Prisoner Reentry: An Overview

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Prisoner ReentryAn Overview
Visions of Justice Implementing Prisoner Reentry
Dan OConnell Clayton Hall University of
Delaware May, 22 2007
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Road Map

• What is Reentry?
• Who is coming home?
• If were going to do something we need to know
  who were dealing with.
• Exiting Criminal Careers
• Because that is really the end goal, right?

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Reentry Defined

• A process The process of exiting a correctional
  institution and returning to the community after
  serving a significant portion of a criminal
  sentence, often coupled with ongoing community
  supervision.
• A State An individual can often be considered to
  be at a point, or state, in a cycle of removalgt
  reentrygt removal (etc.). Sometimes called
  churning.
• Churning At the community level, when large
  numbers of people are churning, it moves beyond
  simply impacting individuals and their families
  to impacting labor markets, social support and
  overall community cohesion.

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Reentry as a ProcessSome questions

• If reentry is a process, when does it start?
• When an inmate leaves the institution?
• Before that?
• How long?
• When does it end (when has a person reentered)?
• When the inmate gets to his or her house?
• A month later?
• When they finish probation?
• A year?
• Ten Years?
• If we cant agree on when reentry starts or ends,
  it is unlikely that we are clear of what it
  MEANS.

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More questionsWhat does the process entail?

• Two approaches
• Increase the price of crime by making it less
  attractive or accessible
• Tougher probation/parole conditions
• More supervision
• Make non-crime more attractive or accessible
• Treatment programs
• Access to employment, education etc

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Who is coming home?

• 650,000 State Prison inmates per year
• Many more county jail inmates who have served
  lesser sentences
• How long must one serve to be considered
  reentering?
• Mostly male.
• Under-employed
• Under-educated
• Drug addicted (BUT MOSTLY CLEAN)
• At high risk for HIV/ HCV
• Reentering offenders die at a rate 12 times the
  general population in the first two weeks after
  release

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Race of People Exiting Prison to Parole in the U.S
Bureau of Justice Statistics
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Current Offense of People Entering Parole in the
U.S
Bureau of Justice Statistics
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Recidivism of Released Prisoners, 1994 (Percents)
Bureau of Justice Statistics
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Three Year Rearrest Rate by Number of Prior
Arrests (Percents)
61 of those with 16 or more prior arrests were
rearrested in the FIRST YEAR
Bureau of Justice Statistics
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Exiting Criminal Careers Arrest Distribution by
Age, 2005 National Uniform Crime Reports
Adapted from Paternoster and Bushway
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Laub and Sampson, 2004
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Exiting Criminal CareersWhat we know

• DISISTANCE IS NORMAL
• The question is WHEN, not IF they desist
• Employment counts
• Family/ social support count
• Education counts
• People tend to drift in and out of crime
• Periods of crime tend to be associated with
  periods of drug use.
• Exiting addiction careers is associated with
  exiting criminal careers.

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Hooks for Change

• We cannot assign people to employment, sobriety,
  good relations and social support.
• People must seek out these things.
• They must be
• Available- are there jobs? Treatment? Support?
• Desired- Does the person WANT these things?
• Attainable- is the person employable?
• Seen as life changing not all hooks work.

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What we DONT KNOW

• DIRECTION Maybe exiting criminal careers causes
  work, good families and fewer drugs.
• Why do some people find these things sooner
  than others?
• What is it about family, work, etc that enables
  people to cease crime?
• What can we do to engage more reentering people
  in these activities?
• HINT Incarceration AND being a criminal are the
  very things that make people less attractive
  candidates for the very things that are
  associated with desistance.

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What we DO know

• The end goal or reentry is to facilitate the
  process of exiting the criminal career.
• Be it trying to help the offender
• Supervise the probationer/parolee
• Incarcerate the inmate
• We are all working towards the same end.

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Further reading

• When Prisoners Come Home Parole and Prisoner
  Reentry (Studies in Crime and Public Policy) by
  Joan Petersilia, Oxford University Press, USA
  (2003).
• But They All Come Back Facing The Challenges Of
  Prisoner Reentry by Jeremy Travis Urban
  Institute Press (2005).
• Making Good How Ex-Convicts Reform Rebuild
  Their Lives by Shadd Maruna American
  Psychological Association (APA) 1st edition
  (2001).
• Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives Delinquent
  Boys to Age 70 by John H. Laub and Robert J.
  Sampson Harvard University Press (2003).
• Prisoner Reentry And the Life Course The Role of
  Race And Drugs by Daniel J. O'Connell LFB
  Scholarly Publishing (2006). (But I warn you,
  its mostly statistics ? ).
• Gender, Crime and Desistence Toward a Theory of
  Cognitive Transformation. American Journal of
  Sociology, v104 p990-1064 (2002)