Digital Rehabilitation: A Model of Reentry Into the Digital Age

Abstract

Despite societal dependence on digital technologies and the Internet across the developed world, current prisoner rehabilitation, reentry models, and practices across most U.S. state correctional systems only target offline realms and issues while disregarding the digital realm. By integrating existing models of rehabilitation and reentry with recently developed and refined digital divide theories, this article develops a new model of digital rehabilitation, considering both the online and the offline realms. The proposed model fills a gap in the literature and allows for a more complete understanding of the problems that parolees encounter on release from prison. By conceptualizing corresponding fields and resources across three realms—prison, reentry, and digital—the digital rehabilitation and reentry model enables systematic research into the extent to which the digital realm can assist in a more successful reentry process.