How to prevent recidivism.
What one program is doing to strengthen re-entry success.
Over 640,000 people return to our communities from prison each year, and another nine million are released from local jails. However, due to the lack of institutional support, imposed legal barriers, stigma, and low wages, most prison sentences are for life. More than half of the formerly incarcerated are unable to find stable employment within their first year of return. Two out of three former prisoners are rearrested and more than 50% are incarcerated again.
The process of previously convicted criminals reoffending and reentering the prison system is known as recidivism. “Without employment opportunities and bare necessities such as housing, food, or clothing, successful reentry into society seems nearly impossible for former prisoners.”
Preparing for re-entry.
How can we best prepare the formerly incarcerated for reintegration into life outside prison and ensure they don’t recidivate? Some experts claim rehabilitation (rather than punishment) is the answer, others believe that correctional education programs are the best way to end recidivism, while others prioritize mental health and substance abuse treatment for inmates. Helping inmates maintain family ties while incarcerated is another way to reduce recidivism, improve an individual’s likelihood of finding a job after prison, and ease the harm to family members separated from their loved ones.
There are many other promising reforms “targeted to address the core behavioral issues that result in criminality, with the goal of reducing the likelihood that inmates reoffend either while incarcerated or after their release” according to the U.S. Department of Justice. All are worthy of consideration.
Peer Support.
One notable effort towards reducing recidivism we’d like to highlight in this article is the use of peer specialist support teams: The Mental Health Peer Support Team Re-Entry Pilot Project. The project “was conceptualized to leverage peer experiences to empower justice-involved persons to successfully transition from jail into communities,” evaluators said.
Impact evaluators from the University of Texas in Dallas assessed the impact of the peer support specialist program on project outcomes: reduce re-arrest, decreased symptomology of mental health and substance use problems, and increase life domain functioning, including residential stability, employment, life skills, and self-care.
A few notable findings are worth mentioning here. First, the value of lived experience was highlighted. Of the peers who delivered the support to re-entering citizens, those who had lived experience, or a history of involvement with the criminal justice system, were deemed most helpful.
Lived experience.
Participants believed that “a peer’s lived experience can help build rapport, credibility, and practical experience in helping address client needs,” the evaluators said. In response to peers who don’t have similar lived experiences, one participant said, “you have peers that don’t have the experience the client has…they’re like, you just read a book and that’s how you learned that – you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
Lived experience was thought to be the most valuable tool in working with clients, more so than any degree.
Reducing recidivism.
To reduce recidivism, symptomology of mental health and substance use problems, and increase life domain functioning, peers who regularly use their lived experience to help re-entering citizens address clients’ mental health and substance use, housing, and employment needs appears promising.
“Today’s recidivism crisis calls for a paradigm shift from prison as punitive institutions to rehabilitative ones. Implementing the rehabilitative practices of prioritizing mental health care, education, and the process of creating a prison-to-work pipeline would lower the rates of recidivism in the United States. Lower rates of recidivism do not singularly benefit society by reducing the rate of crime but also by reducing prison populations, saving taxpayers’ dollars, and most pertinently, ensuring that prisoners are serving their purpose of reform and improvement,” said author Liz Benecchi at the Harvard Political Review.
Note: LaBarbera Learning Solutions is currently helping one non-profit evaluate the impact of a prison education program. Stay tuned for the report.
Labarbera Learning Solutions: Helping nonprofit leaders develop, implement, and evaluate successful programs for maximum impact in communities they serve.
