Prisoner reentry programs

In any given year, more than 600,000 inmates are released from prisons into communities across the United States. Former prisoners face countless economic, social, and psychological obstacles that make reentry diffcult and increase the risk of reoffending. These issues have become increasingly salient to scholars and policymakers over the past two decades. Backed by public support, government agencies have allocated taxpayer dollars to the design and implementation of a wide range of reentry-focused efforts to reduce recidivism. However, evaluations of reentry programs typically yield mixed results. Although some of the lackluster fndings may be the result of methodological problems in these studies, serious faws also exist in the content and delivery of many programs that limit their potential effectiveness. Reentry programs often fail to target high-risk offenders, do not consider the issues of treatment dosage and timing, focus on factors only weakly linked to reoffending, and are not implemented with fdelity. Thus, to improve the effectiveness of the reentry movement in the future, programs must be undergirded by a strong theoretical understanding of the reentry process, implemented as designed, and evaluated using rigorous research designs.