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When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry
01 Jan 2003-
TL;DR: In this paper, a profile of returning prisoners is presented, along with a discussion of the changing nature of Parole Supervision and Services, and the role of the victim's role in prisoner reentry.
Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction and Overview 2. Who's Coming Home? A Profile of Returning Prisoners 3. The Origins and Evolution of Modern Parole 4. The Changing Nature of Parole Supervision and Services 5. How We Help: Preparing Inmates for Release 6. How We Hinder: Legal and Practical Barriers to Reintegration 7. Revolving Door Justice: Inmate Release and Recidivism 8. The Victim's Role in Prisoner Reentry 9. What to Do? Reforming Parole and Reentry Practices 10. Conclusions: When Punitive Policies Backfire Afterword
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TL;DR: This paper found that race, gang membership, drug dependence, and institutional behavior are critical factors in predicting the timing of recidivism among a sample of young men aged 17 to 24 years released from prison in a Midwestern state.
Abstract: Research Summary:
The primary goal of this study is to understand the factors that best explain recidivism among a sample of 322 young men aged 17 to 24 years released from prison in a Midwestern state. Specific attention is paid to the predictive validity of gang membership, gun use, and drug dependence on the timing of reconviction and the current research on desistance frames the analyses. Results from a series of proportional hazard models indicate that race, gang membership, drug dependence, and institutional behavior are critical factors in predicting the timing of reconviction. Contrary to expectations, gun use was not related to postrelease involvement in the criminal justice system.
Policy Implications:
Much of current violence policy has focused on the identification and enhanced prosecution of individuals deemed to be serious and chronic offenders; particular emphasis has been placed on gun offenders. The findings presented here indicate that preprison weapon involvement is not significantly associated with recidivism, likely because gun use is prevalent among young, serious offenders. Although policies aimed at the incapacitation of young, violent offenders may reduce community levels of crime in the short term, the chances for recidivism are likely to increase in the long term if factors like gang membership and drug use, and the deficits that these behaviors engender for social and emotional capital, are not addressed. More broadly, the strong, significant effect of the institutional misconduct measure signals the salience of accounting for institutional behavior when making release decisions. Institutional misconduct may be an important marker of sustained gang membership, making institutional programming and appropriate aftercare services a priority for this group of offenders.
133 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the effect of criminal background checks on ex-offender employment and found that the effect is strongly negative for those employers that are legally required to perform background checks, which is not surprising because these legal requirements to perform checks are paired with legal prohibitions against hiring exoffenders.
Abstract: Research Summary
The rapid increase in the nation's incarceration rate over the past decade has raised questions about how to reintegrate a growing number of ex-offenders successfully. Employment has been shown to be an important factor in reintegration, especially for men over the age of 27 years who characterize most individuals released from prison. This article explores this question using unique establishment-level data collected in Los Angeles in 2001. On average, we replicate the now-common finding that employer-initiated criminal background checks are negatively related to the hiring of ex-offenders. However, this negative effect is less than complete. The effect is strongly negative for those employers that are legally required to perform background checks, which is not surprising because these legal requirements to perform checks are paired with legal prohibitions against hiring ex-offenders. However, some employers seem to perform checks to gain additional information about ex-offenders (and thus hire more ex-offenders than other employers), and checking seems to have no effect on hiring ex-offenders for those employers not legally required to perform checks.
Policy Implications
One public policy initiative that has received considerable attention is to deny employers access to criminal history record information, which includes movements to “ban the box” that inquires about criminal history information on job applications. The assumption underlying this movement is that knowledge of ex-offender status leads directly to a refusal to hire. The results of this analysis show that policy initiatives aimed at restricting background checks, particularly for those firms not legally required to perform checks, may not have the desired consequences of increasing ex-offender employment. This result is consistent with an alternative view that some employers care about the characteristics of the criminal history record and use information about criminal history in a more nuanced, nondiscrete way.
131 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the effect of imprisonment on recidivism is examined within one-, two-, and three-year follow-up periods using Logistic Regression, Precision Matching, and Propensity Score Matching.
