TRI advocates for continued funding of state reentry program

Dominique Vodicka, who spent 25 years in and out of prison, believes that she is only standing here today thanks to a reentry program funded by the state.

“Since the mid ‘90s I had been in and out of the prison system more times than I could count, and a decade later, I still did not have the tools or skills to understand why I was stuck in the (Department of Corrections) revolving door,” Vodicka said during a sunset review by the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee.

The review was on the “Work and Gain Education and Employment Skills” program, known as WAGEES. The Reentry Initiative, or TRI, is a Longmont-based nonprofit that provides programs and services to parolees in Colorado, and one of 19 reentry programs in Colorado funded by WAGEES.

The Colorado General Assembly created WAGEES in 2014, seeing its first sunset review in 2018. At the time, it was reauthorized with strong bipartisan support and increased funding for additional expansion.

Vodicka described sitting through numerous mental health assessments, which only led to misdiagnoses and the lack of consistent therapy. While serving a six-year sentence, she saw a flier for TRI to address substance abuse, mental health and reentry planning for women.

“I had to fight to get into that class — out of 120 applicants, only 12 were selected,” Vodicka said. “This class was the ticket and life changing. What started as a class has evolved into a lifelong relationship … Thanks to The Reentry Initiative, this past summer — for the first time in 25 years — I am completely off paper. Inmate #110426 no longer exists. Today I call myself a daughter, a mother, a grandmother and the Intake Coordinator and Peer Support Specialist at TRI.”

TRI, which was founded in 2016, receives $211,600 from this program to support its Welcome Back Center in Longmont, offering wraparound services to men and women after incarceration. 

If the bill were to sunset, TRI would have to close its Welcome Back Center, leaving members to navigate the reentry process on their own. The Senate Judiciary Committee instead unanimously voted to have a bill introduced to reauthorize the WAGEES grant program and will be reintroduced for a full vote by the senate later this year.

According to the WAGEES Community Impact Report for January 2023, since its inception nearly 7,000 people have participated in the program, including 1,516 who have been placed in stable housing.