Nebraska
Nebraska prisons launching new, ‘holistic’ approach to prepare inmates for reentry into society
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/HFLGT5QTNFERXDZAANT24JFE5Q.png "Nebraska prisons launching new, ‘holistic’ approach to prepare inmates for reentry into society")
LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) – State prisons are launching a new, “holistic” approach in mentally preparing inmates for their return to society, using fellow inmates as guides.
A three-year initiative, started with an anonymous grant of nearly $900,000, seeks to better make ready inmates for reentry by focusing on things like healthy thinking, positive relationships and meaningful work.
The “5-Keys for Wellbeing Development” program replaces two existing classes, called “Thinking for a Change” and “Moral Reconation Therapy,” with an overall goal of preventing a return to criminal behavior and to prison.
“Our goal is to approach reentry from that holistic sense of looking at the whole person, and not focusing on just one area,” said Dawn Renee Smith, the deputy director of Nebraska Corrections.
‘Innovative’ approach
Rob Jeffreys, the state’s corrections director, called the 5-Keys program an “innovative” approach.
“Successful reentry preparation is about providing the right tools and getting the right person in the right program at the right time,” Jeffreys said.
Currently, about 28% of Nebraska prison inmates return to prison within three years, the state’s so-called “recidivism rate.”
That rate has hovered between 27% and 32% over the last eight years, and dropped from 31% three years ago.
But state leaders have often stated a goal of improving rehabilitation and reentry programs to further reduce the recidivism rate, with a larger objective of helping to reduce spending on and overcrowding of Nebraska prisons. They rank among the nation’s most crowded, housing about 1,700 more inmates than state prisons were designed to hold.
First state to try program
Nebraska will be the first state to try the 5-Keys program within its prison system. Officials have been working over the past year with faculty at Florida State University and a 2-year-old, Florida-based think tank called Well-Being and Equity Innovation Inc. The program will be launched full bore next year at seven state prisons.
The preliminary work has focused on training dozens of prison inmates as “peers,” who will present the four, four-week-long, two-hour-a-week classes to fellow inmates along with prison staffers. Those classes are: Unlocking Your Thinking, Ideas for Better Communication, Understanding and Reducing Angry Feelings and Building Social Networks.
Smith, who works with reentry programs, said the idea is to build on inmates’ strengths, giving them a healthier mindset when they step back into society — and more than 90% of the state’s 5,700 prison inmates will ultimately leave prison.
She said the Nebraska prison system has been using inmate peers as “co-facilitators” of rehabilitation programming for the past couple of years and has found success with the concept.
Fellow inmates have ‘built-in credibility’
“(Fellow inmates) really come in with built-in credibility — they have lived experience,” Smith said.
The 5-Keys classes should be shorter and easier to manage than the previous reentry programs, she said, and will focus on five areas: healthy thinking patterns, positive relationships, positive social engagement, meaningful work trajectories and effective coping strategies.
A study by the University of Nebraska at Omaha Center for Justice Research, released in February, concluded that “only a small minority of programs” run by Nebraska corrections to turn inmates into law-abiding citizens were evidence-based.
State prison officials, in a press release, said that the 5-Keys programming is “evidence-based” and a “packaged approach” to preparing inmates for reentry.
“This model works because these are things that all of us need to be healthier,” Smith said.
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Gov. Jim Pillen (R-NE) will undergo a rib fixation procedure on Thursday after a horse bucked him off on Sunday.
Pillen, 68, will need to be under anesthesia while doctors install metal plates to stabilize his seven broken ribs. Lt. Gov. Joe Kelly will take on the role of acting governor during the surgery.
“Based on the Governor’s health profile and active lifestyle, his doctors consider him an ideal candidate for this procedure. Nebraska Medicine has emerged as a national leader in rib fixation operations,” the governor’s office wrote in a statement.
