Parole, Desistance from Crime, and Community Integration (2008) / Chapter Skim
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4 Services and Programs for Releasees
4 Services and Programs for Releasees
Pages 40-62
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From page 40... ...
We do not know, for example, how individual change and social circumstances such as marriage or work interact to produce desistance. Because the committee believes these unexplored issues are important, we try to provide something of a baseline of information about these linkages by organizing parts of this chapter on programs and services for releases in a desistance framework.
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From page 41... ...
The chapter begins with a review of research findings on interventions that are offered either before or after release from prison, organized in a desistance framework that includes education and employment, marriage, drug treatment, and individual change. This is followed by a section on current innovations in reentry programming, including prerelease planning and the consequences of early failure.
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From page 42... ...
. The time spent and connections made at work probably serve as informal social controls that prevent criminal behavior.
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From page 43... ...
More recently, DOL has funded faithor other community-based organizations in 30 sites under the Prisoner Reentry Initiative for employment services and job placements, specifically for clients with nonviolent histories (with varying definitions by site) who are under the supervision of the criminal justice system.
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From page 44... ...
. Prisoners with close family ties have lower recidivism rates than those without such attachments (La Vigne et al., 2004; Sullivan et al., 2002)
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From page 45... ...
Community-based programs usually include counseling, mentoring, assistance with family reunification and rebuilding, continuing parenting education, and family support groups. However, support services specifically focused on marriage and family for prisoners and former prisoners are limited and generally have not directly addressed nonmarital couple relationships.
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From page 46... ...
The most widely recognized behavior management approach to change is cognitive-behavioral therapy or treatment. In the criminal justice field, it is a problem-focused method designed to help people identify the dysfunctional beliefs, thoughts, and patterns of behavior that contribute to their problems and provide them with the skills they need to modify those behaviors, prevent relapse into those behaviors, and maintain successful behavior (Taxman, 2006)
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From page 47... ...
Meta-analyses of programs designed for criminal offenders have shown cognitive-behavioral programs to be very effective in reducing recidivism rates, most notably among higher risk, hard-to-reach offenders (Little, 2005; Lipsey et al., 2001; Landenberger and Lipsey, 2006) . On average, the therapy reduced the recidivism rates of a general offender population by 27 percent.
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From page 48... ...
Prison-based drug treatment programs that use cognitive-behavioral approaches have been found to reduce recidivism by nearly 7 percent (Aos et al., 2006, Exhibit 1)
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From page 49... ...
. A comprehensive assessment is the first step in developing a treatment regimen, and tailoring individualized services is an important component of drug abuse treatment for criminal justice populations (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2006)
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From page 50... ...
. Continuing drug abuse treatment in the community is believed to be necessary to help new releasees deal with problems that only become salient at reentry, such as learning to handle situations that could lead to relapse, learning how to live drug free, and developing a drug-free peer support network.
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From page 51... ...
REENTRY PROGRAMMING In addition to the effects of improved access to appropriate drug treatment programs, jobs and job training, and family support services, reentry programming shows promise in addressing issues and situations that may cause offenders to cycle in and out of prison. Reentry services and programs for releasees focus on immediate needs, such as developing an individualized plan for the first few weeks and months after release; working with a case manager in the community; meeting housing, physical health, and mental health needs; and providing mentoring programs for support.
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From page 52... ...
The risk of death during the first 2 weeks after release, adjusted for age, sex, and race, was 12.7 times that of other state residents. The leading causes of death for former inmates were drug overdose, cardiovascular disease, homicide, and suicide, which are different from the leading causes of death in the state's general population and in the prison population. It has been well established that a large proportion of parolees who return to prison fail in the first weeks and months after their release (Maltz, 1984; Schmidt and Witte, 1988; Ezell, 2007; Haapanen et al., 2007)
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From page 53... ...
. The probability of arrest after release from prison differs by type of crime. Prison releasees arrested for property or drug offenses are more likely to be arrested early in the postrelease period than those arrested for violent offenses. This pattern is illustrated in Figure 4-2, which shows the probability of arrest for releases arrested for property, drug, and violent crimes.
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From page 54... ...
The situation is often complicated by a host of factors: the scarcity of affordable and available housing in many cities, legal barriers, preconceptions that restrict tenancy for this population, and local eligibility requirements for federally subsidized housing that may exclude many releasees, such as those who were convicted of drug offenses. Housing eligibility restrictions on ex-offenders are a critical public policy factor in planning reentry.
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From page 55... ...
As the name suggests, it involves a comprehensive array of individualized services and support networks that are wrapped around clients, rather than presenting them only with set, inflexible treatment programs (Walker and Bruns, 2003)
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From page 56... ...
They not only have higher rates of substance abuse and violence than the general population, but they also suffer high rates of physical health problems. Their generally riskier life-styles increase the prevalence of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, and hepatitis (see Brewer, 2001)
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From page 57... ...
Unfortunately, this assumption has not proved true. The lack of community facilities for mentally ill people has had the unintended consequence of making the criminal justice system the primary public response to problem behaviors associated with severe mental illness.
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From page 58... ...
Two federal funding initiatives -- the targeted capacity expansion diversion program of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the mental health courts grant program of the Bureau of Justice Assistance -- have provided resources for new approaches for mentally ill offenders. In 1992, a national survey of jail diversion programs estimated that only about 52 jails had some kind of diversion program for offenders with mental illness (Monahan and Steadman, 1994)
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From page 59... ...
diverted criminal defendants from jail into treatment programs; and (3) monitored the defendants during treatment and had the ability to impose criminal sanctions for failures to comply with program requirements.
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From page 60... ...
When asked "what would be most helpful right now" (6 months postrelease) , 64 percent mentioned a job or job training, 53 percent mentioned financial support, 24 percent mentioned education, 38 percent mentioned housing, and 41 percent mentioned health insurance (La Vigne et al., 2006)
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From page 61... ...
Best Practices Design and Implementation Problems The only evaluation of a contemporary prisoner reentry program to use a random assignment design, Project Greenlight in New York, demonstrates the implementation difficulties facing these programs (Wilson and Davis, 2006)
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From page 62... ...
are more optimistic about reentry programming in general, and point out that Project Greenlight was not notably different from other failed reentry programs and that the treatment was not delivered appropriately (see also Wilson and Davis, 2006; Visher, 2006; Marlowe, 2006)
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