A promising jail reentry program revisited: results from a quasi-experimental design

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-3-2015

Abstract

Prisoner reentry remains a significant challenge for the criminal justice system with millions of offenders returning to society each year from the nation’s prisons and jails. Employment, housing, and access to substance abuse and mental health treatment are common, often unmet, challenges for the returning offender. In response, state and local jurisdictions have implemented reentry programming designed to assist in the transition from incarceration to the community. While most of these programs have targeted offenders in prisons, a growing number of local jurisdictions have implemented reentry initiatives through federal funding. This study examines the second cohort (2011–2013) of the Auglaize County (OH) transition program (ACT), a BJA-designated ‘promising’ reentry program. This evaluation sought to determine if the program maintained its positive impact on participant recidivism. Findings indicate that the treatment group had significantly lower rates of rearrest and probation violations at the bivariate level, but that these results did not hold for rearrest after the inclusion of relevant control variables in the multivariate analysis. Participation remained significantly associated with reduced probation violations at the multivariate level.

Publication Title

Criminal Justice Studies

Volume

28

Issue

2

First Page

211

Last Page

225

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1080/1478601X.2014.1000489

ISSN

1478601X

E-ISSN

14786028

Share

COinS