As the world leader in incarceration, the U.S. locks up more people per capita than any other nation. By the end of 2020, there were more than 1.8 million incarcerated Americans.
Each year, more than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons. Another nine million are released from local jails. Within three years of their release, two out of three former prisoners are rearrested and more than 50% are incarcerated again. This process of previously convicted criminals reoffending and reentering the prison system is known as recidivism.
Recidivism clogs the criminal justice system. Without employment opportunities and bare necessities such as housing, food, or clothing, successful reentry into society seems nearly impossible for former prisoners.
America’s recidivism crisis is far more alarming than any other democratic country in a similar economic bracket. If prison were teaching the “lessons” corrections workers claim it does, it is concerning that so many of the same prisoners end up back behind bars. The country’s high recidivism rate alone demonstrates that our prisons are as ineffective as they are inefficient, a sobering reality which calls for a reimagined criminal justice system.
How can we best prepare the formerly incarcerated for reintegration into life outside of prison and ensure they don’t recidivate? The simple answer — rehabilitation. By shifting the goal of incarceration towards rehabilitation, we can work to lower the recidivism rate by investing in mental health care, by devising personalized education plans for prisoners, and by connecting prisoners with job opportunities and valuable skills to aid in creating a prison-to-work pipeline.
Until the mid-1970s, U.S. jail and prison systems were comparatively more focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment; however, in 1974, American sociologist Robert Martinson released a study titled “What Works?” which described his views on the shortcomings of prisoner rehabilitation programs. His skepticism of the rehabilitative process was enthusiastically embraced by national media, later evolving into what became known as the “Nothing Works” doctrine. The widely adopted “nothing works” mentality was centered around the idea that rehabilitation programs were simply a waste of time and money.
Likewise, after the “War on Drugs” was introduced and popularized in June 1971 by Republican President Richard Nixon, the use of drugs was not only overly stigmatized, but criminalized and rendered a serious offense. From this point forward, practices of rehabilitation in the penal systems were mostly abandoned. In the 1989 Supreme Court Case Mistretta v. United States, the Court upheld federal “sentencing guidelines” which removed rehabilitation from serious consideration when sentencing offenders. Defendants were sentenced strictly for the crime, with no recognition given to factors such as amenability to treatment, personal history, efforts to rehabilitate oneself, or alternatives to prison.
Since the 1960s, the U.S. incarceration rate has more than tripled. Defunding rehabilitation in our justice systems directly correlates with the increase in the incarceration rate.
To put it plainly, unhealthy minds can’t make healthy choices. The reality is 37% of incarcerated individuals and 44% of those in jail have been diagnosed with a mental health illness. Yet, 66% of prisoners reported not receiving any form of mental health care during the full length of their incarceration. With more accessible mental health care and substance abuse recovery for prisoners, they can be properly diagnosed and receive comprehensive treatment. With these revamped forms of relief and stabilization, the probability that those with mental illness relapse into destructive habits is far more unlikely than if they receive no treatment at all. Our justice system has an obligation to prepare prisoners for a safe and successful reintegration, a process which starts with a healthy mind.
Prisoners who participate in education programs have a 43% lower chance of being reincarcerated than those who do not, and for every dollar spent on prison education, the government saves four to five dollars on the costs of reincarceration. Education can do wonders, and if incarcerated people left the system with degrees and hard educational skills, it would be far less difficult for them to secure and maintain steady jobs. Besides allowing the formerly incarcerated to pursue a job, education — whether that be through adult literacy, GED, or post-secondary programs — inherently shapes one’s decision-making abilities. The more you know about a subject, the better equipped you are to make rational choices.
Prisoners who are taught valuable skills and have a job during the time of their incarceration are 24% percent less likely to recidivate, but it is also pivotal that they are provided fair and equitable wages for their labor. For context, federal prisoners earn at most $1.15 per hour. Prisoners who have obtained these vocational skills will be able to apply their knowledge to jobs, thereby strengthening the prison-to-work pipeline and bolstering the national economy through an increase of skilled workers.
When prisoners are released in Norway, they stay out of prison. Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The U.S. has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are rearrested within five years. Among Norway’s prison population that was unemployed prior to their arrests, they saw a 40% increase in their employment rates once released. The country attributes this to its mission of rehabilitation and reemergence into society through its accepting and empathetic approach.
However, we must not forget the barriers to successful reentry American prisoners face, including an employer’s hesitancy to hire someone with a criminal record or the discouraging complexities and bureaucratic inefficiencies of occupational licensing. The process of obtaining an occupational license is long and tedious, and for those who were previously incarcerated, extremely difficult. Both federal and state governments have enacted more than 20,000 licensing restrictions on those with criminal records, and many don’t require any connection between a person’s offense and the duties of the licensed job. The states with the strictest licensing requirements tend to have the highest recidivism rates, so we must make occupational license applications available to those who are incarcerated to expedite the process.
Furthermore, many states, such as Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Alaska, do not outline clear standards for how licensing boards should consider criminal records, so denials often come without explicit reasoning. Standardizing the reasons for denial of occupational licensing at the federal level would simplify the process, help build the prison-to-work pipeline by allowing more previously incarcerated people to obtain jobs, and in turn, lower the recidivism rate.
In terms of where the U.S. is now, some actionable steps have been taken this past year to reduce the recidivism rate and transform prisons to be more rehabilitative, but those changes are mostly isolated and individual. The North Dakota State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is partnering with Restoring Justice, a non-profit dedicated to ending mass incarceration, to revamp their prison cells with the goal of making incarceration more humane. In December, Congress voted to lift the ban on Pell Grants for those in prison, which allows these students to apply for federal aid to pay for courses and increases accessibility to higher education. Moreover, Ohio and the District of Columbia have already passed legislation to reform occupational licensing by limiting consideration of criminal records and clarifying any unique exceptions, and many other states are attempting to follow in their footsteps.
Today’s recidivism crisis calls for a paradigm shift from prisons as punitive institutions to rehabilitative ones. Implementing the rehabilitating practices of prioritizing mental health care, education, and the process of creating a prison-to-work pipeline would lower the rates of recidivism in the United States. Lower rates of recidivism do not singularly benefit society by reducing the rate of crime but also by reducing prison populations, saving taxpayers’ dollars, and most pertinently, ensuring that prisons are serving their purpose of reform and improvement.
Image by Matthew Ansley is licensed under the Unsplash License.
