NCJ Number
194553
Journal
Criminal Justice Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 2002 Pages: 12-18
Date Published
2002
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This article is an overview of the challenges of prisoner reentry into society after incarceration, including presentation of changing prison and prisoner population conditions and a discussion of the reentry perspective as part of the sentencing, corrections, and parole process.
Abstract
The article is a review of the changes over the past 25 years in prisoner reentry processes. Critical changes in incarceration have made prisoner reentry readjustment more complicated than in the past. Specifically, prisoners today face an increased length of stay, decreased access to vocational and educational programming, and the overrepresentation of certain communities and neighborhoods in both prison and reentry populations. The specialized health and family needs of prisoners suggest that a multi-disciplinary approach utilizing corrections/parole, public health, and children’s services resources should be employed in developing current reentry planning. The authors present the "reentry perspective" to the corrections and sentencing process. The four major propositions to the approach are that: prison programming should be designed to better prepare prisoners for reentry; corrections staff should focus on the actual reentry process when working with prisoners; the parole system as a solely criminal justice system should be reexamined and resources should be allocated to evaluate legal barriers to successful prisoner reentry.