Corrections, Reentry, and Community Supervision

In 2006, the Corporation for Supportive Housing launched its Returning Home Initiative (RHI) with two goals: 1) to establish permanent supportive housing as an essential reentry component for formerly incarcerated persons with histories of homelessness, mental illness, and chronic health conditions; and 2) to promote local and national policy changes to integrate the corrections, housing, mental health, and human service systems. The Urban Institute assessed the process of system change stimulated by RHI activities in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—three communities receiving significant RHI investment. This brief summarizes the influence of RHI-funded activities in each of these cities.

This self-assessment tool is designed to aid correctional administrators in evaluating and improving their release planning practices. With funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Urban Institute staff developed and piloted a monthly assessment tool for individual correctional institutions and a yearly assessment tool for correctional agencies to monitor overall departmental performance. The policies and procedures identified as best practices in the tool are drawn from Release Planning for Successful Reentry: A Guide for Corrections, Service Providers, and Community Groups.

Parole supervision has been a somewhat overlooked field in recent years, even as the challenges of prisoner reentry have attracted increasing attention. Parole supervision can and should play an important role in facilitating successful reentry, yet parole agencies must systematically adopt the practices and policies that have been demonstrated to work. To examine the current state of parole practice, the Urban Institute conducted a survey of parole supervision field offices. The findings of the survey are summarized in this report, and suggest that the principles of effective supervision are beginning to take root.

The traditional approach to incarceration is to keep inmates locked up—away from society—to keep us safe. With little treatment and transition planning, most individuals are released with the same problems that got them locked up in the first place. In the past decade, we have realized that almost everyone who is incarcerated will eventually return home; this is especially true of the jail population. The big question: how do we incarcerate and release individuals in a way that makes them less likely to reoffend and more likely to work, support their families, pay taxes, and be productive members of society?

The application of radio frequency identification device (RFID) technology to prevent inmate misconduct in a women's prison in Cleveland, Ohio was evaluated. An interrupted time series design was employed to analyze administrative data. Interviews were conducted with 89 inmates and 21 correctional and investigative staff. A process evaluation found that the advanced applications of the RFID system theorized to prevent inmate misconduct were not initiated. The resulting study evaluates RFID when employed at its most basic level as a perimeter control device and aid in investigations and finds that rates of inmate misconduct did not change significantly over the evaluation period.