Shannon Ley has been a junkie all her life.

At 32, she said she still is battling the cocaine dependency that has crippled her ability to function in society since the day she was born addicted. Because of it, she has done many things she's not proud of, things she'd rather forget.

"Like getting high with my father when I was just a girl," she said. She has never held down a job, or had a meaningful relationship with anyone -- including both of her birth parents. She has been jailed for crimes influenced by her drug use at least 18 times.

She has not seen Tasha, her 15-year-old daughter, since the girl was adopted by relatives seven years ago.

Her daughter is the only bright spot in the darkness of her life, and the reason why Ms. Ley, who grew up in Lawrenceville, hopes that her latest three-month stint in the Allegheny County Jail also will turn out to be her first real chance of facing and overcoming her addiction.

Ms. Ley knows the odds are against her. But county jail officials and human services providers believe she is less likely to return to jail if she can re-establish a better relationship with her daughter and other family members.

To that end, they've put her and other county jail inmates through an intensive two-month program aimed at helping them deal with drug and alcohol addiction, anger management and other behavioral issues.

Jail officials now are planning to use a $200,000 Heinz Endowment grant to expand that faith-based pre-release program, Warden Ramon Rustin said.

"We know that inmates have a better chance of staying out of jail if they have the stability that can come from having a healthy relationship with their families," Mr. Rustin said.

Research and experience have shown social workers in the criminal justice system that preparing inmates to adjust to life with their families after jail is directly related to preventing their chronic relapses into criminal behavior, the warden said.

The jail's average daily population is 2,600 inmates, and the average sentence is for six to 12 months. About 65 percent of the 345 inmates released every month end up back in jail within a short time, Mr. Rustin said.

By comparison, the rate of relapse and return for inmates who go through the jail's Helping Open People's Eyes, or HOPE, program, is about 12 percent, he said.

That is why the jail plans to use the Heinz Endowment grant to create a family support center that will expand the concept of HOPE. The program, which was started in 2002, is administered by the jail chaplain's office, Mr. Rustin said.

The center would help inmates learn how to face not only personal failings that might have led them to jail, but also the reality that incarceration changes the dynamics of family relationships, said Claire Walker, executive director of the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Foundation.

"There is always enough grief and anger to go around when a family member is incarcerated," said Ms. Walker, who is writing a research paper based on 18 months of interviews with inmates, their families, and correction and probation officers.

The findings of her study, Mr. Rustin said, will guide workers in the family support center, who will handle casework and family counseling for inmates in jail and for a year after release. They also will evaluate former inmates' progress as they seek to re-enter society.

Martin Lawrence can already see in himself the transformation that social workers and probation officers say must start in jail for an inmate to have a chance of fully reintegrating himself to life outside its walls.

"This is the first time that I have been in jail and not continued to live my life the way I did before I went to jail," said Mr. Lawrence, 49, who grew up in Manchester. "Every time I've been in jail, I just continued to rob, steal and stab people."

But after four stints behind bars, including two in federal prison on drug and assault charges, Mr. Lawrence said he started to find peace within himself -- "to cut out all the violence in me"-- after he entered the HOPE program earlier this year. He returned to the county jail in January, after, he said, police charged him with trying to buy drugs while he was on probation following a previous drug conviction.

"This place has shown me that I don't have to be all of that," he said. "I have people who care about me and I need to change my life to show them that I care about them, too."

That, for the most part, is the prevailing sentiment among inmates in the HOPE program, where on a recent morning 95 men prepared themselves for their daily regimen of anger management classes, drug and alcohol addiction counseling and Bible study.

The program, in which 78 female inmates also are enrolled, partners with community service agencies and volunteers from churches and other organizations who serve as mentors, instructors and Bible study leaders.

One volunteer, David Jacobs of the Allegheny Center Alliance Church on the North Side, calls the program "restorative justice."

Jail officials realize that "people can change, but that's something that has to happen from within the jail walls. There has to be an aspect of faith to give someone the courage to face themselves and what they have made of their lives," he said.

But Jim Rieland, Allegheny County's director of probation, contends there also must be a network of support services to cushion what is often a very rocky landing for inmates when they are released.

"Right now, one of the biggest problems we're faced with in the criminal justice system is the fact that there is very little coordination between the inmate and the services they may need when they are let out of jail," he said.

The most important function of a family support center, Mr. Rieland said, should be to create a release plan "that the inmate can buy into."

A release plan would include identifying relatives or a temporary shelter to house inmates while they are placed into a series of programs to help them deal with the transition.

Mr. Rieland, whose office supervises about 17,000 people involved with the criminal justice system, said former inmates often feel so overwhelmed by life on the outside that they quickly end up on a path back to jail.

Sometimes, they don't have a place to stay on their first day out, he said, and are too ashamed of their past deeds to turn to friends or relatives.

"And if they don't have the support structure of family or the confidence to know how to seek critical services like help with housing and counseling for addiction, they're just going to end up in their old criminal circles," said Mr. Rieland.