Utah offering peer support to maximum security prison inmates

Editor’s note: This story has been revised to reflect that maximum-security inmates at the Utah State Correctional Facility can participate in rehabilitation planning.

SALT LAKE CITY — Inmates under maximum security at the Utah State Correctional Facility are getting the opportunity to take part in the state’s peer support program.

The Department of Corrections has been offering its peer support program in their correctional facilities since April 2024.

Rebecca Brown, executive deputy director for the Department of Corrections, said they’ve now expanded this program for their male maximum security inmates.

“To help kind of plant some seeds and help them start to have interest in re-entry and rehabilitation planning with people with lived support.”

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This program partners up inmates with people who have so-called “lived experience” who can mentor them and get them excited about rehabilitation.

“In the state of Utah, peer support specialists are people with lived experience, either with a history of substance abuse and addiction, or a history of mental health and behavioral health diagnosis.”

Those people then get hired and obtain a special certification from the state.

“[They can] help prepare from a different lens than somebody with, you know, just a clinical license or is a caseworker who may or may not have ever had those direct experiences in the system.”

Brown said they have hired and trained about 30 people to provide peer support to inmates.

She shared that they recently had someone who received peer support in prison graduate from the program and get peer-certified. Now he’s working with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s department to help other former inmates with their re-entry to the outside world.

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