The Issue

• Each year, more than 700,000 inmates are released from prisons and reunited with their communities and families. 
• Released prisoners face a myriad of challenges that may contribute to their return to criminal activity, rearrest and reincarceration, including joblessness, substance abuse, mental health problems, low levels of educational attainment, and lack of stable housing. 
• According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, two out of three returning inmates will be rearrested for new crimes within 3 years of their release from prison, and more than half will be reincarcerated. 
• Research shows a significantly lower recidivism rate for ex-offenders who find stable employment and develop social bonds.

The Response: Prisoner Reentry Initiative

• Former President Bush announced the Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI) in his 2004 State of the Union address.
• Expanding on the elements of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Ready4Work 3-year reentry pilot program, PRI assists returning offenders by linking them to faith-based and community-based organizations that help them find work and avoid a relapse into a life of criminal activity. 
• These programs
• work to reduce recidivism by helping return nonviolent prisoners to work through an employment-centered program that offers mentoring, job placement, job training, and other holistic transitional services; 
• rely on local partners to deliver a wide range of social services to help ex-offenders successfully return to the community; and 
• draw on the strength of faith-based and community-based organizations as trusted and influential institutions in the urban neighborhoods to which the majority of released prisoners will return. 
• Through the 4-year PRI program, these organizations are helping provide services to approximately 6,250 ex-prisoners each year.
• DOL awards PRI grants to faith-based and community-based organizations in urban areas across the country. Working in collaboration with DOL, the U.S. Department of Justice also awards PRI funds to State-level Departments of Corrections and Criminal Justice Administering Agencies to provide prerelease services to prisoners also served by the DOL grantees.

The Results

• Currently, 30 faith-based and community-based sites operate in 20 States through PRI. A new cadre of grantees will be operative in the coming months, in addition to the continued work of the existing sites.
• As of April 2008, 15,962 PRI participants had been enrolled in the program, and 10,707 participants had been placed in jobs.
• 69% of those placed retained their jobs for nine months.
• Nearly 9,000 participants have received mentoring services through PRI.
• Each year, the PRI program serves approximately 6,250 participants. If the national average one-year recidivism rate of 44% were applied to these participants, then 2,750 ex-inmates would be rearrested within one year of release and 2,118 would return to prison. At an annual cost of $22,632 per inmate, American taxpayers would annually pay $47,934,576 to house this group of inmates alone.¹
• The recidivism rate of PRI participants (14%) is less than one-third the rate of the Bureau of Justice Statistics national benchmark (44%) at one year post-release.
• By the end of 2008, more than $115 million will have been awarded under PRI-73 grants awarded to FBCOs and 63 grants awarded to criminal justice agencies.

More Resources

• Department of Labor Prisoner Reentry Initiatives
• Department of Justice Prisoner Reentry Initiatives
• Targeting Human Needs: Prisoner Reentry
• Compassion in Action: Faith- and Community-Based Partnerships to Improve Prisoner Re-entry Services

¹Stephan, James J. 2004. State Prison Expenditures, 2001.  Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, American taxpayers would annually pay $47,934,576 to house this group of inmates alone. Based on the known one-year reincarceration rate reported by PRI sites (20 percent), 1,250 of the 6,250 participants will be rearrested annually, and 963 will be re-incarcerated. The annual cost to incarcerate these ex-prisoners is $21,794,616—a savings of $26,139,960. Subtracting the annual cost of the PRI program ($19.6 million), an annual savings of $6,539,960 can be identified. Notably, these savings account only for incarceration-related costs, and would be far higher if other factors like judicial system costs, victimization costs, and other crime-related impacts were added. It is important to note that a random-assignment study was not performed for PRI; therefore a strict control group does not exist for the sake of comparison. Without longer term follow-up and a formal evaluation, the widely accepted data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is the best and most recent data that can be used for the sake of comparison.