Recidivism Reduction: Inmate Reentry essay

Almost 650,000 individuals are consistently discharged from detention facilities, and around nine million more are discharged from prisons. Many of them are rearrested within three years after discharge. A number of studies name some social and behavioral elements that may jeopardize a person of taking part in criminal movement or that may help an individual to cease from wrongdoing. The main components include states of mind and convictions of wrongdoing; anti-social behavioral factors; hostile attitude to social companions; family/conjugal relations; substance abuse; absence of reliable work or living conditions; money or school related issues; and wrong use of leisure time and entertainment. Elements that could help solve these problems include full-time employment, good marriage relations, friendly social surroundings, a feeling of control over one's future, a goal in life, a capacity to examine change, and community connections. Analyzing these components will provide a scheme for remedial intervention that centralizes on addressing needs and advancing qualities. It is important to examine and discuss different approaches to enhance the reentry procedure. The aim of the paper is to take into consideration all weak points and develop an effective policy for inmates and former offenders.

Recidivism is the recurrence into the criminal activity. Rates of recidivism show how much discharged detainees have been restored as well as the role correctional programs play in reintegrating detainees into the society. High rates of recidivism result in enormous costs for governmentally incarcerated offenders. They also lead to destroying social expenses to the communities and families of offenders and individual expenses to the criminals themselves. Because of these serious costs, programs for prisoners and discharged detainees that decrease recidivism can be financially effective — even those that have unassuming rates of accomplishment. Regard for rates of recidivism is an imperative approach to screen the part of detention facilities in restoring detainees. Rehabilitation programs in detention facilities provide offenders with chances to change and absorb more positive and profitable ones.

Recommendations for Policy Change 

According to the statistics, 80% of government detainees report a background of drug or alcohol abuse, and 66% of delinquents do not have a high school diploma or equivalent degree. Up to 16% of them have at least one mental disorder, and 10% of those entering a detention facility are destitute in the prior months before imprisonment.

In order to develop an effective policy for reducing recidivism, three major points should be taken into consideration:

• substance abuse treatment,
• education, and 
• employment.

Methods that are used to improve the rate of recidivism must be multifaceted. It is almost impossible to find a good job if substance addiction remains untreated. Therefore, three main spheres of a person’s life – treatment, education, and employment – should be covered. It is important to address the offenders’ needs to find a job, develop skills, or obtain education. It is common knowledge that prison inmates are diverse population. Many of them face various barriers on the way toward their independence. Lack of education or employment experience, various health problems, and absence of stable living conditions can make an individual fall into a harmful environment again.

There is an urgent need to provide a scope of services for inmates that can prepare them for release and help them after their release. Rehabilitation programs must provide access to a great part of fundamental services, both while in prison and after release.

The key tasks of an effective rehabilitating policy are:

• to develop a consistent and effective transition of the offenders from prison to the street;
• to ensure that the inmates are ready to return home and that they are in a better condition before release than at the moment of their admission to prison;
• to help the offenders to obtain some experience in order to be well prepared for future employment;
• to turn offenders to responsible parents and child support payers;
• to support individuals during adaptation in the community;
• to enhance criminals’ realization of the effect of their offences and help them realize the harm caused by their offences, and
• to reduce recidivism.

The occurrence of a mental illness and substance addiction is much higher among prisoners than the general population. These conditions turned to be main barriers to successful employment and identify a high rate of recidivism. According to some specialists, almost 50% of crimes were drug related while 20% of offenders informed that they committed their crimes in order to obtain money for illicit substances. Treatment is more effective for a low-level drug taker. Such treatment also reduces the frequency of drug consumption. Even though such treatment has a positive effect on the consumers and positive results in reducing recidivism, there is a lack of such programs for inmates and released prisoners. That is why the first and most important issue is to provide access to such programs for a wider range of offenders.

Another essential requirement for powerful treatment includes a significant number of prisoners with mental illnesses. Rates of such illnesses, such as schizophrenia/psychosis, major depression, bipolar disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder, are around two to four times more frequent among the prison population than among the general population. Treatment programs should help prisoners and inmates to cope with such problems and prepare them to successful integration into the society. Special establishments should be developed to help prisoners to overcome such illnesses or appease the disorder overflow. Besides, offenders should attend special courses in order to obtain knowledgeable assistance from psychologists.

