Carrie Newman

Carrie Newman Alternative Sentencing Coordinator

Carrie Newman is currently working as the Alternative Sentencing Coordinator for the Beit T'Shuvah Residential Treatment and Prevention Center. Beit T'Shuvah is a Jewish Federation supported agency that was established in 1986 as a response for the need to assist Jewish men and women who had lost their moral, ethical, and spiritual compasses due to a variety of addictive and compulsive disorders. The program combines traditional addiction therapy, 12-step programming, and Judaism to assist its clients in successfully recovering from their addictions. It is the only Jewish faith based recovery program in existence, and it is the combination of traditional methods of recovery with Judaic spiritual principles and traditions that has made Beit T'Shuvah so successful within the recovery community at large.

As the Alternative Sentencing Coordinator for Beit T'Shuvah, Carrie provides outreach and counseling to Jewish criminal offenders. It is her job to interview and assess potential candidates for the program who are incarcerated and to then advocate for these individuals in the courts, that they may be sentenced to Beit T'Shuvah as an alternative to long-term incarceration in jail or prison. Carrie’s “expertise” in her work is the direct result of her personal experience of 23 years of active addiction to a variety of substances, and of her own numerous contacts with the criminal justice system before being alternatively sentenced to Beit T'Shuvah in 1996.

When Carrie arrived at Beit T'Shuvah 13 years ago, she was unsure of her ability, even her willingness, to stop the cycle of drug abuse and to change her life. She was more than a little skeptical of a “Jewish rehab,” and the religious implications of such a place. She would find, however, that she finally felt that she fit somewhere, amongst a community of Jewish recovering addicts, alcoholics, and criminals. She would latch on to the spiritual principles of 12-step recovery and, most importantly, the centuries old wisdom of the Jewish tradition. In the year that Carrie lived at Beit T'Shuvah, she would discover that abstaining from drugs and alcohol was the easy part of recovery. Struggling with the demons that led her to use drugs and alcohol to feel comfortable in the world would prove to be the difficult part. Beit T'Shuvah nurtured that struggle, allowing Carrie to discover her soul and to find what she calls “her place in the universe.”

Carrie’s journey has included many blessings, both spiritual and material. She counts among the spiritual blessings that she has been transformed from an angry, frightened and hopeless “dope fiend,” into a woman who is kind, compassionate, and who brings light, instead of darkness, into the world. She has discovered a connection to Judaism that defines her life and her work. She met her soul mate and husband, Scott, at Beit T’Shuvah, with whom she shares a “bountiful life of blessing and love.” Through Beit T’Shuvah’s guidance and nurturance, Carrie has embarked upon her career as the Alternative Sentencing Coordinator. Carrie received her B.A. in Criminology in 2003, graduating Magna Cum Laude, and hopes to apply her knowledge to “repairing the torn fabric of the world,” by helping others who struggle with addiction through social work, advocacy, and involvement in creating social policy that favors rehabilitation over punitive measures to cope with crime and addiction.