Publications

Toolkit for Connecting Supportive Housing Tenants to Employment
Corporation for Supporting Housing (2008)

This toolkit highlights case studies, evaluations, sample documents, and other useful resources for connecting supportive housing tenants to employment. The goal is to help supportive housing organizations, workforce partners, and employers address key challenges in the planning, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of employment-related services and programs.

Children and Families of Incarcerated Parents: Understanding the Challenges and Addressing the Needs
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (2008)

This report identifies the needs of children with incarcerated parents and describes the ways in which they are being addressed by the Washington Department of Social and Health Services. The report also contains recommendations for how state agencies can more effectively meet the needs of this population.

From Options to Action: A Roadmap for City Leaders to Connect Formerly Incarcerated Individuals to Work
Public/Private Ventures (2008)

This report was inspired and informed by discussions that took place during the Mayors Summit on Reentry and Employment, as well as P/PV’s experience in the field and a review of pertinent literature. It is meant to provide a framework for reentry efforts, presenting practical steps for achieving a more coordinated, comprehensive approach to reentry at the city level.

Reincarcerated: The Experiences of Men Returning to Massachusetts Prisons
Urban Institute (2008)

This report presents findings from interviews with male prisoners returned to the Massachusetts Department of Corrections within three years of release. The report describes respondents' incarceration experiences, preparation for reentry, and life in the community, as well as criminal offending and the circumstances leading up to their reincarceration. This analysis also examines the role of parole supervision in prisoner reentry and the connection between technical parole violations and underlying criminal behavior.

Massachusetts Recidivism Study
Urban Institute (2008)

The Massachusetts Recidivism Study is a collaborative effort between the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center and the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) that aims to better understand the experiences of recidivists and how their previous incarceration and time in the community relate to their returns to prison.

Planning and Assessing a Law Enforcement Reentry Strategy
Council of State Governments Justice Center (2008)

The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center partnered with the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), with support from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), to develop a report that focuses on law enforcement reentry strategies. Planning and Assessing a Law Enforcement Reentry Strategy integrates information on effective practices with an interactive assessment to form a toolkit for designing and evaluating reentry approaches involving law enforcement agencies.

Medical Problems of Prisoners
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2008)

Medical problems of prisoners presents findings on state and federal prisoners who reported a current medical problem, a physical or mental impairment, a dental problem, or an injury since admission based on data from the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities.

HIV in Prisons, 2006
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2008)

Between 2005 and 2006 the number of state and federal prisoners who were HIV-positive decreased 3.1 percent –– from 22,676 to 21,980 inmates, according to a report by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Court Debt and Related Incarceration in Rhode Island from 2005 through 2007
Rhode Island Family Life Center (2008)

Incarceration for court debt is the most common reason to be put in prison in Rhode Island. This report concludes that overall, there is a haste to incarcerate individuals for court debt in the state which causes unnecessary, damaging jail time, is an inefficient use of state finances, and disrupts people’s lives.

The Impact of Incarceration on Crime: Two National Experts Weigh In
Pew Center on the States (2008)

This Question & Answer brief features Dr. Alfred Blumstein and Dr. James Q. Wilson, two of the nation’s most respected experts on incarceration and crime. Professors Blumstein and Wilson spoke recently with the Public Safety Performance Project, an initiative of the Pew Center on the States, about the degree to which increased incarceration deserves credit for the drop in crime across the nation, the likely outcomes of continued prison expansion, and some policies and programs that offer better public safety results for taxpayer dollars.

To Treat or Not to Treat: Evidence on the Prospects of Expanding Treatment to Drug-Involved Offenders
Urban Institute (2008)

Despite a growing consensus among scholars that substance abuse treatment is effective in reducing recidivism, strict eligibility rules have limited the impact of current models of therapeutic jurisprudence on public safety. This research effort was aimed at providing policy makers some guidance on whether expanding this model to more drug-involved offenders is cost-beneficial. We find that roughly 1.5 million arrestees who are probably guilty (the population most likely to participate in court monitored substance abuse treatment) are currently at risk of drug dependence or abuse and that several million crimes could be averted if current eligibility limitations were suspended and all at-risk arrestees were treated.

Mapping the Innovation in Correctional Health Care Service Delivery in New York City
Prisoner Reentry Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (2008)

This monograph, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, profiles the current pattern of the formerly incarcerated returning to New York City with particular focus on New York City's adoption of a community-based public health model for correctional health care.

Jailing Communities: The Impact of Jail Expansion and Effective Public Safety Strategies
Justice Policy Institute (2008)

Jailing Communities is a new report that explores the impact of jail expansion on communities.

From Incarceration to Community: Case Studies from the Weed & Seed / Americorps*VISTA Reentry Initiative
Winston-Salem State University (2008)

The Weed and Seed / AmeriCorps*VISTA Reentry Initiative Case Studies share the reentry context, strategies, and detailed activities on four of twelve Weed and Seed/AmeriCorps*VISTA Reentry Initiative cities, to which over 26,000 ex-offenders return each year.

Reentry in Action Report: Enrollment Issues Among SVORI Programs
Multi-site Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (2008)

The Multi-site Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) is pleased to release a new Reentry Research in Action report based on 2005 and 2006 surveys of all SVORI program directors. The report focuses on enrollment and enrollment-related challenges that SVORI programs faced as they recruited participants into their reentry programs, and it expands on a report on enrollment issues previously released using 2005 data only.

Comprehensive Framework for Paroling Authorities in an Era of Evidence-Based Practice
National Institute of Corrections (2008)

This guide is designed to help paroling authorities understand the requirements of effective evidence-based decisionmaking and practices so they can better understand and articulate their agency needs to funders, regulatory agencies, and other corrections system players.

Restoring the Right to Vote
Brennan Center for Justice (2008)

The Right to Vote Project leads a nationwide campaign to restore voting rights to people with criminal convictions. Brennan Center staff counsels policymakers and advocates, provides legal and constitutional analysis, drafts legislation and regulations, engages in litigation challenging disenfranchising laws, surveys the implementation of existing laws, and promotes the restoration of voting rights through public outreach and education.

Prison Postsecondary Education: Bridging Learning from Incarceration to the Community
Urban Institute (2008)

This paper focuses on prison postsecondary education programming, which attempts to address factors that contribute to incarceration and assist with reintegration into society by providing credit and non-credit college-level courses to inmates before their release from prison. Specifically, we describe several postsecondary correctional education programs primarily offered by community colleges, including programs in California, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, and identify both challenges and solutions in providing these services to inmates. We also highlight program features that may improve reentry outcomes.

Prison-based Adult Basic Education (ABE) and Post-release Labor Market Outcomes
Urban Institute (2008)

We use administrative data from Florida to determine the extent to which participation in prison-based Adult Basic Education (ABE) improves post-release earnings and/or employment. Utilizing a comparison group of inmates who had similar TABE scores on prison entry and a rich set of conditioning covariates, we find no systematic evidence that ABE participation is associated with higher post-release earnings. We do find, however, that ABE participation is associated with an increased probability of post-release employment. We also find that the ABE-employment relationship is the largest for ABE participants who had substantial amount of uninterrupted ABE instruction.

Prisoner Reentry Toolkit for Faith-Based and Community Organizations
U.S. Department of Labor, Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (2008)

This 72-page document contains tips, examples, best practices, and sample forms to use in reentry services including recruiting, case management, employability and job placement, mentoring, and program evaluation garnered from its experience with Ready4Work projects.