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

Working with inmates who leave jails as well as prisons is a milestone marking a major opportunity to reduce crime in Philadelphia and across the country. Amy Solomon and Jenny Osborne explain why in their Philadelphia Inquirer commentary.

Each year, U.S. jails process an estimated 12 million admissions and releases. Substance addiction, job and housing instability, mental illness, and a host of health problems are part of the day-to-day realities for a significant share of this population. Given that more than 80 percent of inmates are incarcerated for less than one month, jails have little time or capacity to address these deep-rooted and often overlapping issues. Life After Lockup synthesizes key findings from the Jail Reentry Roundtable and examines opportunities on the jail-to-community continuum where reentry-focused interventions can make a difference.

Geared toward jail practitioners who are working to improve reentry in their jurisdictions, The Jail Administrator's Toolkit for Reentry provides key elements of the reentry process from jail staff issues and assessment screens to identifying community resources and coordinating stakeholders. The Toolkit also offers examples and materials taken from around the country to assist jail practitioners in developing reentry strategies that can serve a variety of jail populations, whether pretrial or sentenced, and in a variety of jail jurisdictions.

The Massachusetts Recidivism Study aims to better understand the experiences of recidivists and how their previous incarceration and time in the community relate to their returns to prison. This report presents findings from interviews with male prisoners returned to the DOC within three years of release. The report describes respondents' incarceration experiences, preparation for reentry, and life in the community, as well as criminal offending and the circumstances leading up to their reincarceration. We also examine the role of parole supervision in prisoner reentry and the connection between technical parole violations and underlying criminal behavior.

This report provides a comprehensive review of the acute and lasting impact of Hurricane Katrina on the criminal justice system of New Orleans. Using interviews with criminal justice stakeholders living and working in greater New Orleans, the authors examine the state of the criminal justice system before the storm, the impact of the storm on each branch of the system, and how those branches operate today. The final sections of the report discuss policy considerations and how lessons learned from Katrina can be applied to assist jurisdictions across the country should they be confronted with natural or man-made shocks to the systems charged with keeping residents safe.

Little attention has been paid to the issue of reentry from local jails, despite the fact that jails process more than 12 million admissions and releases each year. With support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Urban Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation partnered to convene a Jail Reentry Roundtable. The two-day meeting, held June 2006, brought together leading jail administrators, researchers, corrections and law enforcement professionals, county and community leaders, service providers, and former inmates to discuss the unique dimensions, challenges, and opportunities of jail reentry. This document summarizes the Roundtable presentations and discussion.

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.

In 2000, the Urban Institute (UI) launched an ongoing investment in prisoner reentry research to better understand the pathways of successful reintegration, the social and fiscal costs of current policies, and the impacts of incarceration and reentry on individuals, families, and communities. Over the past six years, this research portfolio has informed a broad set of policy and practice discussions about the challenges facing former prisoners. This document highlights UI's original research findings across several key dimensions of prisoner reentry. In addition, it points to recent and relevant reports published by UI that provide more in-depth research and related findings.

Return to list of authors