Prisoner Reentry: Current Trends, Practices, and Issues

Abstract

After three decades of passing laws and implementing policies designed to dramatically increase the nation's prison population and harden the conditions of confinement, there is a newfound interest among policy makers and criminologists in prisoner release. Using national data and a survey of eight states, this article examines the current “state of the art” of prisoner reentry. Not surprisingly, most state prison systems are ill equipped to ease the transition of inmates from prison to the community. A significant portion of released inmates pose minimal risk to public safety. Parole supervision increasingly results in ex-convicts' being reincarcerated for noncriminal behavior or misdemeanor crimes. For most inmates, reentry should be curtailed by either eliminating supervision or greatly shortening the period of supervision.