WASHINGTON (CN) — Aiming to help lower the country’s high rate of felons returning to prison, a new report from the National Institute of Justice finds prison recidivism programs are best assessed using structured and localized data.
The 20-page report released Monday by the NIJ — a research and evaluation agency within the Justice Department — suggests the use of randomized controlled trials, or RCTs, in programs for those leaving the prison system instead of other evidence-based assessments that can be distorted. RCTs split study participants into an experimental group and a control group and compare outcomes.
Pointing to statistics showing that 83% of inmates released from state prisons are rearrested within nine years of release, the new white paper says using these methods instead could help reduce that number.
This study suggests taking into account numerous variables to develop a causal inference. The more structured the trial and its use of time-related elements as well as avoiding external variables that could cloud results, the more it could be used for policymaking and program assessment.
The report also suggests the importance of individual prison systems developing their own research and programs.
“State prison programs and policies should be evaluated locally rather than relying on evidence in other jurisdictions,” the study says. “Such evaluations do not need to be expensive or drawn out over long periods of time. Despite common objections, RCT evaluations are also ethical and can be conducted in a state prison setting.”
The new study differs from a 2018 report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers that suggests recidivism programs are best assessed using national data.
“Carefully designed, broad-based national programs that target a wide variety of offenders in conjunction with carefully designed empirical evaluations would improve the ability of policymakers to allocate criminal justice funds to achieve the greatest possible social benefits,” according to the May 2018 report titled “Returns on Investments in Recidivism-Reducing Programs.”
The White House report aimed to link the cost of crime on taxpayers with programs that help reduce returns to the prison system and most often found — as the NIJ study said — that more study was needed. But certain program aspects, like the difference in targeting those for high or low risk for recidivism or how long they track returning citizens, can impact how the programs succeed and therefore their ability to get federal or state funding.
But Robert Wilson, director of development for the Georgia-based Rehabilitation Enables Dreams program, said he’s seen success in the application of both national and local data.
Started in 2015, RED works with youth who are facing jail time or who have experienced it before and helps steer them away from the prison system. The year-long program was created by David Lee Windecher, a member of the Latin Kings gang in Miami who spent much of his youth in and out of jail cells. He turned his life around and is now a criminal defense attorney. Using his own experience, Windecher and his staff have developed RED in the last five years to have participants in the program reach a recidivism rate lower than 10%.
“Our goal is to increase our participants’ civic, financial and educational literacy,” Wilson said in a phone interview Monday afternoon.
From a national standpoint, he said one of the first sections of the program is emphasizing the rights participants have so they can avoid problems with police during the program's duration.
“For the next nine months you’ve got to stay straight or you’re going to get kicked out,” Wilson said of the program participants. “We need you to know how to interact with police officers.”
“We’re arming them with their constitutional rights,” he added.
But from a local angle, Wilson said taking community variables into account is just as important.
“If you’re in an area that was hit very hard with the opioid crisis, or like in the [San Francisco] Bay Area where housing is a problem, you have to change your programming to address that issue,” he said.
Like the RED program, the new NIJ report hopes prison systems will be open to study and change when deciding the best recidivism programs to address the issue.
“State prison departments should commit to fostering a learning organization where the strongest possible evidence is generated for making decisions about what programs, policies, and practices to use or not use,” the report states. “Just as experimentation has progressed in private-sector organizations, experimental evaluations can also help state prisons better achieve their mission and goals.”
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