Peer Support Across Jails, Probation, and Recovery Courts
A Trust-First, Lived-Experience Model for Justice-Involved Recovery
SOS Recovery Community Organization runs the Peer Strength Program, a justice-focused peer recovery support model staffed entirely by people with lived experience of both recovery and the justice system, working alongside jails, probation and parole, and recovery courts across New Hampshire to support participants from inside the walls through reentry and into the community.
The Challenge They Were Addressing
Before the Peer Strength Program existed, people moving through New Hampshire's justice system had few recovery supports tailored to their specific situations. Probation officers carried heavy caseloads and could not provide the day-to-day contact that someone early in recovery needs. People leaving jail often reached their highest risk of overdose at the exact moment they had the least support: no housing, no job, no insurance, and no one they trusted on the outside. The model was built to put a familiar name and face in that gap, someone the person already knew before release.
SOS RCO had already learned what did not work. An earlier law-enforcement-assisted diversion pilot, the first in the state, generated only a handful of referrals and did not survive the early pandemic period. A later telephone-only recovery support grant for rural counties showed the same lesson from a different angle: strictly virtual contact could not build the relationships that referrals depend on. Officers and corrections staff do not refer people they met once on a video call, and participants do not open up to a coach they have never met in person. The program that worked combined in-person relationship-building with telehealth for follow-up and efficiency.
The founding idea came from a staff member with lived experience of incarceration and recovery who wanted to build something for the justice world. SOS connected with probation and parole through the Department of Corrections in Strafford County and set up in a former smoking room in the basement of the court, sitting there on check-in day when participants came in for testing. That early arrangement, built on a confidentiality agreement that protected participants, grew into a statewide program serving more than nine recovery courts.
What They Built
The Peer Strength Program meets justice-involved people where they already are: in jail, on probation and parole, or in recovery court. While most participants are first connected with the program after they have been released, the program is working to increase engagement before release whenever possible. In those cases, a peer support worker begins building the relationship. At the same time, the individual is still incarcerated through scheduled peer support phone calls and a recovery capital workbook used to identify strengths and set goals. Staff also collaborate with the jail case manager to coordinate housing, obtain necessary releases with attorneys and recovery court, and prepare for a successful transition back into the community. The goal is for individuals to leave jail already knowing who to call and having a trusted connection to support their recovery and reentry.
After release, the work shifts to basic needs. By the team's own estimate, roughly 70 percent of the work is helping people secure housing, insurance, transportation, phones, and clothing, and about 30 percent is recovery-specific support, though the two constantly overlap. Housing is consistently the biggest obstacle. The team describes its recovery coaching as complex care coordination that resembles traditional case management, except that participants are not assigned to a single case manager and can reach any available coach.
The program also runs daily recovery meetings, both virtual and in-person, including SMART Recovery and all-recovery meetings, as well as a recovery capital group offered in several counties. Staff coordinates with community partners through a weekly wraparound meeting to prevent duplication of services and refers participants to treatment centers and behavioral health providers for needs the peer team cannot meet directly. Recovery plans are built using recovery capital domains and tracked in a full participant database.
Telehealth carries much of the ongoing contact once a relationship exists. The team learned that in-person contact must come first to build trust with both referral partners and participants; once that trust is established, participants will readily use telehealth. The model is deliberately structured to be in person where it counts and virtual where it scales.
Key Program Components
Who You Need at the Table
What made a willing partner essential vs. optional?
The program's most essential partners are those that provide access to the people it serves: probation and parole, recovery courts, and local jails. Recovery courts have been the program's most consistent referral source, creating opportunities to engage participants throughout their recovery journey from times of stability and progress to moments of struggle or sanction, when additional support can have the greatest impact. Through its partnership with Probation & Parole, peer support workers are present during check-in days and have consistently demonstrated that peer support helps reduce absconding. These partnerships have been built over time through consistent presence, reliability, and a steadfast commitment to maintaining participant confidentiality.
Helpful partners extend reach and fill gaps, but are not required for day-one operations. Behavioral health departments, treatment centers, and the community partners coalition take referrals for needs the peer team cannot meet on its own, and the Department of Corrections offers a route into the state prisons over time. The program's experience is that access is uneven from one facility to the next, so the practical strategy is to start where partners are already willing and build outward from there.
