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Changing Lives |
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Compassion Spotlight
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The Need
Each year, more than 650,000 inmates are released from State and Federal prisons.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, two out of three of these released inmates will be re-arrested within three years and more than half will be re-incarcerated.
Released inmates face a myriad of challenges that often contribute to their return to criminal activity, re-arrest, and re-incarceration — including joblessness, substance abuse, mental illness, low level of education, lack of identification (e.g., driver’s license) and unstable housing.
The cycle of recidivism carries severe consequences for victims of crime, community safety, the families of prisoners, and offenders themselves, as well as the cost to taxpayers for additional judicial and correctional expenses.
The Response
”America is the land of the second chance, and when the gates of prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.”
President George W. Bush, 2004 State of the Union Address
Faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) frequently possess a personal touch, deep community roots, caring volunteers, and a commitment to service that government alone rarely offers. These elements can prove the critical difference in helping ex-offenders avoid crime and make a fresh start in life after prison. The Faith-Based and Community Initiative places FBCOs at the center of a range of efforts to do just this. And although most prison-related policy and funding decisions are made at the State and local level, the Federal Government can serve as a “venture capitalist” to design, fund, and test replicable models that show how effective FBCOs can help cut crime and enable new beginnings.
Prisoner Reentry Initiative
President Bush announced the Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI) in his 2004 State of the Union address, drawing on the strength of FBCOs as trusted institutions in the urban neighborhoods to which the majority of ex-prisoners return. PRI programs fund FBCOs to deliver a wide range of social services that help ex-prisoners find work, stay out of prison, and successfully reintegrate into their communities — including mentoring, case management, education, job training, job placement, and other essential wrap-around transitional services.
In April 2008, President Bush signed into law the Second Chance Act of 2007, which formally authorizes key elements of the successful PRI.
To implement PRI, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) competitively awards grants totaling $19.8 million annually to 30 employment-centered FBCOs in urban areas across the country. Working in collaboration with DOL, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has more recently awarded funds to State criminal justice agencies to provide pre-release services to prisoners also served by the DOL grantees. By fall of 2008, more than $115 million will have been awarded under PRI—with 73 grants awarded to FBCOs and 63 grants awarded to criminal justice agencies.
DOL’s PRI program has produced promising results. Most importantly, PRI participants’ rate of re-arrest (15%) is approximately one-third the Bureau of Justice Statistics national benchmark (44%) at one year post-release.
Through the first two years of services, the DOL-funded FBCO grant sites have assisted 12,890 ex-prisoners.
A recidivism rate reduced by 66% (achieved in PRI) saves roughly $31.6 million in incarceration costs per year. If the annual DOL cost of the program ($19.8 million) is subtracted, net savings on incarceration costs are $11.8 million per year—even without counting judicial system, victim, and other costs.1
Each year, PRI sites serve approximately 6,250 participants. If the national average one-year recidivism rate of 44% were applied to these participants, then 2,750 ex-inmates would be re-arrested within one year of release and 2,118 would return to prison. At an annual cost of $22,632 per inmate, American taxpayers would annually pay $47.9 million to house this group of inmates alone.
Ready4Work
The Faith Based and Community Initiative at DOL established Ready4Work (R4W) in 2003 as a three-year, $19.5 million national demonstration project. R4W sought to test the effectiveness of partnerships between local FBCOs, the public workforce system, businesses, and criminal justice agencies to provide ex-prisoners with employment, mentoring, and case-management services. R4W was jointly funded by DOL, Public/Private Ventures, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. DOJ also provided $5.5 million for six sites to serve juvenile offenders.
R4W recidivism rates were half the national average after six months and 34% lower after one year post-release.
55% of the participants at the 11 R4W sites were involved in mentoring or life coaching, and those participants fared better than non-participants in all of the following areas:
The Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative
To improve criminal justice, employment, education, health and housing outcomes for adults and juveniles returning home from prison, Federal agencies collaborated to form the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI).
From late 2002 through 2006, the U.S. Departments of Justice, Labor, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services provided approximately $110 million to develop new or expand existing programs offering integrated post-release supervision and reentry services.
Reentry efforts were funded in all 50 States, plus the District of Columbia. The 69 grantees operated 89 adult and juvenile programs for serious and violent ex-offenders, and received between $500,000 and $2 million in single, three-year awards.
Through SVORI, FBCOs provided returning ex-offenders with such services as needs-assessments, reentry planning, mentoring, life-skills training, dental and medical services, housing placement, interviewing skills, and job placement.
The preliminary findings for measures of housing, employment, and substance use at the follow-up interviews indicate that at 15 months after release, SVORI participants were:
Other Initiatives
The Bush Administration has implemented a number of other innovative reentry-related programs that assist ex-prisoners and their families through faith-based and community organizations, including:
Access to Recovery (addiction recovery)—More than $390 million to date
Mentoring Children of Prisoners (mentoring)—$257 million to date
The Department of Justice Anti-Gang Initiative—$25 million to date
Beneficiary-Choice Contracting Program—$10 million to date
Esperanza Trabajando and Reclamado Nuestro Futuro projects—$13 million to date
1 Stephan, James J. 2004. State Prison Expenditures, 2001. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Based on the recidivism rates reported by PRI sites for PRI Year 1 (15 percent), 938 of the 6,250 participants were re-arrested and 722 were (projected) re-incarcerated. The annual cost to incarcerate these ex-prisoners is $16,340,304—a savings of $31.6 million less than what it would have cost to house PRI participants had they returned to prison at average rates. Even subtracting DOL’s Year 1 cost for the PRI program ($19.8 million), a net annual savings of $11.8 million can be identified for the first year, and likely much more after that since Federal outlay is made only in the first year to serve these ex-offenders. Notably, these savings account only for incarceration-related costs, and would be far higher if other factors like judicial system costs, victimization costs, and other crime-related impacts were added. It is important to note that a random-assignment study was not performed for PRI; therefore a strict control group does not exist for the sake of comparison. Without longer term follow-up and a formal evaluation, the widely-accepted data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is the best and most recent data that can be used for the sake of comparison.
