The serious and violent offender reentry initiative

Abstract

In 2003, the Federal government provided funds to 69 state agencies to implement reentry programs for adult and juvenile prisoners. The Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) programs partner correctional or juvenile justice agencies with other government, community, and faith-based organizations to provide a range of services to participating individuals. A fully implemented SVORI program incorporates assessment, services, and programming for offenders while incarcerated, under supervision in the community, and once released from supervision. The individual SVORI programs share the common goals of improving employment, education, health, housing, and criminal justice outcomes. Each program, however, is unique in the approach taken and array of services implemented to address these common goals. Measuring the implementation of multi-faceted programs is a challenge for researchers and one that the SVORI multi-site evaluation is confronting. In this paper, we describe an approach to categorize the types of services being provided that incorporates both the number of services provided and the proportion of individuals receiving each service for each service group.