Budget Breakdown
What is the minimum viable budget to replicate this?
The team is direct that salaries are the program, and that this is an appropriate use of settlement funds: services do not happen without people to deliver them. A workable minimum is one dedicated peer support worker with lived experience of both recovery and the justice system, housed inside an organization that can provide supervision and a clinical and community back end. At roughly $287,000 per year, the program funds three positions and serves more than 200 people, so a single-position version supported by an existing recovery community organization could plausibly run a focused county program in the $75,000 to $100,000 range. The non-negotiable is that the person be paid: this is skilled, full-time work.
What Worked and Why
Specific decisions or design features that drove success
Protecting participant confidentiality was the decision that made everything else possible. The program told its justice partners up front that it would share only whether a participant was engaged or not engaged, and nothing more, unless the participant agreed otherwise. Partners were uneasy at first, but the boundary was what let participants trust the team. Without that trust, people would have assumed the peer worker was an extension of supervision and would never have opened up.
Hiring people with lived experience of both recovery and the justice system gave the program credibility that cannot be taught. A peer worker who has been through drug court understands phases, calls, and sanctions from the inside, and can help a participant work through a system that takes most people a year to learn. That same lived experience is what earns trust among the people being served and the officers and corrections staff who make referrals.
Stepping in at the moment of crisis, when a participant is ready to abscond, turned out to matter more than the team expected. Peer workers learned to say, “Wait, let us call your officer and find out what you actually face before you run.” More often than not, the consequence was far smaller than the participant feared. Probation and parole came to value the program once they saw fewer people absconding, which also helped build the referral relationship over time.
Combining in-person contact with telehealth fixed the weakness of the earlier telephone-only effort. The team uses in-person contact to build the relationship first, then runs follow-ups over telehealth for efficiency. Participants who would not engage with a stranger on a video call will use telehealth readily once they know the person on the other end.
Measuring recovery capital with a validated tool provided the program with data it could present to funders and partners. Using the BARC-10 across hundreds of assessments, the team documented a measurable gain in recovery capital that tracked with peer support engagement, alongside low overdose and rearrest numbers. That evidence is what the program uses when it asks a new partner to let it in.
Early outcomes and data
227 justice-involved participants served in FY2025, up from 187 in FY2024 (against an original FY2024 target of 85 unduplicated participants).
Average recovery capital gain of +3.19 on the BARC-10 across 429 assessments completed by 133 unique individuals in FY2025, correlated with peer support engagement.
Of FY2025 participants, zero overdoses occurred without naloxone present; two participants experienced an overdose where naloxone was administered.
19 participants administered naloxone to someone else during the year.
18 emergency room visits among participants, of which only 2 were related to substance use or mental health.
14 participants were rearrested, a low rate relative to typical correctional recidivism, though the figure is self-reported.
Participants attended 1,053 recovery-oriented meetings, 185 pro-social events, 43 advocacy events, and 367 educational events during FY2025.
More than nine recovery courts statewide receive peer support services through the program.
Lessons Learned
Lead with lived experience. Hiring people who have been through the justice system, and not only substance use recovery, is what lets the team work through phases, sanctions, and the daily reality participants face. The program treats this as its defining staffing choice.
Protect confidentiality even when partners push back. The agreement to share only engagement status, not details, felt risky to justice partners at first. Holding that line earned participants' trust and, over time, partners' trust as absconding dropped. Concede this, and the model stops working.
Build trust in person before scaling with technology. The earlier telephone-only effort showed that virtual contact alone cannot build relationships with referral partners or participants. Establish the relationship face-to-face, then use telehealth to sustain and extend it.
Get into the highest-need settings. Drug courts are the softest ground to start on, but the people at highest risk are leaving jail and prison with the least support. Plan from the beginning to reach behind the walls and into the general population, where the need is greatest.
Collect outcome data you can hand to skeptics. Recovery capital gains, low overdose numbers, and rearrest figures give the program something concrete to show a hesitant partner. Data does not convince everyone, but it gives supportive partners and funders a reason to keep backing the work.