The governor was riding a new horse with his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter when he fell. In addition to his rib fractures, he suffered a partially collapsed lung, lacerations on his spleen and kidney, and a minor vertebrae fracture.
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“Gov. Pillen remains grateful for the exceptional care he is receiving by the team at Nebraska Medicine and thanks Nebraskans for their outpouring of support to him and his family during this time,” Pillen’s office wrote.
This surgery will result in Pillen remaining in the hospital for a few days following his surgery. He is prepared to continue to work from his hospital bed.
Merry Christmas: Nebraska wins Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii
For the first time since the San Juan Shootout in 2000, the Nebraska men’s basketball program has an in-season tournament championship.
Led by Brice Williams’ 25 points (6-of-6 at the free-throw line), seven rebounds, four assists and two steals, the Huskers picked up a 78-66 win over the Oregon State Beavers on Christmas Day.
NU (10-2, 1-1 in Big Ten) now gets to leave Honolulu with the 2024 Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic title.
“As we said to our guys, we just don’t get a whole lot of opportunities in your life to play for championships, and this was a big tournament for us,” head coach Fred Hoiberg told Huskers Radio Network after the game.
Notable perks to a tournament win like this includes picking up a true road win over host Hawaii and a Quad 1 victory (for now) on a neutral site over Oregon State, which came into the game with a NET rating of 43 (Nebraska’s was 52).
“Just really proud of the guys for finding a way to muster up the energy and play, I thought, our best stretch of basketball those last five minutes,” Hoiberg said.
That five minutes Hoiberg reference had a lot to do with strong defense and Williams.
NU’s defense held OSU to just 40% shooting overall for the game, and the Huskers out-rebounded OSU 31-24 to become only the second team to out-rebound the Beavers this season. But OSU did connect on nine 3s that helped them hang around. Four different OSU players each made two triples.
But from the 5:32 mark of the second half when nursing a 61-56 lead, Williams took over and showed everyone he was the best player on the court. The 6-7 guard scored 11 points in the stretch, including five game-sealing free throws. He outscored OSU 11-10.
Williams has scored 57 points the last two games, with tonight’s 25 and Monday’s 32. He averaged 22 points per game in three games and earned tournament MVP honors.
“I was just aggressive, I wanted to let my defense lead to offense,” Williams said after the game. “I came out hot and my team kind of took it from there.”
The game was a low-scoring, back-and-forth affair that featured scoring runs and scoring droughts for both sides. Neither team ever took control until Williams did his thing.
NU never trailed by more than four points in the first half and took a 34-32 lead into the break. There were 13 lead changes in the opening 10 minutes of the second half.
Multiple Huskers stepped up late to help NU take command. Sam Hoiberg made his third 3 of the season to put NU up 48-47. Andrew Morgan was another bench player who made an impact as his and-1 paint bucket extended the Husker lead to 51-49.
One player who had maybe his best night as a Husker was Berke Buyuktuncel. The 6-10 big who’s been playing through minor injuries showed off a variety of skill sets that made him one of the top international prospects coming out in his signing class.
Buyuktuncel finished with a career-high 16 points and made three 3s, also a new career mark. He played defense and rebounded too, collecting six with one offensive board which turned into an and-1 putback.
Buyuktuncel scored eight points in both the first and second half.
“Both ends. I thought two days ago, versus Hawaii, we finished off the game with him at the five, and he battles those fives as well as anybody on our team,” Hoiberg said of Buyuktuncel. “Him knocking down those shots in the first half, that’s a game changer for us. Hopefully he can get it going and it’ll give him confidence. When Berke can knock down threes, that’s just opens up a whole other new opportunities for us to run different plays to get him going.”
Buyuktuncel had success bullying his way into the paint and finishing. His and-1 where he grabbed an offensive board and sank the putback while being fouled pushed NU to a 54-51 lead. Not long after, he was running the court with Williams and hit a transition layup to put NU up by six points, 57-51.
