if the needs of those trying to re-enter society are met.
"One of the first of its kind in the country, Richland County Re-entry Court has worked this way for 10 years, processing 1,000 or so felons like Marshall, who've served at least six months in state prison.
In the movies, they're outfitted with a freshly-pressed suit, $100 in cash and a pack of cigarettes.
In real life, they barely get bus fare and emerge clad in a penitentiary jumpsuit.
"I call them the vast unready," Judge James DeWeese said of re-entry court participants. "They're uneducated, unskilled, unemployed, unhoused and unused to self-government. It's surrogate parenting."
The program can lend help in many forms.
One man had to get his teeth fixed for work, which federal grant money paid for. Others need glasses, food or bus fare. All of them need jobs."
In a 2006 study, Ashland University professor Jeffrey Spelman found 124 of nearly 600 re-entry court participants, just 4 percent, were arrested for a felony within one year of successful completion of the program. The average recidivism rate nationally for those who did not participate in a re-entry court program was 44 percent in the first year.
Why are we not duplicating this program everywhere?
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1 comment:
The findings of the 2006 study seem to be misleading. 124 of 600 is 21%, not 4%. Further, there is a glaring selective bias in the study, as reentry court participants are selected based on likelihood to respond to treatment. The national prison population is hardly a comparable sample.
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