Halfway home—the truth about the halfway house

I know that many people look forward to going to a halfway house to finish their time. I do not mean to “burst your bubble,” but I believe the experience would’ve been better for me if I was mentally prepared for it. That’s what I hope to do for you with this article, share the truth about halfway houses.

The most important thing to remember is that any halfway house, home confinement, or supervised release time isn’t a reduction of your sentence – you are still under BOP guidelines until you are off paper. 

You can make it a better experience by being committed to finding a job and starting your new life as quickly as possible. It’s almost impossible to go back to working for yourself if you are self-employed, and I’m not exactly sure why. We weren’t sure if this restriction, which could vary by facility and personal circumstance, was due to the fact that at the halfway house we are still under BOP custody or if it was due to the way most self-employed people do not receive a paycheck. The halfway house had no way to calculate their 25 percent take of your gross earnings. 

I got together with a few former inmates and these were the ways we felt the halfway house was worse than prison, in no particular order:

1. Facilities can vary widely, but all of our halfway houses served “county jail food.”

1. There were far more rules from the halfway house than there were in prison. Many of the rules applied to being in the halfway house or on home confinement. To the best of our recollection, here were the main rules:
   • You had to submit a detailed schedule for the week. You list the arriving times and departure times of every place you will spend time, along with the address and phone number to each place you intend to visit for the whole week, in advance of that week. If you missed your deadline you could be stuck all week. 
     
   • You were allowed a couple hours a week to shop, plus some hours for recreation time. You could only shop at specific stores where they knew they could call the store and have you paged. Our halfway houses all had people that would call each and every spot on your schedule, daily. If you weren’t there when they called, they could violate you. 
     
   • Each halfway house had their own curfew time and/or maximum number of hours you could be outside of the facility daily. Make sure you keep that in mind when you apply for jobs. 
     
   • You couldn’t go for a walk or ride a bicycle for recreation time, because they had no way to verify your location with a third party. You could walk or ride to work. 
     
   • You could have one pass per week to go to church, but you had to bring back a church program or a signed note from the pastor with a phone number where they can confirm your attendance. 
     
   • You could get passes for a home visit once you’ve been there a month or so. Those often required an ankle bracelet to monitor you. Most places required you to pay the cost of monitoring as well.
     
   • If you were on home confinement or a home visit pass, you could only be approved for a location with a landline, which they plug the monitoring unit into. The landline couldn’t have any extra features on it, like call forwarding, call waiting, blocked calls, etc. You had to call in daily. My advice to you is to keep a log on when you call in and check in with – you never know when this might help you if they claim you didn’t call in. 
     
   • You could get a pass to apply for jobs, but you couldn’t ride in a vehicle without that person having checked in at the halfway house, signed a form, left a copy of their ID, and agreed to be responsible for your return. 
     
   • Everyone had to do chores, unless you were working an outside job. 
     
   • While it varied by facility, most facilities will require you to get a job or you could face being violated and sent back. If you had a job, you had to give 25 percent of your gross pay to the halfway house. Many people found it very difficult to save up money to get their own place when they had taxes taken out, and another 25 percent of the gross income taken out. 
     
   • You had to be patted down every time you returned to the building. You had weekly, and random, drug tests, and there were more counts than most of us experienced in prison. 
     
   • To drive your own vehicle, you had to have a valid driver’s license, show proof of insurance and a valid license and registration. In addition, they had to inspect your vehicle and log your mileage each week, which they compared to your weekly schedule that was approved. 

3. It seems that the “social hierarchy” of the halfway house is the exact opposite of what it is in prison. In prison, higher security level inmates tended to get more respect, while lower security levels might receive less respect. It was the exact opposite in the halfway house. 
   
4. At the halfway house, respect of any kind among residents was almost non-existent. When I mean no respect at all, I mean NO RESPECT – at all! One of the former inmates who shared his thoughts with me for this story said that his first halfway had two-man rooms with a private bathroom and a yard they could go into at any time. His second one was far different as they used dormitory style living quarters and they housed people with jobs in the same space as people who didn’t work. The guys who didn’t work stayed up making noise all night and slept when the workers were gone at work. Needless to say, that made it difficult on those who did have jobs and it created stress and tension in the dorm. 
   
5. In prison, you could go into the yard, workout, and do whatever. At the halfway house, unless you were working, applying for jobs, or on pass, you couldn’t leave the building.
   
6. My friend “Greg” was in RDAP, and had been in a medium and low security prison, as well as a camp. Greg says the halfway house was worse than prison since the halfway house contained all levels of custody and not all levels knew how to get along with each other. 
   
7. While this varies by facility, most seemed to limit personal property more than in prison. Don’t give away your shower shoes, padlock, or toiletries – you will need them all at the halfway house. You might also want to keep your radio, too. 
   
8. You could only use a cell phone that didn’t have a camera and didn’t have the internet on it. They had to inspect and approve your phone before you could use it or bring it into the halfway house. 

Our consensus was we all wished we could’ve finished our time in prison instead of the halfway house. The truth about the halfway house time—it was harder. 

Here’s the good news: despite all of this, the upside of being at the halfway house is you’re almost completely out the door. I’ve said it before: if you can survive prison, you can survive anything – even the halfway house!