Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/ElizabethCincottaMcBride

This report discusses housing options for persons with mental illness who have had contact with the criminal justice system. While several housing models exist to serve this population, there is little evaluation research from which to draw conclusions about what works. To create a foundation from which to examine promising practices, the report presents a continuum of housing options and explores the common characteristics and elements among housing models. It also discusses the variety of "reentry" points after individual contact with the justice system and reflects on how the type of reentry may influence opportunities for and success in housing.

With incarceration rates in America at record high levels, the criminal justice system now touches the lives of millions of children each year. The imprisonment of nearly three quarters of a million parents disrupts parent-child relationships, alters the networks of familial support, and places new burdens on governmental services such as schools, foster care, adoption agencies, and youth-serving organizations. Few studies have explored the impact of parental incarceration on young children or identified the needs that arise from such circumstances. Little attention has focused on how communities, social service agencies, health care providers, and the criminal justice system can work collaboratively to better meet the needs of the families left behind. This policy brief is intended to help focus attention on the hidden costs of our criminal justice policies.

The fifth Reentry Roundtable, held in May 2003, focused on policies, practices, problems, and incentives involved in connecting returning prisoners to meaningful employment. Five discussion papers and four presentations were commissioned and, combined with the discussions that came out of the Roundtable and additional literature from the field, form the conceptual framework for the monograph addressing prisoner reentry and work. The report addresses the in-prison and post-prison work experiences of prisoners and transition planning.

Return to list of authors