Almost all incarcerated individuals reenter the community—most with serious deficits in the competencies needed for successful reintegration. Ultimately, about two-thirds of individuals released from a correctional facility end up back in the justice system. Policymakers and practitioners need successful strategies for prisoner reentry. Empirically based approaches to identify service needs well in advance of release, engage the individual in reentry planning prior to release, and ensure that needed services are provided both during incarceration and after release are needed to improve the trajectories of reentering individuals. Innovative approaches to facilitating prisoner reentry, including technological strategies, are important to identify and test.
For decades, RTI has been at the forefront of prisoner reentry research and evaluation, having conducted major national evaluations of federally funded reentry initiatives as well as developed and tested reentry interventions at the local and state levels. We have disseminated numerous policy briefs, sharing lessons learned from our research on reentry program implementation and effectiveness, to reentry practitioners and policymakers. Our experts also provide training and technical assistance to help reentry programs improve their own program evaluations and effectively plan for sustainability.
