About the Report The Report, Part I: Planning a Re-Entry Initiative:

chapters and policy statements:
About the Report of the Re-Entry Council

Policy Statement 2, Recommendation E

Examine how prisoners are prepared for re-entry, supervised, and aided in the transition from prison to community.

In order to assess returning prisoners' needs and how best to address them, it is important to obtain information about access to programs and services both in prison or jail as well as within the community. Departments of corrections should collect key information that describes the services, programming, and treatment a person received while incarcerated. Important considerations include:

  • What percentage of prisoners participates in work-release programs? Substance abuse treatment? Employment readiness/job placement?
  • What percent makes use of services in the community?

With regard to how people who are released from prison or jail are assisted in making the transition back to the community, important questions to ask include:

  • What are the key steps to prepare prisoners and their families for a forthcoming release?
  • In jurisdictions where prisons are a substantial distance from prisoners' communities, how, when, and through what means is an inmate to travel home?
  • How are individuals re-entering a community prepared for employment and connected to the local labor market?

When program developers are considering these questions and identifying agencies that provide services to this population, they should also consider the nature and extent to which the caseloads of these service providers overlap. Strategically coordinating these services through increased inter-agency communication and collaboration can minimize service redundancies, untangle conflicting sets of expectations for offenders, and create a more efficient division of labor. (See sidebar, Million Dollar Blocks, for one example of overlapping resources.)

Million Dollar Blocks

A study of the public resources spent in communities to which large shares of prisoners return demonstrates the need to consider overlapping efforts. [1]   The concentration of residents who have been incarcerated is so great in some areas that there are individual blocks in Brooklyn (NY) and Camden and Trenton (NJ) that cost the public one million dollars in incarceration expenses alone. These so-called "million dollar blocks," of course, also absorb the greatest share of the re-entering population (many of whom are on probation or parole) when those prison terms are done. In addition, these neighborhoods are home to disproportionate shares of the welfare population and to single parent families receiving other public benefits. What this tells us is that extraordinary government funds are expended on the residents of these neighborhoods, through the overlapping criminal justice system and other human services systems. Yet, there is rarely any coordination between the systems or consideration of whether the total spending is allocated most effectively to promote public safety and community development.

  1. Eric Cadora, "Criminal Justice and Health and Human Services: An Exploration of Overlapping Needs, Resources, and Interests in Brooklyn Neighborhoods" (paper presented at the US Department of Health and Human Services' "From Prisons to Home" conference, Washington, DC, January, 2002); Jeremy Travis, Sinead Keegan, and Eric Cadora, A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in New Jersey (Washington DC: The Urban Institute, 2003). back
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