Those plays helped a 10-2 run that extended the Husker lead to 61-53. But the Beavers never went away and NU’s offense went cold. During one stretch, it missed six of seven shots. That allowed OSU to cut its 8-point deficit in half.
But then Williams put the Beavers away. NU went on an 11-3 run to end the game.
Williams, along with Buyuktuncel, were named to the all-tournament team. Williams averaged 22 points on 56% shooting along with 3.7 rebounds and 3.0 assists in NU’s three games.
Hoiberg becomes the second head coach to win the Diamond Head Classic twice. His first win came while he was coaching Iowa State in 2013.
UP NEXT
Nebraska has one non-conference game left before diving into Big Ten play the rest of the season. The Huskers host Southern on Monday night with a late tip of 8 p.m.
Southern is currently 5-7 and riding a three-game losing streak. Earlier this season, Southern led Texas A&M at halftime, 39-25, before losing 71-54.
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As one of the most underrated scorers in this year’s draft class, Nebraska senior wing Brice Williams has quietly put together a strong case to be selected in the upcoming draft. He had a solid first year with the Cornhuskers last season after transferring from Charlotte, but he has truly broken out through the first 11 games of his final year of eligibility. While his offensive game has been efficient and effective so far, there are still several aspects of his all-around play that need continued improvement as he enters conference play.
Let’s break down Williams’ play so far this season, focusing on how his scoring potential could draw interest both as a whole and in his most recent outing against Hawaii.
Through his first 11 games of the year, Williams has averaged 19.2 points, 2.7 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.1 steals on promising shooting splits of 49.6%/45%/90.3%. While his ability to score from all over the floor has been very intriguing, he has also made noticeable strides in drawing fouls, leading to almost guaranteed points from the free throw line. Continuing to post big scoring nights in conference play could be the key to his rise up draft boards, and his most recent performance against Hawaii offers hope that he could be ready.
In Nebraska’s 69-55 victory over Hawaii at the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic, Williams finished with a season-high 32 points, along with two rebounds, three assists and two steals. He did an excellent job of staying in attack mode throughout the game, constantly hunting for open space to get off shots. His efficiency on high volume stood out as he shot 55.6% from the field while tying a season-high with 18 attempts. Williams also connected on 4-of-5 attempts from three-point range and earned eight attempts from the free throw line, where he did not miss.
32-POINT SEMIFINAL PERFORMANCE 🤯
Brice Williams with a massive game to send @HuskerMBB to the Diamond Head Classic championship game ‼️#B1GMBBall pic.twitter.com/Xk40OQ5BMM
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) December 24, 2024
This game highlighted his off-ball movement, as he navigated to his spots on the perimeter and found clear lanes to the rim. He knocked down several threes by losing his man on screens, taking one dribble to solidify his looks and hitting the jumpers with impressive touch. While his movement off the ball looked strong, his mechanics on catch-and-shoot opportunities were also clean and consistent.
Outside of his scoring ability, Williams has areas to improve if he wants to earn a shot at the next level. While he has enough athleticism to elevate for jumpers and defend at a serviceable level in college, he will need to find other ways to become a more versatile player. His passing and rebounding have flashed at times this year, but the consistency has been lacking. These concerns also extend to his defense; while he can stay with ball-handlers at a decent rate, his lack of ground coverage and switchability remain concerns.
In summary, Brice Williams has proven to be one of the more underrated offensive prospects in this year’s draft class. His scoring ability, particularly his efficiency and versatility as a shooter, positions him as a potential high-ceiling player who could contribute immediately at the next level. While there are areas of his game—particularly his passing, rebounding and defense—that need further development, his recent performance against Hawaii demonstrates that he has the potential to be a game-changer when he’s locked in. If he can continue to improve in these areas and maintain his offensive production throughout conference play, Williams could very well see his stock rise as the draft approaches.
Want to join the discussion? Like Draft Digest on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest NBA Draft news. You can also meet the team behind the coverage.
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