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Beyond Bars: Rethinking Reentry Through Policy, Partnership, and Practice

Friday, November 14, 8:30 to 10:00am, Property: Grand Hyatt Seattle, Floor: 1st Floor/Lobby Level, Room: Discovery B

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Of the numerous areas in which public-private partnerships dominate policy implementation, one of the most complex and difficult to study is criminal reentry. There are dozens of organizations across the country that provide reentry services to people returning from incarceration; some are publicly run, some are privately run, some are privately run but funded through federal and/or state grants. The variation in size and ownership of these programs makes systematically studying reentry incredibly difficult, as evidenced by the mixed results in existing work documenting the impact of such programs on recidivism. The proposed panel explores partnership in reentry policy through three different lenses. 


First, Sera Linardi’s paper “Recidivism and Barriers to Reintegration: A Field Experiment Encouraging Use of Reentry Support,” presents the results of an RCT conducted in partnership with a non-profit organization that documents how monetary incentives and the ability to choose the type of service one receives impact service uptake and compliance among participants. She and her coauthors find that incentive groups increased visits, and one extra visit reduces rearrests three years after study enrollment by six percentage points - driven by Black participants. They also document a shift in the types of services requested by participants throughout their interaction with the nonprofit. The study speaks to the importance of considering first-stage heterogeneity and heterogeneous treatment effects in evaluating the impact of services to these populations.


Christian Geckler’s study, “A Longitudinal Follow-up Study to the 2009 Second Chance Act Adult Demonstration RCT Impact Study,” describes the findings from their RCT, a longitudinal impact study of seven Second Chance Act (SCA) Adult Demonstration Programs. Grantees included state departments of corrections and other local government agencies, operating in partnership with numerous other correctional and community-based organizations, and first awarded grant funds by the U.S. Department of Justice in FY 2009. 


Bianca Hunter’s “Second Chances or System Failures? An Assessment of Alternatives to Incarceration Initiatives in Los Angeles County” explores implementation challenges for Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) program rollout in Los Angeles County, identifying the ways insufficient infrastructure, unclear referral pathways, and lack of cross-agency coordination have hindered program efficacy. Through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, including ATI staff, community-based service providers, and system-impacted individuals, this research highlights these barriers, contributes to the growing discourse on justice reform, and offers actionable recommendations for strengthening ATI efforts in Los Angeles and beyond.


Zooming out further, Michaela Cushing-Daniels’ “Beyond Recidivism: Examining the Impact of Social Policy Access on Justice-Involved Individuals’ Health and Financial Outcomes” explores the relationship between social policy and criminal justice contact. This paper describes the challenges to reentry studies posed by American federalism and public-private partnership and asks whether a focus on more expansive social welfare benefits actually improves people’s outcomes beyond recidivism. Based on a sample of over 200,000 people in Allegheny County, this study uses linked administrative data and a difference-in-differences approach to explore how changes in Pennsylvania’s eligibility criteria for Medicaid and Welfare impacted a variety of health and financial outcomes – something that has not been possible in previous studies. 

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