An internship at the ACI’s maximum-security facility during her senior year at URI was the hook. She was surprised to find she loved it, so when she graduated last year, she took a job at The Providence Center, which provides a variety of wraparound services and programs for people affected by psychiatric illnesses, emotional problems and substance use disorders. Now her work as a discharge planner focuses on prisoners, primarily those with substance use disorders, re-entering the community. She also runs an anger management group in the Women’s Prison.

“Women share their traumas and their troubles,” she says. “I always tell them that anger does not go away. It’s what you do with those emotions that counts.”

When her clients go to their new placements in residential settings and outpatient clinics, such as Anchor Community Recovery Center, an initiative of The Providence Center, there are groups specifically designed to meet their needs—a lifeline for many of them. “Patience has run out on most of these people,” she says. “They have no one in their lives who believes in them anymore.”

But even with support, “things can go south quickly,” Feliz acknowledges. “The first 48 hours are the most dangerous. Tolerance for drugs is low, there is easy access, and unfortunately overdosing is likely.”

Parole or probation violations that send her clients back to the ACI are also likely, especially among nonviolent offenders. This phenomenon, she says, is known as “life on the installment plan.”

Despite everything she’s seen, she’s optimistic. Clients on the “outside” who are doing well give her hope. And for those who return, Feliz has a strategy. “I ask them which parts of the discharge plan worked. I praise whatever they did right. I tell them, ‘We’ll try again.’”