Abstract: There is debate about the extent to which imprisonment deters reoffending. Further, while there is a large literature on the effects of imprisonment, methodologically sound and rigorous studies are the exception due to problematic sample characteristics and study designs. This paper assesses the effect of imprisonment on reoffending relative to a prison diversion program, Community Control, for over 79,000 felons sentenced to state prison and 65,000 offenders sentenced to Community Control between 1994 and 2002 in Florida. The effect of imprisonment on recidivism is examined within one-, two-, and three-year follow-up periods using Logistic Regression, Precision Matching, and Propensity Score Matching. Findings indicate that imprisonment exerts a criminogenic effect and that this substantive conclusion holds across all three methods. The main contribution of this study is that various methods yield results that are at least in a similar direction and support overall conclusions of prior literature that imprisonment has a criminogenic effect on reoffending compared to non-incarcerative sanctions. Limitations and directions for future research are noted.
130 citations
TL;DR: This article presented a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a re-entry program that combines post-release subsidized work with "reach-in" social services provided prior to release.
Abstract: While the economic model of crime suggests that improving post-prison labor market prospects should reduce recidivism, evaluations of previous employment-oriented re-entry programs have mixed results, possibly due to the multi-faceted challenges facing prisoners at the time of their release. We present an evaluation of an experiment that combines enhanced employment opportunities with wrap around services before and after release. This paper presents what we believe is the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a re-entry program that combines post-release subsidized work with “reach-in” social services provided prior to release. The sample was 236 high-risk offenders in Milwaukee with a history of violence or gang involvement. We observe increased employment rates and earnings during the period when ex-offenders are eligible for subsidized jobs, and these gains persist throughout the year. The intervention has significant effects (p < 0.01) in reducing the likelihood of rearrest. The likelihood that the treatment group is re-imprisoned during the first year after release is lower than for controls (22 vs. 26 %) but the difference is not statistically significantly different from zero. The results of our RCT suggest that “reach-in” services to help improve human capital of inmates prior to release, together with wrap around services following release, boosts employment and earnings, although whether there is sufficient impact on recidivism for the intervention to pass a benefit-cost test is more uncertain. Average earnings for both treatment and control groups were very low; legal work simply does not seem that important in the economic lives of released prisoners.
129 citations
Cites background from "When Prisoners Come Home: Parole an..."
...Leading scholars have identified reach-in services as one key aspect of a successful re-entry program (Petersilia 2003; Travis 2005)....
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...The Milwaukee Intervention There remains the possibility that what is needed is not just improved job opportunities, but also help in dealing with the myriad other problems typically faced by released offenders, including drug addiction, family dysfunction, debts, gang connections, and lack of ‘‘soft skills’’ in dealing with other people on a day to day basis (Petersilia 2003)....
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...…just improved job opportunities, but also help in dealing with the myriad other problems typically faced by released offenders, including drug addiction, family dysfunction, debts, gang connections, and lack of ‘‘soft skills’’ in dealing with other people on a day to day basis (Petersilia 2003)....
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TL;DR: A wide range of research literature is reviewed to suggest how exposure to the corrections system may affect the HIV/AIDS related risks of drug users in general, and the disproportionate HIV risk faced by African Americans in particular.
Abstract: African Americans in the United States are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. We focus in this paper on the structural and contextual sources of HIV/AIDS risk, and suggest that among the most important of these sources are drug policy and the corrections system. In particular, high rates of exposure to the corrections system (including incarceration, probation, and parole) spurred in large part by federal and state governments' self-styled war on drugs in the United States, have disproportionately affected African Americans. We review a wide range of research literature to suggest how exposure to the corrections system may affect the HIV/AIDS related risks of drug users in general, and the disproportionate HIV risk faced by African Americans in particular. We then discuss the implications of the information reviewed for structural interventions to address African American HIV-related risk. Future research must further our understanding of the relations among drug policy, corrections, and race-based disparities in HIV/AIDS.
128 citations