Dismas Home gives women from prison a path to hope

As a young teenager whose parents had separated when she was two or three, Jewel Burke started drinking and using prescription painkillers. Jewel and her mother lived in a crime- and drug-ridden housing project in New Hampshire. 

At age 18, because of the influence of a boyfriend, Jewel got into harder stuff, including cocaine and heroin. 

“It just completely spiraled out of control over the next 20 years,” Burke told Aleteia. 

In order to support their habit, the boyfriend stole people’s checks, and Burke forged them. In 2003, she was arrested but let out on bail.

“I knew I was facing prison time, and I actually went on the run,” she said. 

She was on the run for six years – staying clean from drugs, working and getting a GED. But, missing her family, she turned herself in. She was given probation, but had to enter an 18-month program, from which she graduated.

Burke relapsed and got into drugs again. She was arrested after selling to an undercover officer.

“I was in prison for five years, but during that time so many things changed; so many things happened that eventually led me to where I am today,” she said.

Part of that was the opportunity to enter a relatively new program in New Hampshire that is supported in part by the Order of Malta. Dismas Home in Manchester is based on – but independent of – a national Dismas House program. It helps people who have been through the justice system transition to a more hopeful life. The name comes from the “good thief” who was crucified to Christ’s right, St. Dismas.

One goal of Dismas Home is to reduce the rates of recidivism, and its record with its own clients is impressive: Its rate for program completion is 65%, compared to a 50% national average for such programs. 

“The long term success rate for women who complete the Dismas program is about 90%, leaving a 10% recidivism rate,” said Cheryll Andrews, Dismas Home’s executive director. 

But the main goal of Dismas Home is to set people on a new path in which they can live out their God-given potential. 

“I'd spent a lot of time in my life homeless or on the street or struggling to find a place to go,” Burke said. She longed to go “home,” and when she walked through the doors at Dismas, she said, “That's exactly what I felt – that I had come home.”

That’s by design, said founder Julie McCarthy. It’s why she decided the project should be called Dismas Home, not Dismas House. 

“It looks like a home, it acts like a home, and these women -- most of them have never really had a home,” McCarthy told Aleteia. Residents are required to be dressed and ready for the day by 9 o'clock. They have chores to do, including laundry and cooking. “We have a garden in the summertime out back that they tend, and they take care of the plants in the pots and window boxes and that sort of stuff.”

McCarthy founded Dismas with her late husband, Jack McCarthy, after working in prison ministry and learning about Dismas House in Vermont. Leasing a house from Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Manchester, Dismas Home got licensed by the state to operate as a trauma, addiction, mental and behavioral health facility.

Because New Hampshire didn’t have as many resources for women who’ve been in prison, the McCarthys decided to devote Dismas Home to women. They also enlisted the help of members of the criminal justice department at St. Anselm College in Manchester for assistance. 

Residents are not sent to Dismas Home by a court or any authority, but must choose it and apply on their own.

“They have to choose, and we want them to choose because that means that they're willing to put the time in and want to change their behavior,” McCarthy said.

It’s a two-phase program. Residents spend the first 90 days working on the “gut-wrenching trauma that they've been through that has caused their addiction,” McCarthy said. The work takes place through daily clinical sessions, group meetings, and one-on-one counseling. Many residents also attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings. 

“The addiction is really a symptom of a real problem,” said Paul Young, who was chairman of the board for Dismas for six years. “Almost all of them had some type of trauma in their lives early on – a lot of times, sexual abuse. So that led to drug and alcohol abuse, bad relationships with men, and ultimately, incarceration.”

The initial three months at Dismas is followed by a Transitional Living Program, which combines workforce education, life skills, ongoing therapeutic support and case management to prepare residents for the next step in independent living.

“We teach them how to go grocery shopping, how to do a budget, for when they start to work,” said Young. “We take a percentage of their salary just to get them used to starting to pay for something, like rent. We teach them how to write a resume, how to do job interviews, things of that nature.” 

McCarthy noted that it's important to work on life skills, because some residents have been living on the street. “They don't even know what a good bathing routine is. They don't know how to eat. We work with them on a proper diet,” she said. “We take them grocery shopping.”

Dismas also works with businesses who are willing to hire people who have been in prison. 

Some of the women express the desire to do further education, and Dismas Home tries to help them with that. 

“We will reach out and get scholarship money for them,” McCarthy said. “It's not always a lot, but we try to cover it by working with several community colleges for their certification. We had one lady who wanted to be a vet tech, and we sent her to school, and she graduated eight years ago, and now she's a vet tech.”

Some end up working for Dismas itself, which in McCarthy’s view is “wonderful, because they know all the BS that's going to come out of the newbies that come into the house.”

Burke discovered a calling to help others who have been through similar situations. She went to school and completed a program to become a certified recovery support worker (CRSW) and now works at Dismas as a case manager.

“I love working with women who have been through similar situations and circumstances and seeing them come out of their little cocoons and tight spaces where they feel like they can't trust anybody, and then they start to make themselves vulnerable again and start to trust and open up to us,” Burke said. “There's so much love in this house. It's a support system that I've never had before in my life anywhere.”

Dismas Home has the goal of having at least one facility in each of New Hampshire’s 20 counties. They recently signed a purchase and sale agreement on a second home, which would add 15 more beds to the eight they have in Manchester.

For McCarthey, there is tremendous satisfaction in seeing how the women develop throughout their stay and beyond.

“You watch them blossom, like a rose opening up, and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger,” she said. “And their kids are like, ‘Mom, I'm so proud of you.’ It's like, wow. I don't ever get enough of it.”