Another essential problem for offenders is a low educational qualification. Education gives individuals basic skills and helps to enter the employment market. It also helps to develop a sense of self-efficacy and success for discharged inmates. These impacts of education make it one of the major tools for reducing recidivism. Educational programs should be the most popular and much needed in prison. The program should be implemented during penitentiary service and after release. A high-school degree is the most desirable among inmates and former prisoners. The lack of the degree is associated with a high rate of criminal activity. That is why the effective implementation of an educational program will help offenders to achieve success and reduce recidivism at large.

Concerning work programs, they should be implemented during penal service in order to help prisoners to obtain necessary experience, which will increase their employability after release. Employment maintains stability and occupies time, which could be used for illegal activity. It also trains responsibility and self-assessment. Unfortunately, while seeking a job, former prisoners face different problems. Many employers refuse to hire a former offender. Another problem is the low payment. That is why it is essential to give an opportunity for a better living to former offenders. It would be useful to establish such organizations that would hire former offenders and inmates in order to provide them with a workplace.

Besides, the more prosocial support an individual has from family, friends, and the community, the more likely they will be to eschew future encounters with the equity system. The individual’s relationship with the family, friends, and the community should be explored. It is important to determine with whom the person communicates most often and can verbalize with about things that might be nettlesome. It is necessary to explore options for the person to eschew contact with peers who may inspirit malefactor activity and to maintain or reinforce familial and social relationships.

Analysis of the Potential Consequences, Both Intended and Unintended, of the Policy Recommendation

Despite the fact that the estimation of recidivism may need clarity, unmistakably high rates of recidivism imperil public safety and heighten consumptions on law authorization and criminal equity. Growing prison populaces and high recidivism rates result in most individual, social, and economic expenses. The effective policy should cover three noteworthy components that effectively reduce recidivism. Treatment for substance addiction or a mental illness can evacuate obstructions that forestall work and coordination. Education gives the opportunity to prisoners to find the job they like, which will produce better results. Employment gives released offenders a feeling of independence and self-confidence.

Only effective rehabilitating programs should be implemented because of their cost and success. Widespread screening and evaluation of prisoners for emotional instability and substance addiction should be conducted. Rates of substance addiction and emotional sickness are much higher among detainees than in the overall public; jail admission systems need to distinguish and allude people in need of substance addiction or psychological well-being treatment. Educational programs should be more available to prisoners by expanding limit and expelling hindrances and confinements to enlistment. It will give an opportunity to inmates and former prisoners to obtain a degree and to improve their position in the society.

Detention facilities played an important role of tending to issues of objectionable behavior among people in the society. They are a part of the central foundations in the society invested with notable relations to public and social welfare systems. Confining a person in prison provides a chance to recognize the diverse social needs of the arrestees, particularly during the detainment procedure.

Drug and alcohol addictions are noteworthy factors in the issue of imprisonment. Dominant part (56%) of the state detainees take drugs in the time of the offence while a third (32%) of the prisoners commit their offense under the drug influence.

A definitive objective of the legal framework in the United States is to give a stage that improves, affords, and educates individuals.

Training and education programs for inmates are broadly used in the US jails and have doubtlessly been the most pervasive. They show the solid conviction that positive practices are learned and better work skills gained. They are crucial for securing work after their term is over and stopping them from regressing to criminal activities as well as promote a decent and beneficial citizenship.

Programs of psychological aptitudes are based on the assumption that the vast majority of criminal practices in public are a consequence of insufficient considering. This impact must be adequately managed by the exertion of ingraining intellectual aptitudes to the detainee; this lessens the odds of recidivism. At the point when these aptitudes are centered on offense related components, they deliver a critical thinking system that oversees and avoids offense related circumstances in favor of the subject.

Activities of mental aptitudes are often in perspective of the suspicion that most of the horrendous practices in the society are a result of inadequate considering. This effect must be enough overseen by the effort of imbuing scholarly aptitudes to the prisoner; this diminishes the chances of recidivism. Right when these aptitudes are revolved around offense related parts, they convey a basic intuition framework that administers and avoids offense related conditions for the subject.

