Through the Looking Glass: Taking Stock of Offender Reentry

Abstract

Offender reentry has been part of the fabric of the criminal justice system since the first prison opened its doors and people who went in the front door were, at some point, released. Traditionally, the research on offender reentry has either supported best practice by determining what specific individual-level programming “works” or “doesn’t work” or it has assessed the success of programs in terms of their ability to reduce recidivism. And while we may have moved the dial in the last 50 years with respect to what we know about individual-level offender reentry attributes, there is no effective overarching narrative to explain the offender reentry phenomenon. Overwhelmingly, practitioners and academics in the criminal justice system operate within a paradigm that assesses and evaluates everything using risk. Unfortunately, a risk- or deficit-focused approach to viewing offender reentry severely limits our ability to think differently about the problem. However, if we employ a paradigm for offender reentry that focuses less on problems and more on strengths, different outcomes are possible. Work done in social work that promotes “strengths-based, solution-focused, capacity building, asset creating, motivation enhancing” empowerment models that accentuate the positive serves as an exemplar for us to use in criminal justice when discussing offender reentry. The three strengths-based principles adapted to offender reentry and discussed here are as follows: Officer–offender relationships that emphasize collaboration will promote law-abiding, prosocial behavior; offenders who are empowered will be more likely to seek to change; and cooperation from the community is key to successful offender reentry. Fiscal, political, and common sense reasons for using a strengths-based approach to offender reentry are discussed.