Recidivism Rate
Relapse Rate
Employment Rate
Average Days in Residence
First-Year ROI
Southern Utah’s communities are bearing the growing costs of revolving-door incarceration, repeat emergency room visits, and chronic homelessness. Reactive spending on downstream consequences costs far more than investing in evidence-based recovery infrastructure.
Each return to incarceration costs Utah taxpayers approximately $30,000 per person per year. Emergency room visits for uninsured individuals in active addiction cost healthcare systems tens of thousands more. Chronic homelessness compounds every other problem — making employment, recovery, and family stability nearly impossible.
The typical policy response — short-term stabilization programs with 30 to 90-day windows — treats the symptoms without addressing root causes. Access Foundation was built on a different premise: that lasting recovery requires time, structure, and comprehensive support far beyond what brief interventions can offer.
Our Stable Environment Model™ provides the extended, stable platform that evidence consistently shows is necessary for durable behavior change — and our outcomes data demonstrates that this investment pays for itself many times over.
It makes me feel like society didn't give up on me. Coming out of jail, you assume people see you as a lost cause. But this tells me the opposite — that people I've never even met want me to have a shot at a real future.
When individuals believe they have a future, they act like people with a future. Dignity and stability are not luxuries — they are foundational inputs to outcomes that save public systems enormous cost.
Against an operational investment of under $1 million, Access Foundation returned more than $12 for every dollar spent — through reduced incarceration, lower healthcare costs, family preservation, and tax revenue generation.
Most programs measure whether a person is still sober after 30 days. We measure whether they’ve rebuilt a life. The difference is a 314-day average residency that allows real transformation to take hold.
Effective recovery is not a sprint. Neural pathways shaped by years of addiction require months of consistent, supported experience to reshape. The Stable Environment Model™ addresses the core conditions that make lasting change possible:
Safe housing, medical stabilization, legal coordination, and crisis de-escalation. We remove the chaos that makes every other intervention fail.
Employment preparation, financial literacy, social-emotional learning for the workplace. Residents begin building economic independence.
Prosocial network development, family reunification support, and community reintegration. Residents begin defining themselves by who they are becoming.
Residents transition as contributing community members — employed, housed, connected, and stable. Outcomes we continue to track for two years post-discharge.
Dedicated services for mothers reuniting with children in the welfare system. In 2025, we served 7 mothers and 8 children, preventing an estimated $25,000 in foster care costs.
Access Foundation's outcomes don't just exceed benchmarks — they do so by margins that represent hundreds of lives and millions of dollars redirected away from crisis systems each year.
| Outcome Metric | Traditional Approach | Access Foundation | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
Recidivism / Return to Incarceration |
24% (Utah State Average) |
<7% |
71% Reduction |
Substance Use Relapse |
40% (National Average) |
7% |
83% Reduction |
Employment Rate |
10–20% Post-Incarceration |
91% |
4–9× Higher |
Average Length of Stability Support |
30–90 Days |
314 Days |
3–10× Longer |
Post-Discharge Outcome Tracking |
Minimal / None |
2-Year Follow-Up |
Comprehensive |
First-Year Return on Investment |
Reactive cost spending |
13.1:1 |
$13.11 per $1 invested |
The economic return from Access Foundation's programs flows through four distinct channels - all of which represent reduced demand on public resources and increased taxpayer contributions from formerly incarcerated or homeless individuals.
Criminal Justice Cost Avoidance
Healthcare Cost Savings
72-Hour Safety Net Value
New Tax Revenue Generated
Child Welfare Cost Avoidance
Total 20-Year Community Value
Access Foundation's current facilities are designed for 15–20 years of operational life, projected to serve 8,000-10,000 residents over infrastructure lifespan. Over this horizon, the cumulative community value is estimated at $104M - a 100:1 or greater return on infrastructure investment. Every policy decision that supports the long-term sustainability of this model compounds those returns year over year.
