A halfway house is an institute for people with criminal backgrounds or substance use disorder problems to learn (or relearn) the necessary skills to re-integrate into society and better support and care for themselves. As well as serving as a residence, halfway houses provide social, medical, psychiatric, educational, and other similar services. They are termed "halfway houses" due to their being halfway between completely independent living and in-patient or carceral facilities, where residents are highly restricted in their behavior and freedoms. The term has been used in the United States since at least the Temperance Movement of the 1840s. Types Halfway houses in the US generally fall into one of two models. In one model, upon admission, a patient is classified as to the type of disability, ability to reintegrate into society, and expected time frame for doing so. They may be placed into an open bay same-sex dormitory similar to that found in military basic training, with fifty to one-hundred similar residents in a gymnasium-type setting all going through the same thing at the same time. As the patients become able to increase their skill level and decrease their dependency on support services, the number of dorm members is reduced, to the point where, at the final stage before being able to move into their own apartment, a patient may have only one or two roommates. Another model reverses this. New patients are admitted in individual rooms providing one-to-one services and programming. As they become more independent, the dorms become bigger so that by the time the patient leaves, they are living in the 50–100-person dorm described above. The same two models are used for convicted criminals to begin the process of reintegration with society, while still providing monitoring and support; this is generally believed to reduce the risk of recidivism or relapse when compared to a release directly into society. Halfway houses are meant for reintegration of persons who have been recently released from prison or continuous mental institutionalization. Definitional problems There are several different types of halfway houses. Some are state sponsored, while others (mainly addiction recovery homes and mental illness homes) are run by "for profit" entities. In criminology the purpose of a halfway house is generally considered to be that of allowing people to begin the process of reintegration with society, while still providing monitoring and support. This type of living arrangement is often believed