Programs of training for temper control and developing the skill of remaining calm and composed depend on the suspicion that the odds of re-doing an offense can be diminished if a detainee is furnished with aptitudes of outrage administration and particularly when it is carefully fit to meet the criminological needs.

Research about the programs of drug and alcohol abuse has demonstrated that substance addiction and wrongdoing has a high level of connection; consequently, the push to adapt to real criminal exercises is necessary to fight the combined wrongdoing offenses based on addictive substance use.

Advising and psychological programs – these are programs created in order to equip the detainees with social abilities and attempt to change the basic issues that may have entailed the offenders’ culpability. In all likelihood, social changes are the utilization of medications since there is a measurable confirmation, which shows that, at any rate, half of the prisoners had already manhandled drugs. It was evaluated that the extent on the number of participants in medication treatment programs expanded from 4.4 to 32.7 percent. There are a few organizations with projects called remedial groups that exclusively manage medicate dependent prisoners. The right projects are done for guaranteeing that the detainees relinquish their demonstrations of wrongdoing; they focus on the state of mind of wrongdoing and their methods for considerations that typically encourage these unlawful practices.

Offenders need more viable and concentrated parole supervision after discharge. Besides, society participation also plays a crucial role in improving inmate’s position and reducing recidivism rates. It is much easier for the offenders to cope with psychological and other problems after release if they know that their family or friends are ready to encourage them.

Finally, it is essential that treatment be united with any restrictive measures imposed. Such measures alone will neither reduce recidivism nor result in any positive behavioral change. On the other hand, treatment alone may not provide the punishment or behavioral control that the judge concludes are appropriate or necessary. The restrictive measures imposed may interfere with the provision or effectiveness of the treatment mandated. If both sanctions and treatment are ordered, care must be taken in order for the several components of the sentence to be integrated and not to contradict.

Evaluation Plan

This plan is developed to reduce a high rate of recidivism and to help offenders rehabilitate once they are released from prison and become law-abiding citizens that have normal and happy lives, good jobs, and happy families for them to never return to prison.

The most widespread criminogenic factors are:

• Antisocial background.

Antisocial activities begin during an individual’s early age in or out of the home or school, such as arrests in early age, escapes from custody, and neglect of the probation terms. In this case, an individual should focus on building on noncriminal behavior and developing self-efficacy.

• Antisocial surrounding.

This involves interpersonal communication with criminals as well as attitudes and values that lead to crime. The most effective solution is to constrict such communications and to reduce asocial thinking.

• Family participation.

The problem is poor quality of relations among family members as well as lack of parental participation and monitoring. The solution is to develop strong and tender family relations with powerful monitoring.

• Education and employment.

The problem is lack of experience and academic degree, lack of money and housing. The solution is to involve offenders into different rehabilitating programs, which assist in obtaining a degree and employment.

• Leisure time.

The problem is involvement into criminal activities. The solution might be to participate in anti-criminal activities, which provide an individual with positive results, pleasure, and satisfaction.

• Substance abuse treatment.

The problem is excessive use of alcohol and drugs. The solution could involve focusing on reducing substance addiction with the help of special medical and psychological programs.

The implementation of the plan is intended to slow or reduce prison populations growth rate. Besides, the plan focuses on developing strategies that will reduce recidivism rate among inmates and former offenders.

Conclusion

To summarize, recidivism ought not be seen as an issue that develops exclusively from the individual slants of a man, yet as a systemic social issue. It concerns everybody since the constantly developing number of prisoner recidivists shakes the premise of the security and suggests the conversation about the adequacy of the present-day remedies framework, which neglects to adapt to one of its capacities. There is a broad study on this record, which demonstrates that the conditions inside a jail, the points of view outside it, and the social medium are decisive for whether a man would return to wrongdoing after serving their sentence. The central recommendations on this record cover money related help, guiding, and legitimate social mix that incorporates exercises sought before, amid, and after the jail sentence. Housing facilities and employment were mentioned among those components, which tremendously affect the likelihood of recidivism since the last is driven by the powerlessness of a person to fulfill their essential needs.