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What Hapi Delivers

Updated: Jul 28


Personalized Discharge Plans


Hapi creates step-by-step roadmaps tailored to each person’s needs, covering housing, jobs, healthcare, mental health, community supervision, and safety planning.



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What is discharge planning?

A dynamic, step‑by‑step roadmap that starts before release and updates after release. It covers core needs, housing, income/employment, healthcare and mental health, IDs/benefits, community supervision requirements, safety planning, transportation, and adapts as circumstances change.


Why is it important?

A one‑size‑fits‑all checklist cannot address the layered realities people face when they leave prison. Many return to environments marked by poverty, trauma, unstable housing, and social exclusion. Without personalized, coordinated, and continuously updated support, individuals are far more likely to slip through service gaps, with preventable, often devastating consequences.

Personalized discharge planning matters because it enables:


  • Continuity of Care: It bridges the gap between prison-based and community services, ensuring that medical treatment, mental health care, and addiction support are not abruptly discontinued at release.

  • Improved Engagement: When discharge plans reflect an individual’s specific needs and goals, people are more likely to engage with services and take ownership of their reintegration journey.

  • Cultural Relevance: Tailored plans can incorporate culturally safe services, especially for Indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups who may distrust or avoid mainstream systems due to historical harms.

  • Risk Reduction: Individuals with personalized plans are less likely to reoffend or return to custody, as their plans address key criminogenic needs such as housing, employment, and social support.

  • Efficiency and Cost Savings: Early, targeted intervention reduces the likelihood of emergency health service use, homelessness, or re-incarceration, which are significantly more costly to the system.

  • Empowerment and Dignity: Personalized planning recognizes individuals as people, not just cases, helping them regain agency, rebuild identity, and foster a sense of hope and purpose.

  • System Navigation Support: Released individuals often struggle to understand or access complex service systems. Personalized plans act as navigational tools, connecting them to the right supports at the right time.


Personalized discharge planning is foundational to a justice system that is restorative, humane, accountable, and effective.

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Discharge Planning Across the Release Continuum in Canada

Inside Custody

From admission, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) conducts an Offender Intake Assessment and develops a Correctional Plan jointly with the individual. The plan identifies criminogenic needs, required interventions/programs, and timelines linked to parole eligibility dates. Sentence Management Officers (SMOs) record key eligibility dates (e.g., day parole, full parole, long‑term supervision) and structure the sentence accordingly. Case management inputs come from program staff, health-care providers, and specialized roles (e.g., Indigenous liaison officers) who contribute to the plan 1,2. Section 84 processes can begin at this stage to involve Indigenous communities in release planning 1,3. Identification and health‑card needs are documented, and staff assist with applications as part of the Correctional Plan 1.


On Release Day

Before conditional release, the individual reviews and signs a release certificate and agrees to the community conditions set out in the Correctional Plan. They receive copies of key documents (plan summary, appointment schedule, contact numbers) as outlined in CSC’s release procedures. Travel arrangements and financial allowances are issued according to the “Day of Release” and “Allowances upon Release” provisions 1. Where applicable, placement in a Community Residential Facility (halfway house) is confirmed following prior screening and recommendations 2. CSC notifies police and relevant community partners of the release details within prescribed timelines. Parole reporting instructions, where, when, and to whom the individual must report, are reiterated before departure 1,2.


In the Community

Within one working day of arrival at the release destination, the person meets their parole officer for an initial interview, residence verification, and condition review 2. Early supervision involves scheduled contacts, program attendance, and any special requirements (e.g., curfews, substance testing) aligned with the Correctional Plan. The parole officer updates the plan as needs change, makes referrals to community services (housing, health, employment, cultural supports), and records progress in CSC’s case management system 1,2. Periodic reviews and case conferences occur with the Parole Board of Canada to ensure conditions remain appropriate until warrant expiry or sentence completion 1,3.



System Shortfalls and Drawbacks

Inside Custody

Correctional Plans are created under CSC policy during intake (Commissioner’s Directive 705/705‑6), but for people serving life‑minimum sentences, updates are routinely years overdue—25% wait 2–5 years and 7% wait 5–13 years 1,4. Parole and case management staff report large caseloads and chronic understaffing; 69% of parole officers say their workload prevents them from adequately protecting the public 5. Because resources are thin, “discharge planning” inside often amounts to information sharing rather than intensive coordination with community supports 6.


On Release Day

People commonly leave custody with minimal material support, no valid ID, inadequate clothing, or money, pushing them directly toward emergency shelters 6. In provinces such as British Columbia, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island, individuals can be released without an active health card, creating a barrier that experts call nearly impossible to fix once they are back in the community 7,8. Release packets typically consist of phone numbers and resource lists that go out of date quickly, making them hard to use in a high‑stress moment 6.


In the Community

After release, individuals must cold‑call agencies, repeat their stories, and navigate eligibility rules on their own; plans are rarely revised, and feedback seldom flows back into the system 6. The health risk is acute: in British Columbia, the overdose death rate in the first two weeks after release was 56 times higher than in the general population 8,9. Overloaded parole officers have limited capacity to catch crises early, so missed appointments and unmet needs slip through the cracks 5. Housing remains precarious; discharge planners themselves acknowledge they “do not have the resources to do an adequate job,” often defaulting to shelter referrals 6.


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How Hapi Changes the Current Process

Inside Custody

  • Rolling, living plans, not dusty PDFs. Hapi starts the discharge plan the day someone enters custody and keeps it current. SMS prompts (written in trauma‑informed, plain language), “Has anything changed with housing/family/health?”, so updates don’t wait years.

  • Lightens overloaded staff. Hapi helps you with forms that need to be filled, and walks you through each question in plain SMS, so you don’t have to chase staff for “Which form? How do I answer this?” That self-serve guidance cuts back on repeat questions and frees staff to focus on higher‑touch support.

  • Real coordination. If Hapi is present in institutional tablets, the client can loop in with community partners early (with permissions), so housing, ID, and health tasks are booked before release, not handed off at the door.


Release Day

  • No more paper packets. Everything the person needs, IDs to pick up, bus times, parole address, clothing vouchers, is in a text thread they already use. 

  • ID & health coverage steps, spelled out. Hapi walks people through provincial health card reactivation and ID applications step by step (SMS checklists, reminders to bring documents).

  • Navigation without data. Directions, transit changes, and timing arrive by SMS, no smartphone, app, or Wi‑Fi needed. If the first option falls through, Hapi can reroute.


In the Community

  • One conversation instead of ten cold calls. People text Hapi once; They don’t have to retell their story over and over.

  • Built‑in mental health and crisis support. Hapi uses gentle, validating language and can surface grounding exercises, crisis lines, or escalate to a human when risk flags (missed methadone, suicidal language) appear.

  • Keeps the plan alive. As needs shift, from shelter to stable housing, to work, to credit repair, Hapi updates the roadmap and closes the loop, so feedback actually shapes the next step.


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