Reentry – Page 2

Document Category: Reentry

Making People’s Transition from Prison and Jail to the Community Safe and Successful

This brief from the National Reentry Resource Center highlights advancements made in state and local governments’ approaches to reentry and reducing recidivism since the passage of the Second Chance Act in 2008. It underscores the involvement of diverse constituencies and systems in these efforts, the field’s increasing understanding and application of what works to reduce recidivism, and promising recidivism outcomes in a number of states. Finally, this brief points to the critical work that is still ahead to transform systems, continue to improve reentry for people returning to the community after incarceration, and reduce recidivism in state and local jurisdictions across the country.

NIJ-Funded Research Examines What Works for Successful Reentry

NIJ-supported research has shown that there is no one-size-fits-all model for successful reentry. However, NIJ-supported researchers have evaluated reentry programs with effective and ineffective attributes, and these studies have identified some efforts that could actually be counterproductive.

Adult Pre-Release Handbook: Pre-Release Information for an Informed Re-Entry and a Successful Transition

Pre-release handbook that focuses on topics including housing, employment, health, and financial needs. Resource includes worksheets to assist individuals in determining their individual needs.

The Role of Human Service Providers During Community Supervision

The Role of Human Service Providers During Community Supervision examines the intersection between community supervision and the human service needs of people on probation, parole, and pretrial release.

A better path forward for criminal justice: Prisoner reentry

Over 640,000 people return to our communities from prison each year. However, due to the lack of institutional support, statutorily imposed legal barriers, stigmas, and low wages, most prison sentences are for life—especially for residents of Black and Brown communities. More than half of the formerly incarcerated are unable to find stable employment within their first year of return and three-fourths of them are rearrested within three years of release. Research has demonstrated that health, housing, skill development, mentorship, social networks, and the collaborative efforts of public and private organizations collectively improve the reentry experience.

Preparing People for Reentry: Checklist for Correctional Facilities

Jails and prisons may find this checklist useful for guiding reentry planning and helping to ensure the safety of employees and people who are returning to their communities.

Meeting the Needs of Individuals with Substance Use Disorders: Strategies for Reentry from Jail

This brief discusses strategies for connecting people with SUDs to community-based treatment and services in preparation for and after being released from jail to help them transition back to their communities and sustain their recovery

Building Second Chances: Tools for Local Reentry Coalitions

Building Second Chances: Tools for Local Reentry Coalitions is a comprehensive toolkit for reentry coalition leaders and local city, county, and community leaders who want to play an active role in improving reentry policy, practice, and outcomes. This toolkit will help you to take stock of how best to improve outcomes for people leaving prison and jail. It will help you evaluate your current reentry efforts and map out the future of reentry for your community. The toolkit has user-friendly references to seminal publications, research findings, and noteworthy examples to give you the knowledge and skills to design new and reinvigorate existing reentry strategies.

Theme: Community Integration

This web-based resource shares personal experiences and insights from returning individuals about their transition related to community reintegration, securing housing, mental health services, substance use disorder treatment, employment, healthcare, family reunification support. The conversations, a unique partnership between American Institutes for Research (AIR) and JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA), featured a series of facilitated group discussions with individuals returning to the community from across the United States that occurred between August and October 2022. In the final segment of the group discussions, the topic turned to each person’s experiences with integration into their community. This segment was an opportunity for the participants to reflect on the reasons they have been successful as well as to identify the kinds of supportive services they felt were missing that would have been helpful. We also invited the participants to share whether they experienced any barriers related to a sense of stigma associated with their convictions. Here we present a series of themes that emerged from the participants’ collective responses. Each theme (a bulleted statement in boldface) is supported by direct quotes from the participants.

The Effects of Incarceration and Reentry on Community Health and Well-Being

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop on June 6, 2018. The workshop’s mission was to investigate the connection between incarceration and health inequities to better understand the distributive impact of incarceration on low-income families and communities of color. Topics of discussion focused on the experience of incarceration and reentry, mass incarceration as a public health issue, women’s health in jails and prisons, the effects of reentry on the individual and the community, and promising practices and models for reentry. The programs and models that are described in this publication are all Philadelphia-based because Philadelphia has one of the highest rates of incarceration of any major American city. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop.