WORKING PAPERS 

Prisoner Reentry and 
Community Policing: 
Strategies for Enhancing 
Public Safety 

Reentry Roundtable Meeting 
The Urban Institute 
Washington, DC 
May 1213, 2004 


research for safer communities 

URBAN INSTITUTE 
Justice Policy Center 


URBAN INSTITUTE 

Justice Policy Center
2100 M Street NW 
Washington, DC 20037 
www.urban.org


 2004 Urban Institute 

This report was prepared under Cooperative Agreement 2003-HS-WX-K044. Opinions 
expressed in this document are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the official 
position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its 
funders. 

JPC Publication: 


Prisoner Reentry and 
Community Policing: 
Strategies for Enhancing 
Public Safety 

Working Papers 

Reentry Roundtable Meeting 
The Urban Institute 
Washington, DC 
May 1213, 2004 


History of the Reentry Roundtable 

Three years ago, the Urban Institute launched a major research and policy development initiative 
on the issue of prisoner reentry, with a broad substantive agenda that encompasses criminal 
justice policy as well as the impact of incarceration and reentry on children, families, former 
prisoners, communities, and civil society. (A prospectus of Urban Institutes reentry activities 
can be found at http://www.urban.org.) One of the key components of our initiative has been the 
creation of the Reentry Roundtable; a group of prominent academics, practitioners, 
community leaders, policymakers, advocates, and former prisoners that convenes about twice a 
year to push the envelope of research and practice. We also invite about a hundred individuals 
(including practitioners, researchers, foundation officers, and community members) to observe 
meetings of the Roundtable, and have been impressed with the breadth and stature of people who 
have joined us to become part of a larger national network. The mission of the Roundtable is to 
develop new thinking about the issue of prisoner reentry, broadly defined. 

The first meeting of the Roundtable was held in the fall of 2000, with the purpose of exploring 
the many dimensions of the reentry issue. We commissioned discussion papers by leading 
academics examining the state of knowledge on this topic from a variety of perspectives 
health, substance abuse, family, gender, race, employment, community capacity, and state 
criminal justice policies. Those papers (and two others on mental health and victims 
perspectives) were published in a special issue of Crime and Delinquency (volume 47, issue 3, 
2001). They also provided the basis for the Urban Institute monograph entitled From Prison to 
Home: The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Reentry. 

Following that meeting, the Urban Institute designed a multistate longitudinal study on prisoner 
reentry, entitled Returning Home. At the second meeting of the Roundtable in March 2001, we 
focused attention on that design, with special attention to understanding the impact of reentry on 
family and community. We have completed the pilot study of Returning Home in Maryland and 
are implementing the full study in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas. 

The third session of the Roundtable, held in March 2002, focused on the role of the institutions 
of civil society in creating barriers and bridges to the successful reintegration of record numbers 
of former prisoners. The papers from that meeting have been published on the Urban Institutes 
website. The fourth meeting, held in December 2002, examined the nexus between prisoner 
reentry and health. Those papers were published in a special issue of the Journal of Correctional 
Health Care (volume 10, issue 3, Fall 2003). The fifth meeting examined the employment 
dimension of prisoner reentry. A monograph report based on the findings of that Roundtable to 
be published in the Summer of 2004. The sixth meeting of the Reentry Roundtable, entitled The 
Youth Dimensions of Prisoner Reentry: Youth Development and the Impacts of Incarceration 
and Reentry, was held in San Francisco at the end of May 2003. The papers from this session 
were published in a special issue of Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice (volume 2, issue 1, 
2004). The seventh meeting of the Reentry Roundtable, entitled Housing, Homelessness, and 
Prisoner Reentry, was held in October 2003. A monograph report based on the findings of that 
Roundtable will be available in Fall 2004. 


Reentry Roundtable: Prisoner Reentry and Community Policing 

The eighth meeting of the Reentry Roundtable, held in May 2004, addressed the nexus between 
reentry and public safety. Meeting participants, including academics, practitioners, service 
providers, and community leaders, were brought together to share their perspectives on the role 
of law enforcement and community policing in tackling the public safety consequences of the 
four-fold increase in the number of individuals entering and leaving the nations prisons each 
year. To facilitate discussion, the Urban Institute commissioned four discussion papers exploring 
how community policing can respond to the challenges of prisoner reentry and public safety 
within the context of community concerns, sentencing policy, and corrections. 

This document provides the full-text working papers commissioned for the Roundtable. 
Additionally, a report of a pilot study surveying public attitudes on reentry and public safety is 
provided. These working papers will be also published in a special edition on reentry in The 
International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice. 

A summary of the Roundtable meeting, including highlights of presentations by the authors of 
commissioned papers and the discussions that flowed from them, is available at 
http://www.urban.org. We are in the process of producing a monograph report of this meeting 
that will be available in Winter 2004. 

Reentry Roundtable May 2004 Meeting Participants 

Jeremy Travis (Cochair), Urban Institute 
Jim Bueermann (Cochair), Redlands, 
California Police Department
Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie Mellon University
Patrick Bradley, Massachusetts Executive
Office of Public Safety 
Edward Davis III, Lowell,
Massachusetts Police Department
Walter Dickey, University of Wisconsin
School of Law 
John Fitzgerald, Hampden County 
Massachusetts Jail and House of Correction
Ellen Halbert, Travis County Texas
Office of the District Attorney 
Susan Herman, National Center for 
Victims of Crime
Gary Hinzman, Sixth Judicial District
Department of Correctional Services 
Martin Horn, New York Department of
Correction and Probation
Michael Jacobson, John Jay College of 
Criminal Justice
Gary Johnson, Texas Department of Correction
Jean Johnson, Public Agenda 
Robert Johnson, Anoka County 
Minnesota, County Attorneys Office 
Paul Joyce, Massachusetts Executive 
Office of Public Safety 
George Kelling, Rutgers University 
David Kennedy, Kennedy School of 
Government, Harvard University 
Edmund McGarrell, Michigan State 
University 
Alan Mobley, University of California-
Irvine 
Brenda Palms -Barber, North Lawndale 
(Chicago) Employment Network 
Carl Peed, Office of Community Oriented 
Policing Services 
Charles See, Lutheran Metropolitan 
Ministry Association 
Michael Smith, University of Wisconsin 
School of Law 
Faye Taxman, Bureau of Governmental 
Research, University of Maryland 
Reverend Steven Tucker, New 
Commandment Baptist Church 


CONTENTS 

Brick Walls Facing Reentering Offenders 
Faye Taxman, Bureau of Governmental Research, University of Maryland .............................1

The Roles of the Police in the Offender Reentry Process 
Edmund F, McGarrell, Carol Rapp Zimmerman, Natalie K. Hipple, Nicholas Corsaro, and 
Heather Perez,School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University..............................19 

Promoting Public Safety: A Problem-Oriented Approach to 
Prisoner Reentry 
Walter J. Dickey and Cecelia M. Klingele, University of Wisconsin School of Law..................54

Turning Weeds into Seeds 
Alan Mobley, University of California - Irvine ..................................................76

The Revolving Door: Exploring Public Attitudes Toward Prisoner 
Reentry 
Jean Johnson and John Immerwahr, Public Agenda ..................................................97



Reentry Roundtable  Working Paper 

BRICK WALLS FACING REENTERING OFFENDERS 1 

Faye Taxman 
Bureau of Governmental Research, University of Maryland 

Abstract: Offenders returning from prison and jail often experience psychological and social 
anxiety about their standing in the community. The returning offender arrives in the community 
with grand expectations about their prospects and their revived role as a citizen in the 
community. A citizenship identity is one where the offender becomes an active member of civil 
society by assuming a constructive role as a breadwinner, parent, sibling, and so on. Offenders 
are often positioned to discard their prior roles (e.g., as the outcast, the deviant, etc.). While the 
offender may desire to be a citizen, the society has institutionalized strategies and practices that 
continue to reaffirm the outcast persona. The offender is then placed in the position of trying to 
manage a citizen role while being less than and often lacks the competency in core social and 
psychological skills to navigate through the maze of issues involved in reaffirming the citizenship 
role. The pathway to an outcast is far easier for many offenders than trying to overcome the 
obstacles to being a citizen. 

1 This paper is partially sponsored by the Urban Institute and the University of Maryland. All opinions are those of 
the author and do not reflect the opinion of the sponsoring agency. All questions should be directed to the author at 
301-403-8335 or at http://www.bgr.umd.edu.

Offenders returning from prison and jail often experience psychological and social 
anxiety about their standing in the community. The returning offender arrives in the community 
with grand expectations about their prospects, and their revived role as a citizen in the 
community. A citizenship identity is one where the offender is an active member of the civil 
society; this identity includes assuming a constructive role as a breadwinner, parent, sibling, and 
so on. The offender is often positioned to discard their prior roles (e.g., the outcast or the 
deviant). While the offender may desire to be a citizen, society has institutionalized strategies 
and practices that continue to reaffirm the outcast persona. The offender must then try to manage 
a citizenship role while being less of a citizen (Uggen, Manza, and Behrens 2003). In addition, 
the offender often lacks the competency in core social and psychological skills to navigate 
through the maze of issues involved in reaffirming the citizenship role. As described by Irwin 


(1970) and furthered by Maruna (2001), the pathway to an outcast is far easier for many 
offenders than trying to overcome the obstacles to being a citizen. 

The question confronting us today is the formula for assisting offenders to identify with 
the citizen role as a means to minimize the identification and subscription to the outcast persona 
and to fulfil the goals of reintegration. Assuming that there is agreement that the offender should 
adopt the role of a citizen, then societal institutions are challenged to consider how to break 
down the walls that account for offenders identification with an outcast role. Key institutions 
such as law enforcement, parole, and the community must consider how they interact with the 
offender, and how these interactions influence the decisions that offenders make regarding the 
citizen versus outcast identity. 

In this paper, we will begin with a review of some of the factors aiding and abetting the 
role of an outcast. We will focus the review on specific institutions that have a direct relationship 
to the offender and to the community after years of incarceration. Specifically, we will examine 
the law enforcement agents, parole authorities, and community members. Then we will outline 
how the social institutions can foster the acquisition of a citizenship role in society and can assist 
the offender in discarding the outcast persona. 

Constraints of the Past, Present, and Future 

Reintegrationthe concept of rejoining and becoming a productive member of society 
has not been in vogue for nearly 30 years. In the past, strides were taken to ease the transition 
back into society through a series of halfway houses (transitional living), employment, and 
counseling (Taxman, Young, and Byrne 2003a). For the most part, this limited infrastructure has 
dissolved during the last 30 years, as a move toward just deserts and more punitive approaches 
dominated the sentencing landscape. A collateral consequence that similarly crept into the 


landscape continued the punishment in the community after release from prison and reinforced 
the offenders role as a wrongdoer. These restrictions affect some of the basic needs identified by 
Maslow as those affecting a persons social and psychological security, such as shelter and 
employment. Both of these ultimately affect the ability to thrive and participate in society. (See 
Petersilia [2003] for a discussion of specific areas where restrictions have intensified in civil 
society, such as type of employment, access to educational loans, and access to housing.) 

Exacerbating the problem is the altering supervision context where accountability is the 
name of the game. Under the accountability model, the offender is held to a standard of behavior 
that even law-abiding citizens may experience difficulties achieving such a high standard. These 
accountability standards increase the conditions of release as part of a strategy to restrict liberties 
and freedoms while simultaneously raising the bar about normal societal behaviors. Ultimately, 
this process has yielded a greater likelihood that the offender will be violated for failing to abide 
by the rules. Not surprising, technical violations are an increasing problem that contributes to 
new prison intakes (BJS 2002). The stiffening punitive nature of supervision sends a message to 
the offender about the limitations on their likely success as a citizen. In addition, it serves to 
reinforce the offenders tendency to identify themselves as an outcast and seek continuous 
psychological and social support from others in a like situation. The escalating community-based 
collateral consequences have distanced the offender from the community by stiffening the 
hardships associated with tearing down the walls that prevent an offender from becoming a 
citizen. In a quest to deter others from engaging in criminal conduct, the increasingly harsh 
sociopolitical climate has reinforced the offenders role as an offender (the outcast persona). It 
has not met one of the tenets of a retributionist policy that focus on cleaning the slate for the 
offender. Restricting housing options, limiting employment choices, identifying the offender as 




an offender, and other factors have constrained the offender from integrating into society; 
essentially these strategies have placed a scarlet letter on the offender that is visible to the 
offender and others. More important, these factors reinforce the offenders self-concept as an 
offender with all of the trappings of a deprived status. 

Law Enforcement 

A closer look at the sociopolitical environment details the challenges confronting the 
criminal justice system, particularly for law enforcement agencies. The 1980s led to an explosion 
in arrests for drug crimes and a search for effective police strategies to curb the violence and 
drugs invading the streets of America. Four different efforts emerged to cope with the escalating 
problems of drugs: the broken windows approach, community policing, placed-based policing, 
and COMSTAT and performance management (Weisburd 2002). Each had a different purpose, 
yet they continued the criminal career perspective proffered by Blumstein and Cohen (1986) that 
a small number of offenders account for most of the crime. In the broken windows approach, the 
focus was on public order and nuisance behaviors that degraded the community; often the targets 
were offenders who frequently committed low-level offenses. Community policing positioned 
police officers to focus on problem-solving community issues tied to the places or individuals 
that affected criminal behavior. Place-based policing focused attention on buildings, locations, or 
places where criminal conduct frequently occurred. COMSTAT provided a change to the culture 
of policing by providing a management strategy to increase performance of police units to 
address community-based problems. Together, these represent a new era in policing with 
innovations to alter policing from a reactive posture to proactive policing strategies. Albeit, each 
has had different impacts (some more effective and others more negligible) but together they 


increased law enforcement awareness of offenders (especially those who had been incarcerated) 
and the places that crimes occur, particularly the persistent ones. 

Community policing was the only of these initiatives that was designed to change police 
officers position in society from that of solely maintaining public order to addressing public 
order issues. This strategy was designed to transform police from enforcer to problem solver 
(Greene 2000). Community policing varies in its impact due to the multitude of ways that it has 
been implemented, defined, and so on. At its heart, community policing positions the police 
officer to address community problems in a new fashioninstead of focusing on the offender or 
the person committing crimes, the emphasis is on working with the community to prevent crime. 
In many ways the community policing efforts were designed to alleviate crime-producing 
conditions but also to advance community organizing efforts and the problem-solving skills of 
the officer. The experience with community policing is quite mixed, but overall, police 
departments that tried the new style of policing found that some police officers were more 
comfortable with their public order and enforcer roles, and less interested in the problem-solving 
roles. 

The law enforcement efforts have yielded mixed results. Most salient is that crime 
decreased in the last part of the 1990s and citizens expressed feeling more comfortable in their 
own communities. The impact on the individual offender and their role in the community has not 
been explored. 

A recent poll in California on the criminal justice system reveals that many of our efforts 
to reform police and sentencing may actually only serve to backfire; we should be concerned 
particularly about the likelihood that offenders reintegrating into the community will be 



successful since the offenders and their communities are skeptical about the intentions of the 

criminal justice agencies. 

Another important finding of this poll reveals that the image of Californias criminal 
justice system is in trouble. Surprisingly, in a country where the criminal justice system is 
supposed to be the strongest and the most dependable, majorities of the polls 12 racial 
and ethnic groups think Californias system favors the rich and powerful. Eighty-eight 
percent of African Americans and 75 percent of American Indians agree with that 
concept. Moreover, the states criminal justice system scored low on the most important 
criterion: its fairness. More than two out of three African Americans, Latinos, and 
American Indians indicated that they have only some or very little confidence in the 
fairness of the criminal justice system of California. 

The results of the poll reveal good news and bad news for Californias police 
departments. On the positive side, all of the groups are satisfied with the job that their 
local police departments are doing in protecting their neighborhoods. More than half of 
all the groups and four out of five Arabs and Armenians rate their job performance as 
good or excellent. On the negative side, a majority of Californias racial and ethnic 
groups believe that their local police tend to harass and detain people with darker skin or 
with foreign accents more than they harass and detain other Americans. Namely, three-
quarters of African Americans and nearly half of all Latinos believe that their local police 
officers often abuse their power (Bendixen and Associates 2004). 

If this sense of unfairness and inequity holds true, it is likely that the returning offender 
will be leery of the criminal justice system and its intent in all effortseven efforts to reintegrate 
the offender back into the community. As noted in the procedural justice literature, citizens that 
perceive situations as being unfair or inequitable are more likely not to comply with the law 
(Tyler 1990; Tyler 1994; Taxman, Soule, and Gelb 1999). This situation may create ambivalence 
toward compliance with the law or program requirements. The advances in policing in the 1990s 
may have intensified offenders perception of themselves as social outcasts and thus targets of 
unfair police efforts. The offenders perception may be that the hidden agenda is merely a 
camouflaged lock em up strategy that strives to catch the offender in even the most 
insignificant behavior instead of maintain order in the community. 



The Community 

The community became a central point in crime prevention efforts in the 1990s as more 
and more efforts were devoted to improving community capacity to address crime problems. 
Some of the escalating collateral consequences derived directly from communities being 
inundated with felons and fear that such offenders would prey on the community. For exa mple, 
some of the prohibitions on offenders convicted of felonies in public housing areas (e.g., Section 
8) derived from community concern about returning offenders residing in areas where they could 
easily resume their criminal behavior. At the same time, many communities realized that there 
was a need to take a different approach to welcoming the offender back into the community by 
creating guardians, angels, advocates, or others that could assist the offender in the transition 
back to the community (Taxman, Byrne, and Young 2003b). Scholars have learned that the 
problem of offenders returning home is not evenly distributed through all communities in the 
United States, but rather is concentrated in select neighborhoods (Clear 2004), and by and large 
these neighborhoods tend to be adversely affected by other social ills in employment prospects, 
housing problems, poor performing educational institutions, and so on. In these communities, it 
is unclear what role the offender assumes. What is clear is that the offender joins the 
neighborhood members in struggling to obtain the basics of shelter, food, and clothing. 

In general, the question that plagues this discussion about the community is a simple one: 
Who is the community? The community ranges from family and friends to the neighborhood to 
the political district or jurisdictional area. At each level, the community plays a critical role in 
defining where the offender fits into the social arena. Each level has different expectations and 
demands on the offender, and the offender has reactions to these expectations and demands. 
What should be considered are how these demands and expectations affect the offenders sense 
of psychological and social safety. To coin John Irwins discourse on the reintegration process, 
 


the central focus is on how to assist the offender in making good (being a citizen in the 
community). 

With La Bodega and other innovative family based programming, more attention has 
been placed on the relationship between the offender and the community. Jennifer Gonnermans 
recent book (2004) focuses on life after prison and portrays some of the issues affecting the 
offenders reintegration into a family when the offender has been removed for an elongated 
period of time. Recent attention has been drawn to the family issues related to the offender both 
in and out of prison. In prison, the offender is removed from his or her family but the removal 
does not necessarily mean that the offender does not have obligations or a sense of 
responsibilities to blood relatives (or even others that are part of the offenders extended family). 
The removal often exacerbates the issue by placing new demands on the family, both 
emotionally and financially, including the need to maintain contact, to provide emotional support 
for the incarcerated loved one, and to provide the offender with needed goods. These needs drain 
the financial resources of the offenders loved one and often absorb resources that only serve to 
strap the family even more. Upon entrance back into the community, the family often expects the 
offender to repay the resources consumed while the offender was incarcerated, and to assume a 
pivotal role in the family. Some offenders prefer to delay reuniting with the family to ease the 
pressure (Young, Byrne, and Taxman 2003) while others merely reunite with the family while 
rejecting the demands to contribute to the family. 

At the neighborhood level, the returning offender meets new challenges. The parole 
system (or some form of supervision) has certain restrictions on the offender that can range from 
restrictions on area (places), time (curfews and appointments), people (other offenders even if 
they are family members), and so on. These restrictions are not necessarily designed to affect the 


offenders role as a citizen in typical areas of responsibilities (e.g., employment, parenting, and 
civic participation) but, like other scenarios, there are unintended collateral consequences. Much 
depends on the policies of the local parole office, and in many cases, the practices of individual 
parole officers. As a result, the offender has an increased sense of unfairness, and these 
restrictions may actually interfere with the offenders sense of obligation to the community. 
From the offender perspective, these restrictions may affect the reintegration into the community 
since it serves to belittle the offender in ways that challenges the offenders sense of self-efficacy 
and role identity. 

In addition to the criminal justice authorities, the neighborhood community has certain 
role expectations for the offender as a provider for his or her loved ones, as a law-abiding citizen, 
and as a civic member of the community. The neighborhood organization is part of the natural 
support system that bonds the person to the community and is available to assist people in times 
of need. Whether the neighborhood community is the civic association, community organization, 
church, or some other organization that has a presence in the neighborhood depends on the 
community. Expectations will vary according to the organization and its position in the 
neighborhood, on the individual, and on what types of services the organization will provide to 
the community. Civic associations may be concerned about the organizations physical presence 
in the neighborhood, while the church or other icons may be focused on the needs of that 
organization; the organization may offer services to those in need, such as food for the homeless, 
used clothing, and assistance with housing or emotional support. Increasingly many of these 
efforts undertaken by the natural support systems have slowly evolved from volunteer (natural 
efforts) to contractual services. As natural efforts, these services are provided for the expressed 
goal of assisting those in need. A contractual basis for the services may affect both the type of 



services offered and how those services are delivered. For example, under a contract there may 
be limitations on the type of people that are eligible for services, amount of services available to 
an individual, duration of the services, and other constraints that often occur with providing 
services based on a contract. The contractual relationship changes the nature of the services and 
may involve modifying the services to fulfill the demands of a contract. The person in need must 
then modify their expectations of the services provider, and this can be accompanied by 
increasing resentment toward or ambivalence about the services. It can also create a sense of 
unfairness if these services were previously provided under a different context, and therefore 
create a sense of lost legitimacy for the services (LaFree 2001). The migration from a natural 
system to a contractual (or limited service) may have an impact on the community and how the 
offender perceives the social institutions in the community (e.g., as a caregiver, as a government 
entity, or as a form of social control). 

With the increasing awareness that there are a limited number of neighborhoods that are 
likely to be affected by the migration of returning home offenders, more attention has been given 
to the capacity of these neighborhoods or communities to reintegrate the offender into a 
citizenship role. With several studies under way to examine the social capital in these 
neighborhoods, it is apparent that these neighborhoods suffer considerably from a lack of 
resources to assist the members of the community, regardless of whether they are offenders 
returning from prison or citizens that are not involved in the criminal justice system. These 
neighborhoods ge nerally lack sufficient organizations or resources to fulfill the needs of the 
citizens. The existing organizations have demands that they expect for the offenders to meet 
upon returning home. 


A Citizenship Role for Offenders 

The police, parole officers, and the community (at all levels) have expectations about the 
offender, and as currently presented in the sociopolitical environment, these expectations often 
reinforce the offenders outcast persona. The prior discussion has shown how the offender is 
confronted with the offender persona from society. The question that remains is what steps can 
society take to reinforce the offenders natural tendency upon release to identify with a 
citizenship role (Gonnerman 2004; Uggen, Manza, and Behrens 2003; Irwin 1970; Maruna 
2001). This challenge occurs in a new era of reentry where social institutions, policymakers, and 
communities search for strategies to reduce the churning of offenders to and from incarceration. 
But this recycling of offenders occurs in a socialpolitical environment where the civil rights of 
the offender are constrained, and the balance between the rhetoric of accountability and hug a 
thug has yet to be resolved. 

The returning offender encounters certain challenges upon entrance into society. Irwin 
(1970) and Maruna (2001) describe how the offender goes through different phases, beginning 
with high confidence and expectations about his or her citizen role, and then the offender quickly 
experiences the realities of reestablishing oneself in society and maintaining a prosocial role. 
These harsh realities serve as the dissuaders that result in the offender disengaging from society 
and reverting to old, more comfortable (criminal) ways. The ability to obtain work, and work that 
offers a living wage, along with finding appropriate shelter, are usually the two main distracters 
to being a citizen. The offender, in pursuit of shelter and work, consistently hits barriers that he 
or she had not anticipated. The offender usually does not have the social or coping skills to be 
able to successfully maintain desistance. 

A strategy is needed to affirm the offenders citizenship role and address the fundamental 
needs that often get in the way of successful role identification with being a citizen (and thus 



shed the outcast persona). This strategy needs to attend to the psychological and social needs of 
the offender as a means to reaffirm their new role in society. Given that offenders tend to return 
to communities with significant social capital deficits, the strategy is to attend to both the societal 
need to refurbish the community and provide offenders with the means to make good. The 
strategy derives from the restorative justice model where the focus is on accountability, 
restoration, and competency development. That is, the restorative justice model provides the 
framework for reintegration that works toward the offender becoming a member of the 
community and tearing down the walls that continue to refer to the individual as ex-offender. 
Added to this model is the need to focus on the self-efficacy of the offender in order to build the 
capacity to desist from criminal conduct and build a prosocial lifestyle. 

1. Deportment/Rapport Building. Humanitarian-based interactions are the cornerstone 
to the offender retaining the high expectations that they have upon leaving prison. The first 
strategy begins at the time of departure from prison, where the community and/or police agencies 
should use this opportunity to reinforce the offenders role as a citizen. That is, the emphasis 
should be less on the we know who you are (and we are watching) to more about the 
breadwinner and citizen role that the offender will have after release. The current stance is that 
the offender is made aware of his or her limits and restrictions. Building on motivational 
enhancement approaches, a strategy focused on deportment is designed to reinforce the 
offenders commitment to him/herself as a member of the community that has value. It serves to 
reinforce the offenders sense of self-efficacy and place in the community. Part of the strategy is 
to ensure that the offender views him/herself as having the potential to meet the challenges of 
reintegration. By having the two agencies less likely to treat offenders as citizenspolice and 


parolethen it provides a framework for the offender to understand that he or she is a member 
of the community. 

2. Employment to rebuild the community and provide employment. Few transitional 
employment programs exist like those in New York City that provide offenders with ready 
employment. Employment is one of the key constructive factors that assist the offender in 
establishing him/herself as the breadwinner, a key citizenship role. It is also an area where 
increasing collateral consequences have occurred over the last decade. Employment is a key area 
that serves both societal and individual needsit provides the means for an individual to earn 
funds to be independent and not depend upon criminal conduct to survive. Since many offenders 
have limited work experience, they lack the skills to function in the workplace. However, 
employment could ease the transition from prison to successful reintegration. Having a ready 
employment after release from prison is one of the critical challenges confronting many 
offenders. 

A transitional employment program provides the offender with ready employment that 
both allows the offender to be supervised and also develops a career path. The employment 
program typically has three features: 1) administrative support with a full array of jobs, including 
sales, marketing, advertising, and administrative work; 2) reconstruction business that is modeled 
after Habitat for Humanity, which rebuilds housing for low income individuals; and 3) career 
tracks to help offenders learn management and supervisory skills. The program can be used to 
boost redevelopment in the community through providing employment for the offender and for 
those in the community. The duration of the program, up to five years, allows the offender to 
learn a number of skills and establishes an employment record. The focus on the community then 
serves the purpose of the reparation as well as the competency development of the offenders. 


The transitional employment benefits the community as well as enhances public safety. 
By involving offenders and others in the community, transitional employment programs achieve 
some of the place-based policing strategies to address locations where criminal behavior tends to 
occur. The community identifies the areas and types of dwellings that are needed to rebuild the 
community and neighborhoods. 

A total integration of the transitional employment center as part of the community is 
achieved by different members of law enforcement, parole, and other authorities working with 
offenders in the community. When authorities work with offenders, offenders can become 
acquainted with authorities to ensure that there is mutual respect. It is difficult to develop respect 
if the individuals have not had any opportunities to become acquainted in a different setting than 
the police station, parole office, or other places where the offender is likely to meet with such 
officials. These officials could also be a role model for the offenders and assist the offender in 
learning new citizen roles in a nonthreatening manner. 

3. Create fair and equitable processes. Part of the defiance and adherence to the outcast 
persona of offenders derives from offenders persistence in their belief that they are being treated 
unfairly. The offender examines the societal processes, including some of the collateral 
consequences, and uses these processes to justify that they are being wronged by society. More 
importantly, these situations solidify the perception that the offender is not welcome by the 
mainstream and therefore has no choice but to assume an outcast persona. Stated simply, since 
offenders tend to perceive the world around them as unfair, their perception of society serves to 
undermine their desires and expectations about the likelihood of becoming a part of society. 

One strategy to address this problem is to create more equitable decisionmaking 
processes that are regimented and apply these processes to all offenders in like situations. Using  


the tenets of procedural justice, the goal is to define undesirable behaviors in such a manner that 
the definitions are agreed upon and then to define the appropriate response categories. This 
approach creates a level playing field that the offender can abide and it reduces the perception 
that one offender is treated differently than another offender. This strategy should be used with 
different decisions: rules such as reentry processes, job opportunities at the transitional center 
(see above), noncompliance behavior, compliance behavior, and other issues that affect the 
offenders interaction with the authorities. The procedural justice model has been tried in several 
areas (e.g., arrests for domestic violence, probation and parole, and drug courts) where the results 
continue to suggest that offenders tend to accept negative consequences when they believe that 
they are being treated fairly (Paternoster et al. 1997; Tyler 1994; Taxman and Thanner 
forthcoming). 

Fair and equitable processes also provide a framework for law enforcement, parole, and 
community representatives to understand what are the target behaviors and responses. Currently, 
authorities can use their own discretion as to the expectations for the offender behaviorand the 
offenders tend to find this inconsistency to be a vote of no confidence. The procedural justice 
model addresses this issue by reigning in the authorities and communities along certain tenets, 
and it provides a framework for how these individuals interact with the offender. 

Conclusion 

The sociopolitical climate is one that reinforces the offender as an outcast that is unlikely 
to be integrated into mainstream society. The collateral consequences remind the offender that he 
or she is not entitled to the same privileges as others in society, and that some core benefits (e.g., 
employment based on interests or housing with loved ones) are threatened because of the 
offenders legal status. The challenge is to assist the offender in assuming role identification as a 


citizen. To do so requires eradicating some of these collateral consequences and improving the 
rapport and respect shared between an offender and authority figures. The community must be a 
place where the offender can be successful instead of a place fraught with chains to keep his or 
her head above water. 

Breaking down the wall will involve the need to affirm that the offender is a viable 
member of the community. We should capitalize on the offenders natural tendency to identify 
with a citizen role upon release and work to disentangle the obstacles that offenders face to 
maintain their optimism. These struggles are documented by several scholars, including Maruna 
(2001) in his most recent book, Making Good, or the journalist account of Elaine Barletts 
journey to be a citizen (Gonnerman 2004). This paper presents the strides to achieve some 
balance by reframing how the police and community may reconnect with the offender by 
focusing on a restorative justice model that emphasizes employment and respect for the offender. 
The goal is to reduce the disparity that offenders confront in the most critical area of being a 
citizenmaking a living wage and establishing an employment record. Breaking through the 
walls will need to be based on changing the the interaction between the offender and society. 

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Reentry Roundtable  Working Paper 

THE ROLES OF THE POLICE IN THE OFFENDER REENTRY 
PROCESS 

Edmund F, McGarrell, Carol Rapp Zimmerman, Natalie K. Hipple, Nicholas Corsaro, 
and Heather Perez, School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University 

Abstract: The increasing number of former inmates returning from prison to the community, 
coupled with the high level of reoffending among former inmates, raises public safety issues for 
society generally as well as for particular communities where significant numbers of former 
inmates reside. Given these public safety concerns, inmate reentry emerges, or at least 
potentially emerges, as an issue of concern for the police. From a problem solving perspective, 
crime generated by the persistent high rates of offending by recently released inmates is one of 
those chronic crime problems calling for proactive, strategic problem solving. This paper 
includes a discussion of some of the ways that the police have become involved in reentry efforts 
in some communities. Here we draw upon descriptions of reentry programs that have been 
developed in the states through DOJs offender reentry program as well as reentry programs 
that have been developed as part of DOJs Project Safe Neighborhoods, an initiative intended to 
reduce gun crime. Additionally, we consider the potential roles that the police might play in 
reentry programs. We begin with the premise that most reentry programs are based on a relative 
emphasis on either social support or surveillance/deterrence/incapacitation, or some 
combination of support and surveillance. Correspondingly, police involvement in reentry may 
emphasize social support through community building and/or deterrence through heightened 
surveillance. Interesting theoretical and policy issues arise as to the efficacy of social support 
and surveillance/deterrence and whether programs combining support and deterrence are more 
or less effective in fostering reentry. Further, questions arise as to the consistency between 
individual-level effects (successful reintegration versus recidivism of individuals) and 
community-level effects (community safety). 

Introduction 

Offender reentry has reemerged as a topic on the criminal justice agenda for debate, 
program development, research, and funding. While scarcely a new issue, there is currently a 
renewed focus on the need to address the high recidivism rate of those offenders returning from 
secure confinement to the community. 


Roughly 650,000 adults are released from state and federal confinement facilities each 
year (Beck 2002; Hughes et al. 2002; Glaze 2003). Approximately 100,000 of those are youthful 
adult offenders, sentenced to adult confinement, but paroled or released while still under the 
age of 25. Another 100,000 are juvenile delinquents, released each year from youth facilities. In 
total, local communities must face the return of approximately three-quarters of a million 
offenders. Complicating the reentry process is that not all of these returnees will be on the same 
type of legal status. By the beginning of 2001, 16 states had abolished parole and 4 more 
abolished it for some types of offenses (Beck 2002; Hughes et al. 2002; Bureau of Justice 
Statistics 2003). 

The United States Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, estimates that only 
one-third of those offenders returning from secure confinement will remain crime free after three 
years in the community (Langan and Levin 2002; Beck 2002; Hughes et al. 2002; Bureau of 
Justice Statistics 2003). Research indicates that almost a third of ex-offenders (30 percent) 
reoffend within six months of release (Petersilia 2003). That means that roughly a quarter of a 
million ex-offenders will commit new crimes within six months of their reentry date. 

For some municipalities this creates large financial and human costs. For example, 
officials in Philadelphia estimate that two-thirds of the ex-offenders returning to that city 
recidivate within three years. If they could reduce recidivism by 10 percent, they estimate that 
the city would save $6.8 million in jail costs alone (Philadelphia Consensus Group on Reentry 
and Reintegration of Adjudicated Offenders 2003). 

For police departments, similar savings in time and resources could be accrued if a larger 
percentage of ex-offenders could be reintegrated successfully. However, the role law 
enforcement can and should play in preventing or limiting reoffending has not been well defined 


or intensively and widely researched. Indeed, during the professional era of policing, 
involvement of the police in reentry was likely to occur only as the police responded to a crime 
involving a former inmate. As police departments adopt a problem-solving framework, however, 
the high rate of offending and victimization involving former inmates becomes the type of 
recurring problem that calls for proactive interventions. Further, these interventions may be 
enhanced through multiagency, multisector, problem-solving partnerships consistent with the 
community-building philosophy of community policing. 

In this paper, we begin by reviewing several theoretical models of inmate reentry as a 
means of providing context for discussion of the potential roles of the police in reentry. We then 
present a conceptual model of that role. We next review a number of contemporary reentry 
initiatives with particular attention to the roles of the police. We conclude with a discussion of 
issues related to police involvement in reentry efforts as well as preliminary recommendations. 

Theoretical Approaches Informing Reentry Practice 

Theories attempting to explain why an ex-offender might successfully reenter society and 
live crime free or return to criminal activity tend to center on the possible deterrent effect of 
surveillance or the potential life-course changes associated with the provision of social support. 
These two dimensions (surveillance and support) form the basis of Studts (1972)2 classic model 
of probation and parole supervision and offer a tool for conceptualizing the potential roles the 
police could play in reentry processes. Additionally, we extend the surveillance/support model 
by drawing upon concepts from structural exchange theory. 

2 Studt used the term service to include functions described here as support.  


Surveillance and Sanctions

 Fair sanctions increase compliance with the law by affirming the legitimacy of 
law enforcement, but unfair sanctions reduce compliance by reducing legitimacy 

(Sherman 1995, 212) 

Perhaps the most congruent role for the police in inmate reentry efforts involves the 
surveillance of former inmates, likely in concert with probation and parole authorities, to deter 
criminal behavior or increase the likelihood of incapacitation once an offense has occurred. Such 
approaches draw upon traditional police roles involving the surveillance of high-risk groups 
(e.g., gangs, drug distribution networks), as well as promising efforts involving deterrence 
(Nagin 1998), career criminal initiatives (Martin and Sherman 1986), coerced drug treatment 
(Harrell, Cavanagh, and Roman 1999; Harrell et al. 2002; Kleinman 1997; Satel 1999) and gang 
interventions (Kennedy et al. 2001; Decker 2003). 

Deterrence is based on the premise that the person considering a criminal act will modify 
his or her calculation of the potential costs versus the benefits of committing the crime if 
commensurate sanctions for the crime are known to be applied with certainty and celerityor 
swiftness. This is an effort to coerce compliance with legal and social norms through external, 
formal agents of control. Yet the deterrent effect of increased surveillance of probationers and 
parolees has produced mixed results (Bryne et al. 1992; Petersilia and Turner 1990). 

Applying this principle to ex-offenders returning from confinement has proven 
problematic on two fronts. First, intensive supervision programs, in which officers from parole, 
probation, police, or a combination of those agents have attempted to monitor offenders closely 
have not been shown to be effective (Petersilia and Turner 1990; Petersilia and Turner 1991; 
Petersilia and Turner 1993; Lurigio and Petersilia 1992). These programs tend to increase the  


detection of technical violations, but such technical violations have not proven to be a good 
indicator of the ex-offenders risk of committing further crimes. 

The second problem encountered with fully implementing a deterrence strategy is that, 
even with specially targeted monitoring or supervision programs, it is virtually impossible to 
detect and sanction every misdeed. Consistency or inconsistency of surveillance and sanctions 
appears to affect the value of the intervention. Colvin et al. (2002) theorize that consistent efforts 
to coerce lawful behavior may result in low levels of antisocial behavior, but that inconsistent 
coercion leads to anger and an increased risk of criminal activity (Sherman 1993; Cullen 1994). 

A model for such external action by formal agents of control could be borrowed from life 
course models to explain the onset of delinquency. Erratic and abusive discipline increases the 
risk of delinquency (Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber 1986; McCord 1991; Smith and Thornberry 
1995). This lack of consistent external coercion creates alienation, rather than pro-social bonding 
between parent and child (Hirschi 1969). The coercive bond is then theorized to be reproduced in 
other power relationshipsbetween child and school, child and authority figureslike police 
(Colvin and Pauly 1983). 

Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) argue that such erratic coercion is one of the factors that 
lead to low self-control (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). Colvin and colleagues note a similar 
result for adults in that an erratic schedule of coercion teaches individuals that they cannot 
control consequences because negative stimuli appear to occur randomly, not as predictable 
outcomes of behavior (Colvin et al. 2002, 22). 

In addition to consistency, the legitimacy of the supervision or sanctions may also lead to 
increased prosocial behavior, while the perception that such measures are not legitimate may 
lead to anger, strain, and a return to criminal behavior (Agnew 1985). As Sherman (1993) noted, 


if an intervention is perceived to be arbitrary or unjust, defiance rather than conformity to social 
norms may result. Just as with the impact of social supports, inconsistent support degrades trust 
and the likelihood of prosocial bonds and inconsistent coercion may similarly degrade trust in the 
formal agents of society and in the norms that are sworn to uphold (Cullen 1994; Sherman 1993). 

To better explain the conditions under which deterrence appears to have less effect, 
Sherman (1995) identifies four conditions in which defiance, rather than deterrence, may result 
from police sanctioning: the offender believes the sanction is unfair, the offender is poorly 
bonded to the agent (the police) and the community that agent represents, the offender perceives 
the sanction as a personal rejection, and the offender denies or redirects the shame to defiance. 

Thus, while there appears to be evidence that increased surveillance can result in reduced 
criminal activity, the impact appears to be conditional, and the possibility exists that inconsistent 
and perceived unfair surveillance and coercion may generate criminality. 3 The relationship 
between the social supports offered by the community and the coercive supervision imposed by 
that community might help explain the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of various reentry 
intervention strategies. 

3 Laub and Sampson (2003) warn of the potential of cumulative disadvantage as arrest and incarceration disrupts 
employment, school, family, and community bonds. 


Social Support 

A warm, caring, romantic relationship was associated with decreased involvement 
with deviant friends and this change in friendship network, in turn, was linked to less 
criminal behavior (Simons et al. 2002, 427). 

Social support can be conceptualized at both the individual level and at the broader level 
of community or society. At the individual level, Sampson and Laub (1990, 1993, 1997) point to 
specific transitions that appear to set successful (or unsuccessful) trajectories for the returning 



offender. A caring relationship with a prosocial (conventional) spouse and a commitment to a job 
are predicted, by this age-graded theory of informal social control, to lower criminal activity. 

Social learning theory predicts a similar outcome for those ex-offenders who are involved 
in a prosocial marriage or relationship. Warr (1998) found that those delinquent adolescents who 
were later married to a conventional spouse were more likely to terminate their relationships with 
criminal peers. Warr argues that it is the change in the social learning environment that led these 
prior offenders to desist from engaging in further criminal activity (Akers 1985; Warr 1998). 
Simons et al. (2002) also found that a caring, prosocial partner led to less involvement with 
deviant peers and to higher work commitment. 

Similarly, differential association theory would support the premise of a strong 
association with a conventional, prosocial spouse fosters a difference in friendship networks and 
it is that association that enhances the ex-offenders ability and willingness to interact with those 
conforming to societys norms (Sutherland et al. 1992). This begins to reflect social support at a 
more macro-level. The more the offender is able to move into conventional society, the less his 
or her opportunities will be blocked (Cloward and Ohlin 1960). 

However, more intimate prosocial groups are not sufficient to create important 
opportunities (Cullen 1994). To be meaningful, social supports at the community level provide 
resources that allow people to provide for themselves and their intimates without resorting to 
criminal behavior. One important aspect of such supports is the consistency with which they are 
delivered (Cullen 1994; Colvin et al. 2002). If such supports are episodic and unpredictable, the 
person attempting to rely on them may experience frustration, anger, and strain (Agnew 1985, 
1992). However, an ex-offender who perceives social supports as consistent and dependable 
begins to rebuild (or build) a stronger sense of self and self control as the offenders actions and 



interactions lead to understandable, consistent, and positive results (Cullen 1994; Colvin et al. 
2002). Consistent social support appears to engender trust, thus opening up the possibility of 
creating or increasing attachment to prosocial norms, the community, and to conventional society 
(Cullen 1994). 

Just as deterrence through heightened surveillance is complex, so too is social support. 
The experiment in providing employment and income support conducted by Rossi et al. (1980) 
demonstrated that mere provision of support was not associated with decreased offending. 
Rather, it appears that it is the increase in social capital through social ties such as marriage, 
employment, and parenthood that is most to lead to desistance from crime (Decker and Lauritsen 
2002). 

The role of law enforcement in resocialization 

Thus, although an exchange may appear to be instigated by the actors themselves, 
it often derives from the performance of social norms or interlocking role obligations 
(Burns, 1973). 

Figure 1. Model of Socialization 

A law enforcement officer is, by definition of the job, a protector and defender of social 
values and norms. For a person who abides by those norms, the relationship between officer and 
citizen is typically one-sided and positive. The officer provides a service and is seen as giving 
more to the relationship that the citizen who has merely to continue to uphold the norms and 
values he or she already embraces. The provision of valued public safety services by law 
enforcement links the agent to this valued public good. The implicit understanding 
of the officers role reinforces the 


benefits of the norms while recognizing an unrealized threat of sanction for violation of those 
norms. Thus, for the generally norm-following person, law enforcement activity is perceived as 
positive for the community and the individual. Cooperating with someone who represents the 
norms of the society is seen as an exchange that provides the benefit of social approval (Blau 
1964). 

Similarly, socialization (or resocialization) to the communitys norms is theorized to 
occur when the actions of the person are met with stable and predictable outcomes depending on 
the level of compliance with social norms. Through rewards and sanctions, compliance increases 
and positive interactions increase, thus leading to identification with the norm senders and finally 
to internalization of norms (Thibaut and Kelly 1959). 

Burns notes that compliance with norms and positive interactions with the agents of those 
norms are associated with four factors: the degree to which the society satisfies needs, the more 
the person lacks an alternative means to satisfy those needs, the degree and length of this 
prosocial bonding, and the more the person depends on the group for guidance in time of 
uncertainty (Burns 1973, 195). So for the ex-offender who must made choices between a return 
to criminal associates and enterprises or an attempt to find employment and seek lifes 
satisfactions through socially approved means, law enforcement becomes both the reflection of 
current attitudes and a possible source of attitud inal change. The more positive the relationship 
between the officer (as the tangible symbol of law) and the ex-offender, the more viable law-
abiding behavior becomes (Thibaut and Kelly 1959). 

However, the interaction between ex-offenders and those attempting to preserve the 
public peace are not simple, product-based, reciprocal exchanges. While it may appear that the 
officer and the ex-offender are communicating on a person-to-person basis, structural exchange 


theory proposes that the communication is heavily influenced by the societal role that the officer 
is commissioned to play, the context of the interaction, and the social orientation of the ex-
offender to the offender and vice versa (Burns 1973). If either party in the exchange perceives 
that the other will be inclined to create problems or work against his interest, the incentive to 
behave in a positive manner will be greatly reduced, as no positive return on that investment is 
expected (Burns 1973). Mistrust breeds mistrust (Scanzoni 1979). 

By definition, the ex-offender has violated societal norms, and past experience with law 
enforcement has led to negative personal consequences. Thus, the offender may choose a 
negative orientation or a hostile orientation toward any interaction with law enforcement, 
inhibiting communication, cooperation, and feelings of reciprocity (Burns 1973). This inhibits a 
productive, positively oriented exchange, as that sort of exchange requires some level of trust 
between the participants (Blau 1964). Therefore, this theory predicts that threats of sanctions will 
be most effective with those that are least at risk to commit crime; this theory too predicts that 
such messages will be met with most hostility and defiance by those with the fewest and weakest 
bonds to societys norms (Blau 1964; Burns 1973). If sufficient negative sanctions are applied, 
compliance can be coerced. However, without some internalization of norms, surveillance and 
sanctions must be ubiquitous to be effective (Thibaut and Kelly 1959; Blau 1964). 

The Relationship of Informal Social Bonds and the Use of Formal Social Control 

individuals who report higher stakes in conventionality are more deterred by 
the perceived risk of exposure to law-breaking (Nagin 1998, 20). 

In their study of arrests for domestic violence offenders, Sherman and Berk raise the 
possibility that failure to find robust, replicable results for general deterrence effects for arrests 
of domestic violence perpetrators might be due to the fact that there is a good chance that arrest 



works far better for some kinds of offenders than for others (Sherman and Berk 1984, 270). 
Although arrest produced deterrent effects for offenders with greater stakes in conformity, they 
found that that the external application of control by officers for those people who had a low 
stake in conformity produced more violence, rather than less (Sherman and Berk 1984). 

As control theory would suggest, the greater the prosocial bond, the greater the effect of 
deterrence (Hirschi 1969; Sherman and Berk 1984). Those individuals who exhibit such bonds to 
conventional others and commitment to conventional activities appear to have internalized or 
accepted social norms and, therefore, to be more likely to experience and fear shame if such 
norms are broached (Hechter and Opp 2001; Wolfgang and Ferracuti 1967; Braithwaite 1989). 

Intimate Handling: Natural and Agency Handlers 

Those who are bonded to peers (or for children, their handlers) who disapprove 
of crime would seem to be shielded from defiance (Sherman 1995, 216). 

Byrne et al. (2000) make the distinction between natural guardians and agency guardians, 
a distinction between those intimates who may affect the behavior and external agents (such as 
police or parole officers) who are formally tasked with enforcing legal norms. The concept of 
persons who hold such sway has also been termed handling (Felson 1986; Cohen and Felson 
1979; Sherman 1995). However, for the purposes of exploring the possible role of police within 
a community reentry process, the idea of expanding handlers to include both intimates and 
external agents of control may be useful. 

Handlers are seen as offering both support and coercing obedience to norms. Handlers, at 
both the community and individual level, can provide instrumental support and steady 
encouragement (Colvin et al. 2002). In addition, for adults as well as children, such handlers can 
serve in a tracker role as envisioned by Atshchuler and Armstrong (1994) in their model for 


intensive aftercare supervision for delinquents, which envisions a program for effective transition 
to the community as an amalgam of intensive surveillance and delivery of social supports and 
services. 

The Joining of Informal and Formal Agents of Social Control 

The ability of law enforcement to detect warning signs of renewed criminal activity and 
use their discretion not only to sanction but to use problem solving strategies to intervene holds 
some promise for officers in terms of prevention and intervention, especially in terms of the 
imposition of graduated sanctions (Uchida and Forst 1994; Greene and McLaughlin 1993). 

Commensurate Interventions 

Erratic coercion produces an extreme other-directed anger, because, following 
Agnews (1992) insight, the perception of unjust and arbitrary treatment is 
heightened in an erratic schedule of coercion (Colvin et al. 2002, 22). 

Rather than view any violation, even a technical violation, as a reason to remove the 
offender from the community (to jail or prison), graduated responses to antisocial behavior can 
reinforce the proposition from deterrence theory that sanctions must be certain, swift, yet 
commensurate in order to be effective and viewed as legitimate (Sherman 1995). Research 
indicates that if members of any group, such as ex-offenders, feel that arrest is overly aggressive, 
that group will not only develop defiance attitudes toward the agents imposing that coercion, but 
also for the society those agents represent (Greene 2000; Rosenbaum et al. 1998; Walsh 2001). 

Social Supports, Surveillance and Sanctions 

The community organization model presupposes that various community 
problemscan be prevented through the collaborative efforts of various social 
control agencies, including the police, schools, and grass-root organizations 

(Thurman and Mueller 2003, 168). 


The potential to reduce relapses into reoffending by combining social support and 
surveillance can be informed from research in related fields. Hanlon et al. (1999) found that for 
drug addicts a combination of surveillance (in this case, urine testing) and treatment resulted in 
the greatest success in maintaining drug-free lifestyles. While treatment alone was better than no 
treatment, the combination of treatment with coercive efforts to force compliance provided the 
most success and the least risk of continued drug abuse (see also Kleinman 1997; Harrell, 
Cavanagh, and Roman 1999; Harrell et al. 2002; Satel 1999). 

Similarly, an evaluation of the Massachusetts Intensive Probation Supervision Program 
(Byrne and Kelly 1989) indicated that while employment was the factor most associated with 
criminal desistance, there was an interaction between surveillance and employment. This led 
Byrne and Parravina (1992) to posit a model of surveillance indirectly affecting change in the 
offenders behavior. 

Given that the consistent provision of social supports appears to improve reentry success 
and that external controls, including surveillance and sanctions, appear to be most effective with 
those who have the largest stake in conformity, then programs increasing stakes in conformity 
through support seem warranted. Linking surveillance with support should increase the positive 
impact of deterrence threats for those with stakes in conformity while potentially increasing the 
detection of criminal behavior for those undeterred. 

A Model for Police and Community Collaboration for Offender Reentry Success 

This model could be expanded to suggest that such behavioral change could lead to 
cognitive changes and to a heightening valuation of prosocial norms (figure 2). 



 
Figure 2: A Model for Supports and Deterrence as a Reentry Strategy 


Community supports can lead to both perceived and actual opportunity leading to a 
greater chance of behaviors reflecting conventional societal norms. Likewise, surveillance and 
sanctions can, if perceived to be legitimate, coerce adherence to norms. The more practiced and 
successful the ex-offender in exercising prosocial behaviors the more invested the ex-offender 
will be in conventional societal norms and institutions. This investment is also proposed to 
change the decision processes of the ex-offender, giving the threat of sanction greater weight 
and, hence, making the choice of criminal activity less attractive (Nagin and Paternoster 1994). 

In addition, the greater the collaboration and information sharing between police and 
other members of the community, the greater the possibility that police can detect criminal 
relapse and intervene with community-based sanctions and support to increase the probability of 
maintaining the offenders trajectory toward reentry success. Alternatively, the increased 
information sharing may result in removal of the offender from the community where warranted 
for public safety. 



Offender Contracting 

As a means to both operationalize this model and overcome the barriers to meaningful 
and productive exchange, it may be useful to employ the concept of contracting. The idea of 
binding the offender and those providing services and sanctions with an explicit statement of 
obligations and consequences is borrowed from fields of mental health, health, education, and 
substance abuse (Taxman 1998; Solanto et al. 1994; Zemke 1979; Corbett 1990; Kersten 1990). 
For example, Kersten (1990) focuses on the need to make obligations and promises explicit and 
understandable. Since all parties in a reentry effort may come to the exchange with negative and 
even hostile prior orientations, moving beyond those unstated orientations to clearly stated and 
mutually understood roles, expectations and consequences can be a first step in creating at least a 
minimal, working level of trust (McDonald 1981).

Figure 3. Model for offender contracting 

Explicit 
agreement 
by contract 

Application 
of consistent 
sanction and 
rewards 

Reduces 
ex-offender 
perception of 
targeting 

Increases 
ex-offender 
perception of 
control over 
outcome 

Increase 
ex-offender 
trust in 
reentry 
efforts 

Increase 
ex-offender 
investment 
in 
prosocial 
values 

Decrease 
in 
criminal 
activity 


Police and Reentry Efforts in Practice 

In recent years some attempts have been made to reintegrate police officers and activities 
into a broader, collaborative effort to help ensure that ex-offenders returning to the community 
did not also return to criminal activities. 
 


Some of those efforts have involved maintaining the police officer in the more traditional 
aspects of detection and intervention with criminal activity, or coercion of law-abiding behavior 
through surveillance and the potential threat arrest and sanctions. Others efforts have attempted 
to team police with community service providers in attempts to educate offenders about the 
resources available to support conventional lifestyles and the potential risks of violating the law. 
Some efforts have attempted to combine surveillance and support. 

Reentry Meetings: Getting a Message to Reentering Ex-Offenders 

Several programs have drawn upon direct communication with offendersa strategy that 
was successful in addressing gang and group violence in Boston, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis 
(Kennedy, Braga, and Piehl 2001; Kennedy and Braga 1998; McGarrell and Chermak 2003). In 
these communities, the police partnered with federal and local prosecutors, probation and parole 
officials, service providers, and community members to deliver a deterrence-based message to 
probationers and parolees believed to be at high risk for involvement in gun crime. The 
meetings, known as offender notification or lever pulling meetings, delivered a deterrence 
message that sought to break down the anonymity of the potential offenders, increase the 
credibility of sanctions for illegal carrying and use of firearms, and provide a direct connection to 
community services and legitimate opportunities. Significant declines in homicide and gun 
assaults were associated with these efforts. 

McGarrell et al. (2003) report on the results of a program in Marion County, Indiana, that 
utilized a one-time community meeting with returning ex-offenders to both inform returning 
offenders that the police were aware of their presence and their statistical risk of reoffending, 
while also offering and explaining various community-based support services. Some limited 
positive results were shown for the groups receiving the intervention, though these were not 



statistically significant findings. The limited nature of the intervention (one meeting) would seem 
to limit the perceived consistency of both sanctioning and support that may be critical for robust 
results. 

A similar program has been implemented in Massachusetts for those ex-inmates 
reentering the community after confinement in a state facility. The meeting structure is much the 
same as that of the Indiana project, although the meeting with the offender takes place in the 
prison facility before the offender is released (Taxman et al. 2000; Office of Justice Programs 
2000). 

The City of Lowell, in Massachusetts, focuses on support, community surveillance, and 
control. The police are part of a team that seeks to link former inmates with community services. 
Additionally, the police meet with the offender prior to release (as noted above) and develop a 
profile of each offender returning to their community and display those profiles at roll-call 
meetings in order to decrease the anonymity of returning inmates (Bryne et al. 2000). 

Partnerships for Reentry: Police, Corrections, and Community 

Operation Night Light has become another model for collaboration. Begun in 1992 as a 
probation and police partnership, this program has involved lever-pulling meetings, combined 
parole and police enforcement of curfews and parole conditions, as well as shared intelligence 
between probation agents and law enforcement. This model was associated with a drop in youth 
crime, especially gang-related violence (Jordan 1998; Kennedy, Braga, and Piehl 2001) 

The offender reentry program in Washington State uses community-based storefront 
locations, staffed by community volunteers and providing office space for police and parole 
officers. A beat officer is partnered with a parole officer in an effort to better understand the 
community context facing ex-offenders and facilitating more timely and effective intervention if 



problems arise (Byrne et al. 2000). In Spokane, Washington, police officers work with 
corrections agents to enforce curfews and with volunteer guardians who help ex-offenders 
access services and attempt to intercede to ensure lapses can be addressed with more 
preventative measures. 

In Vermont, police officers from the locality to which the inmate will return are members 
of a community review board. Within 45 days of the offender entering the prison, the review 
board reviews treatment plan options and then continues to monitor the inmate throughout the 
incarceration process and make recommendations for release (Bryne et al. 2000). In addition, 
once the offender has returned to the community, police officers are members of community 
boards that oversee the progress of the parolee in the community. Police officers sit on similar 
boards in Missouri (Bryne et al. 2000). 

Project Safe Neighborhoods and the Link to Reentry 4 

4 The information on PSN reentry efforts was gathered in phone interviews with PSN project coordinators who had 
reported to the Department of Justice that their PSN task force was involved in reentry efforts. 

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a Department of Justice program that seeks to 
reduce the level of gun crime in communities across the country. PSN is intended to follow a 
strategic problem-solving model whereby law enforcement and community resources are focused 
on the factors driving gun crime. Given the high rate of involvement in former inmates in crime 
and the high rates of ex-offenders as both offenders and victims in gun crime, some PSN efforts 
are attempting to specifically address the issue of inmate reentry in their strategic action plans. 

Generally those plans attempt to address reoffending through the use of strategies that are 
in concert with aspects of theory and the practices already discussed. Some plans tend to focus 
squarely on deterrence, some target high-risk offenders for increased surveillance, some attempt 
to link social support with policing efforts, and all capitalize on the tremendous value-added by 



aggregating intelligence through increased communication and collaboration among criminal 
justice system agencies and personnel. 

In general, those strategies fall into three broad categories of police involvement: police 
integrated into a collaborative decision making process, police integrated into an implementation 
process, or police acting within their conventional role but with a direct link to reentering 
offenders and cooperation with other agencies. 

Strategies to enhance the conventional role of law enforcement 

While still maintaining 
separation among agencies and 
mission, law enforcement agencies 
are enhancing their role in reentry by 
receiving and transmitting 
intelligence about reentering 
offenders. In addition, law 
enforcement personnel may meet 
with offenders before or after prison 
release to deliver a strong deterrence 
message. In states including 
Alabama and Iowa, videotapes have 
been developed by police, 
prosecutors, and corrections officials 
to deliver deterrence messages focused 
particularly on the 
sanctions available for felons caught 
in possession of or using a gun. This is 
a particular focus of
PSN due to the considerable federal 
penalties for offenses involving felons 
and firearms.

Figure 4. Tracks and Elements of PSN Reentry Practices 
 


Strategies to partner with others to implement reentry strategies 

Other jurisdictions, such as Missouris Jefferson County, have used monthly Ceasefire 
meetings to establish strong communication networks among reentry partners.5 Similar to the 
Indianapolis and Massachusetts meetings described earlier, these meetings with reentering 
offenders include a deterrence message from law enforcement coupled with social service and 
faith-based presentations offering support and links to community resources. 

5 The term ceasefire draws on the Boston program that reduced youth gun crime violence through the use of lever 
pulling or ceasefire meetings with groups of chronic offenders (Kennedy, Braga, and Piehl 2001). 

In Providence, Rhode Island, similar meeting are held within the prison to prepare 
offenders for release. In addition, the Providence Police team with parole officers from the 
Department of Corrections who bring the reentering offender to the police substation to receive 
messages about the consequences of reoffendingespecially as it relates to firearm violence. 

Strategies to harness law enforcement knowledge for strategic decision making 

As noted earlier Boston, Massachusetts also holds reentry meetings. However, law 
enforcement officers are also used as strategic resources prior to the inmates release. Police 
enforcement personnel may also serve on reentry committee panels that select inmates for the 
reentry program. Targeting reentering offenders appears to be a theoreticallyand practically 
promising practice. Scarce resources can be assigned strategically using the combined 
knowledge of members representing the spectrum of reentry committee members. 

Panel members then meet with the offender prior to release, delivering a message that 
balances social support and deterrence. Community mentors, generally members of the faith 
community, work with the offender as he or she returns to the community. 

Durham, North Carolina, is also implementing a strategic, collaborative effort. An aspect 
of the Durham approach that seems particularly promising is hubbing both physical and human 



resources. Members of the PSN effort work and often travel together as a team. This fosters both 
formal and informal communication and collaboration. In terms of physical aggregation of 
resources, having a centralized Criminal Justice Resource Center facilitates the communication 
among law enforcement, other governmental agencies, and social support services; it also 
provides centralized resources for returning ex-offenders. 

This project also involves law enforcement as decisionmakers. As members of reentry 
teams, law enforcement personnel participate in interviews with inmates prior to release and in 
crafting recommendations to the parole commission on parole conditions. The reentry team also 
assesses inmates nearing release to help target higher-risk or higher-need inmates for the reentry 
program. Once the ex-offender is released, the reentry team continues to meet and review the 
progress of the parolee. 

Shared resources for a higher value added 

Some PSN projects are beginning to capitalize on the power of sharing human and 
physical resources in implementing reentry efforts. From fairly straightforward communication 
and intelligence sharing to more complex networking for strategic efforts in decision making, 
planning, and deployment of assets, these efforts are pioneering new roles for law enforcement. 
Some programs reflect just one aspect of these possible protocols; others attempt a wide 
spectrum of collaborative elements. 

Unfortunately, information on the success of program elements and overall program 
outcomes of law-enforcement inclusive reentry efforts is still sorely limited. Clearly defining the 
elements in each particular protocol, looking for common measure of implementation and 
outcome success, and evaluating the program in the context of the communityits norms, 
 


politics, and constraintsare critical steps in building a knowledge base of promising (and then 
proven) practices. 

Policy Recommendations 

As the above review of reentry practices involving the police suggests, the police have 
increasingly become more involved in reentry initiatives. Yet, as just noted, very little is known 
about the scope (numbers of jurisdictions, numbers of returning inmates affected) or 
effectiveness of these efforts. For many law enforcement agencies, focusing on inmate reentry 
likely remains a biproduct of responding to crimes committed by ex-offenders. Dealing with 
prevention programs or crafting and participating in efforts to stem criminal activity before it 
occurswhile attractivemust generally be prioritized against the need to expend resources to 
respond to current criminal activity that threatens public peace. For other police agencies, 
however, reentry programs may increasingly be seen as part of their community- and problem-
solving policing mission. The high rates of offending among ex-offenders and the concentration 
of ex-offenders in particular neighborhoods creates recurring problems at both the individual and 
neighborhood levels. Addressing these recurring problems in ways that increase community 
safety certainly falls within a community and problem-solving framework. 

The increased attention by law enforcement to inmate reentry will be shaped by a variety 
of constraints. These include the traditional reactive focus of many police agencies, public and 
political expectations, and strained human and fiscal resources. These very real and practical 
constraints on the role law enforcement plays in ex-offender reentry efforts will affect how any 
policy recommendations are viewed and considered. An additional constraint is the lack of 
knowledge about successful reentry practices and about the police role in particular. It is with 
these very real constraints in mind that these policy recommendations are offered. These 



recommendations are proposed to highlight general areas for consideration and evaluation by 
those responsible for the strategic leadership of these critical agencies. 

Recommendations 

1. Successful reentry is most likely to be the product of multiagency, multisector 
collaborative problem-solving coalitions.


No single entity ultimately owns the reentry problem, nor can any single entity 
successfully respond to the problem. This is certainly true for law enforcement agencies. Given 
the variety of challenges posed by ex-offenderschronic patterns of offending, housing, 
transportation, substance abuse, employment, etc.a wide variety of responses are needed. The 
police bring the potential for targeted deterrence through increased surveillance as well as the 
ability to mobilize community resources to increase social support. 

2. Law enforcement personnel should be viewed as planning resources and should 
actively participate in preplanning for reentry success. 

If law enforcement from the inmates community can be involved in prerelease planning, 
as is the case in Vermont, that officer can provide localized informationif not about the 
offenderthen about the various opportunities or risks specific to that community setting. 

3. Law enforcement should be viewed as adjudicators of reentry success and should 
actively participate in the oversight of reentry compliance and gauge when legal 
disability should be discontinued. 

Community panels are being used to review the success and preparedness of offenders to 
be taken off legal disability (e.g., Ohio and Vermont.) In Vermont, those panels include members 
of local law enforcement. This not only provides the panel with intelligence about the ex-
offender and his or her community context, it also provides the officer with the opportunity to 
frame positive incentives for good behavior and provide a positive outcome (discharge) when 
and if the panels expectations are met. The inclusion of the police (and prosecution) coupled 
 

with victims or victim advocates is also likely to increase the legitimacy of such panels with 
political leaders and community members. 

4. Law enforcement should be viewed as a source of intelligence to aid in social service 
provision. Peace officers can flag needs that should be addressed lest they lead to 
criminogenic risk. 

A community-based coalition of volunteers, parole officers, and police officers working 
out of storefront locations (Washington and Oregon) provide neighborhood-level intervention 
and links to services that can quickly respond to situations that might otherwise develop into 
risks for criminal behavior. 

5. Law enforcement should view corrections and social service providers as sources of 
intelligence so that police are able to intervene when criminogenic risk rises to the level 
that requires increased surveillance, police intervention, or re-arrest. 

The same programs that link parole and service providers in a community setting provide 
law enforcement with intelligence about areas or people that may warrant increased surveillance 
or even more direct law enforcement intervention. 

6. To the extent possible, law enforcementand all members of the coalitionshould 
attempt to inform and be informed by community members as to expectations, fears, 
and opportunities surrounding ex-offenders reentering the community. 

If the community feels that actions by the police or other members of the coalition are 
understandable, consistent, and fair, community acceptance and support for actions taken to 
assure community safety increases. 

7. Any policy, practice, or intervention should be realistic and not reach beyond the 
agencys capacity to provide a service, surveillance, or sanction fully or consistently. 

Reentering offenders may become frustrated or defiant if actions that are perceived to be 
punitive or negative are administered in inconsistent or seemingly capricious ways. If positive 
supports or services are inconsistent or not forthcoming as promised, ex-offenders may be 



tempted to return to criminal peers and activities that promise needed resources or desired 
rewards. 

8. Roles, expectations, and outcomes (positive or negative) should be explicitly stated and 
clearly communicated (to all members of the coalition and to the ex-offender.) 

Ex-offenders often have negative and stereotypical views about law enforcement, as do 
law enforcement officers of ex-offenders. If actual positive and negative consequences for 
behavior are to be effectively communicated, these attitudinal barriers need to be broached. 
Explicitly and clearly stating roles, expectations, and outcomes is a step in overcoming the 
perceptual barriers that could limit even well intentioned efforts to provide fair treatment. The 
idea of using a contract may be helpful. 

9. Direct contact interventions should be made as routine as possible. 

Research suggests that one-time interventions have limited effectiveness. Similarly, 
research suggests that inconsistent application of negative interventions may actually increase 
the risk of offending. 

10. Direct contact interventions that provide the opportunity for some positive contact or 
link to other coalition members that provide positive contact (service) have a better 
chance to add to offender reentry success than intervention that can result only in 
negative (punitive) outcomes. 

Although limited, research and theory suggests that balanced positive and negative 
(support and sanction) interventions have a greater chance of success. 



11. Law enforcement should have access to and employ dynamic risk assessments 
(conducted by correctional officials on incarcerated offenders) in order to strategically 
target reentry interventions. If some risk assessments are not in force, law enforcement 
should advocate for the employment of such assessments. 

The raw number of returning ex-offenders can overwhelm available resources for 
intervention. Dynamic risk assessment could help strategically target resources. 

12. Interventions, especially those employing surveillance or focusing on negative 
sanctions, should be targeted at offenders at highest risk for reoffending. 


Focused surveillance/deterrence allows scarce resources to be allotted to the greatest risks 
to public safety while recognizing that targeting lower-risk offenders could actually increase 
criminogenic risk. Realizing that it is rare (or unheard of) for any law enforcement agency to 
have sufficient resources to address all public safety needs of the community, and that some 
interventions may be appropriate for some types of ex-offenders, but unproductiveor 
counterproductivewith others, a risk assessment allows law enforcement to make truly 
strategic and defensive choices as stewards of public resources for the public good. 

13. Information collected on arrest should be coded to indicate if the arrestee were on 
parole or probation, an ex-offender (not presently on legal disability), and if the 
offender were in contact with any reentry interventions. 

Without information that allows ex-offenders to be analyzed as a group, the need to 
specifically address ex-offender reentry cannot be prioritized, and the effectiveness of programs 
targeted at ex-offender reentry cannot be assessed. 



14. Information on the precise nature of any program aimed at ex-offender reentry should 
be richly described. 

The actual interventions undertaken should be clearly documented. Since jurisdictions 
may vary in what they consider standard practices and definitions, making explicit the protocols 
used will make the program understandable and replicable in other areas. 

15. Information on the outcome of processes should be collected and analyzed to determine 
if the program is working as planned. 

Information on the immediate outputs of the intervention or program should be 
documented. It is be critical to know if the elements of the program are working and are 
implemented as planned if an evaluation of the ultimate outcome is to be meaningful. 

16. Information on outcomes should be collected, analyzed, and reported. 

Outcomes of the program (e.g., lowered reoffending by returning inmates or reduced 
crime rates) should be carefully defined, measured, and reported to increase our understanding of 
the effectiveness of varied approaches to inmate reentry. 

Conclusion 

A confluence of factors has emerged to increase the level of attention given the issue of 
inmate reentry and of the role of police in reentry. These factors include the increasing numbers 
of ex-offenders returning to the community, high rates of reoffending by former inmates, 
patterns of inmates returning in concentrated numbers to disadvantaged neighborhoods, and 
police agencies moving to more proactive, problem-solving orientations. The review of emerging 
programs involving the police in reentry efforts suggests that a number of communities are 


experimenting with reentry programming. Yet, we have very limited information about the 
scope, intensity, service variety, and effects of such programs. 

The theories reviewed at the outset of this paper indicate that some mix of focused 
deterrence and social support may hold promise for increasing the success of returning inmates 
and increasing public safety. Consistent with these theories is limited evidence drawn from 
congruent programs such as drug courts (when implemented in meaningful fashion) and so-
called lever-pulling approaches to reducing gang- and group-involved gun crime. Beyond these 
general directions, however, a variety of questions remain. Can deterrence through surveillance 
reduce reoffending? Can social support without heightened surveillance reduce reoffending? 
Does the combination of surveillance and social support, as suggested herein, reduce reoffending 
more significantly than either effort in isolation? Do these approaches work better with some ex-
offenders as opposed to others? What are the necessary dosage levels to have impact? Given 
limited resources, can we effectively triage resources to those ex-offenders at greatest risk? 

Similarly, issues arise as to the congruence, or lack thereof, between individual-level and 
community-level effects. One might hypothesize, for example, that increased surveillance and 
consequent incapacitation of high rate offenders might increase the reported offending levels of 
individual offenders but ultimately reduce community-level crime rates. In contrast, some have 
theorized that the high rate of incarceration of young men from disadvantaged neighborhoods 
may have short-term crime reduction effects but ultimately generate increased crime due to the 
disruption and loss of human capital (Rose and Clear 1998). 

This list of theoretical and policy questions only begins to highlight the set of relevant 
issues. The critical need is for increased information and understanding about the reentry process 
and about the nature and efficacy of these reentry initiatives. Consequently, the most significant 



recommendation we offer is that these programs be implemented with a research and evaluation 
component so that we can pool the lessons learned from the variety of efforts being implemented 
at the local and state levels. Only with a significant increase in our information base and 
understanding of reentry, can we make appropriate judgments about the role of the police in 
reentry decision making and processes. 



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Reentry Roundtable  Working Paper

 PROMOTING PUBLIC SAFETY: A PROBLEM-ORIENTED 
APPROACH TO PRISONER REENTRY


Walter J. Dickey and Cecelia M. Klingele 

University of Wisconsin School of Law 

Abstract: Talk of opportunity and risk in the context of reentry usually stimulates a focus on 
offenderstheir histories, characteristics, needs, and methods for reintegration, information 
directed at their treatment and control. Risk is the focus and is usually defined as a trait 
contained within the offender. Indeed, it may be a mistake to make the offender so much the 
focus of release planning, particularly if risk is narrowly understood as a mere quality of the 
offender, instead of a complex interaction between an offenders propensities and the 
environment in which those propensities may or may not give rise to criminal conduct. A robust 
definition of public safety would acknowledge the key role that an offenders circumstances play 
in the formation and control of the risks he represents. Rather than being an aggregate sum of 
measurable crime statistics, public safety is the absence of factors giving risk to apprehension 
and the risk of harm. This definition suggests that focusing only on an offenderand not also on 
the persons, property, and locations about which we are concernedis insufficient. 

Public safety: a popular goal for police and correctional agents, and one against which 
few would argue. But what does it mean to promote public safety, particularly in the context of 
prisoner reentry? Is it simply a matter of arresting known offenders? Or does it require 
something more? As examples of the vastly different ways in which the problem of public safety 
is addressed, we begin with the stories of two cities and their approach to the not-uncommon 
problem of a troubled street corner. 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 

In 1996, Wisconsin convened the Governors Task Force on Sentencing and Corrections 
to address issues of correctional resource allocation. 6 Task Force meetings were open to the 
public. One such meeting was attended by a number of Milwaukee citizens who complained that 



the corner of 9th Street and Concordia, a place where they and their children passed daily, was 
frighteningly unsafe. A local police officer, also in attendance, reported that the corner had been 
the focus of intense police activity. The result? In the three months prior to the meeting, police 
had made 94 drug-related arrests at that location alone. When one Task Force member asked the 
officer what the corner was like in the wake of the 94 arrests, he answered that police tried to 
avoid the area because they considered it dangerous. 

6 The Task Forces final report, which recommended adoption of many of the principles advanced in this work, has 
been reviewed elsewhere. See, for example, Morris (1996) and von Hirsch (1996). 

At the time, Milwaukee drug arrestees typically received two-year prison sentences. 

These did little to deter new offenders, some of whom were in their early teens, from 
flowing to the street corner. Once released from prison (and while still on parole supervision), 
offenders resumed dealing drugs from the same corner at which they had originally been 
arrested. 

The city mayor denied that the corner posed a problem, prompting a local journalist to 
investigate the claim, and ultimately report that the corner was unsafe, despite the mayors claim 
to the contrary. When interviewed by the same journalist, area residents, including elementary 
school children, were able to easily identify multiple drug houses located at the intersection. 7 

The official promise was that a stronger police presence would be deployed to the 
cornerleading inevitably to more arrests and the recycling of offenders at the intersection. 
Public officials apparently did not notice that delivering more of what wasnt working was 
unlikely to yield satisfying results. Not lost on local residents was the fact that they and their 
children were still unable to pass the corner safely despite the repeated incarceration of local 
youth. 

7 The public debate between the Milwaukee Mayor and the Task Force over the safety of 9th and Concordia was 
well covered in the local media. See, for example, Residents Near Drug Dealing Corner Say Situation Improving, 
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 1, 1997, which describes the deplorable conditions at 9th and Concordia. 



Minneapolis, Minnesota 

At roughly the same time, the City of Minneapolis was also confronted with the problem 
of a dangerous street corner. In the late 1990s, the intersection of Chicago and Lake was the 
main transfer point for all city buses running north-south and east-west, including buses of high 
school students traveling to and from school. The volume of traffic provided opportunity for 
anonymity and high levels of street crime: drug dealing, prostitution, and purse snatching. The 
area, once a thriving lower middle class business district, had experienced the loss of two of its 
major businesses, due in part to criminal activity in the neighborhood. These losses had left large 
areas of the neighborhood abandoned, including a warehouse once used as a Sears Roebuck 
catalogue distribution center, one of several locations where public safety had fallen into serious 
disrepair. One of the few remaining businesses was a large hospital complex, which employed a 
number of area residents. The hospital wanted to expand, and was even willing to contribute to 
the construction of affordable housing in the area, but was deterred from these plans by concerns 
over neighborhood safety. 

A group of city business owners decided to try rescuing the area for themselves and 
other city residents. Realizing that public safety was the number one obstacle to economic 
revitalization, the group convinced police to gather and analyze information about problematic 
locations. When police mapped offenders, they discovered that over 50 percent of area crimes 
were being committed by individuals under correctional supervision. 

Using the information gathered by police and drawing on the knowledge of correctional 
agents and others responsible for public safety in the area, a partnership formed which included 
the local business group, elected officials (including the prosecutor), police, and correctional 
agents. Together, they devised and implemented a new public safety strategy. 
 


The strategy had two emphases: one on places, the other on people. Places within the 
neighborhood were made safer in a variety of ways. The city built bus depots off the street in 
order to reduce traffic and pedestrian congestion, permit easier patrolling of waiting areas, and 
discourage street crime. The abandoned Sears warehouse was torn down. People of concern were 
also made subject to closer supervision through the assignment of a single parole agent to the 
area. The agent engaged in the active supervision of offenders located in the troubled 
neighborhood. 

Encouraged by the plan and progress, the hospital undertook its plans for expansion in 
the space previously occupied by the Sears warehouse, and began construction of housing 
designed for its employees. The area is fast becoming a place where people want to live, shop, 
and worka safe place. 

Defining Public Safety 

The release of a prisoner is ordinarily thought to be a moment of risk for the 
communityand it is. It is also a moment of opportunityfor the offender and for other 
community members who want and deserve safety in their homes, neighborhoods, towns, and 
cities. 

Talk of opportunity and risk in the context of prisoner reentry usually stimulates focus on 
offenders: their histories, characteristics, needs, and methods for reintegration. This information, 
while often important, is directed solely at the treatment and control of the offenders in question. 
(See, e.g., Petersilia 2003; Rodriguez and Brown 2003; Visher and Travis 2003.) Risk is the 
focus of such inquiry and is usually defined as a trait contained within the offender. The 
information routinely gathered about offenders, whether for management in prison or jail, or for 



release decisions and community supervision, usually focuses on fixing the trait which 
causes the risk. Some of this information is necessary and useful. It may also be misleading. 

Indeed, it may be a mistake to make the offender so much the focus of release planning, 
particularly if risk is narrowly understood as a mere quality of the offender, instead of a complex 
interaction between an offenders propensities and the environment in which those propensities 
may or may not give rise to criminal conduct. A narrow definition of risk suggests that safety in 
the places to which offenders return depends exclusively on the inherent riskiness of the 
offenders found there. 

But what about there? Dont we need to know more about both the vulnerability to 
threats and the assets these places possess to mitigate those threats? After all, which is more 
subject to manipulation for public safety, the inner workings of offenders hearts and minds or 
the external circumstances in which we findand might controlthem? To make this point 
more starkly, consider the risks posed by a recently released pedophile. His propensity toward 
sexual contact with children will pose a greater risk to public safety if he lives near an 
elementary school than if he lives and works on an ore boat in Lake Superior. A robust definition 
of public safety would acknowledge the key role that an offenders circumstances play in the 
formation and control of the risks he presents. Instead, public safety is too often defined and 
measured solely in terms of arrest, conviction, and recidivism ratesmeasures that demonstrate 
a limited understanding of the fluidity of risk and the methods by which it can be controlled. 

We offer and prefer a different definition of public safety, one inspired by the work of 
Michael Smith, which arose out of conversations that took place in the Wisconsin Task Force. 
We argue that public safety cannot be adequately measured by arrests, prison populations, or 
crime ratessince it is often when public safety is in worst repair that arrests skyrocket, prison  


populations explode, and crime rates (due either to fear of reporting or avoidance of those places 
in which the risk of victimization is highest) remain steady or even decline. Rather than being an 
aggregate sum of measurable statistics, public safety is an absence of factors giving rise to 
apprehension and risk of harm. In short, public safety is a condition specific to places in which 
persons and property are not at risk of attack or threat and are not perceived to be at risk (Smith 
and Dickey 1999, 2). This definition suggests that focusing only on an offenderand not also on 
the persons, property, and locations about which we are concernedis insufficient. It is with this 
understanding of public safety that we wish to offer ideas for increasing public safety, with 
emphasis upon the circumstances surrounding offenders return to the community from prison or 
jail. 

Problem-Oriented Approaches to Public Safety 

Why emphasize location? After all, it is offenders who commit crimes and who must 
ultimately be held accountable for them. Especially when former offenders remain under the 
supervision of correctional agents, legitimacy requires that there be accountability for their 
behavior, law-abiding or otherwise. Moreover, it is tempting to define public safety in terms of 
offenders in hand, rather than in terms which we may not have strategies for addressing. 

It is true that accountability is an essential component of successful reentry supervision. It 
is not, however, the only component, nor should it be. To the extent that promoting public safety 
is the objective of correctional supervision, the best strategies will be those that consider the 
assets and liabilities of both the offender and the community to which he or she will return. 
These approaches promise greater public safety as well as the control of offenders under 
supervision. 



Routine Activity Analysis and Crime Pattern Theory lie behind the approach we advocate 
here. Both arose out of work in the field of situational crime prevention, and date back to the late 
1980s. 

The former explains crime as the confluence of a motivated offender and a 
desirable target at a place and time when controllers are absent or ineffective. 
Control might be exercised by persons in a protective relationship to a potential 
victim, by persons responsible for the place, or persons in intimate or supervising 
relationship with the potential offender (e.g., parents, wives, children, friends, 
employers, even security guards). These guardians of people and place are 
abundant in safe places. But they can also be found in dangerous places, and 
effective police, probation, and parole officers know how to find them and enlist 
their help. Crime pattern theory combines routine activity analysis with ideas 
about rational choice, to help explain the observed distribution of crime across 
places: rational offenders should be expected to routinely note places lacking 
effective guardians. Conventional correctional practicesaimed at incapacitating 
motivated offenders for periods of time or at improving their character or 
reducing their motivationseem artificially constricted when the public safety 
problem is understood in this more complex way. This line of thought leads to 
more complex engagements by police or others who aim to help produce or 
maintain public safety. For more than a decade, police have been learning to 
combine with naturally occurring guardians to solve crime and disorder problems. 
Probation and parole officersquite literally official guardianshave the same 
need to look beyond known and potential offenders, to find and invoke the 
authority of naturally occurring guardians of the offenders under their 
supervision, guardians of the persons made vulnerable by proximity to these 
offenders, and guardians of the places where the resulting risks arise. 

(Smith and Dickey 1998, 1617 

For ease of reference, we refer to this approach to public safety as problem oriented. 
Some police agencies have developed practices that focus on reducing opportunities for criminal 
conduct and mobilizing the resources of local communities to provide guardianship for people 
and places whose safety is threatened (Goldstein 1990; Scott 2003; Cullen et al. 2002; Felson 
and Clarke 1998). Community mobilization of this sort can take many forms. It may involve the 
use of guardians of people or places at risk (e.g., by increasing the visibility of parents, 
storeowners, or other authority figures), as well as physical changes to high-risk locations (e.g., 
adding street lights to a dangerous corner or installing security cameras in stores to deter theft). 



An emphasis on location has been a shared feature of nearly all successful problem-oriented 
police initiatives (see Scott 2003). When obstacles impede an offenders ability to access a target 
of criminal activitybe it a victim, an item, or a locationcrime is less likely to occur (Felson 
and Clarke 1998) 

Although proponents of problem-oriented crime reduction theories have advocated its 
adoption by parole agents, correctional agencies have, for the most part, ignored the possibilities 
problem-oriented approaches offer for enhancing supervision and management of former 
offenders (Cullen et al. 2002). 

A problem-oriented approach to prisoner reentry has a number of unique advantages. 
Unlike other approaches to reentry, success does not depend solely on the offenders degree of 
rehabilitation or his connection to the workforce and other socializing influences. It is true that 
rehabilitation, employment, and socialization are desirable and may increase the presence of 
guardians in the lives of offenders. But success also depends also on whether, in a given location 
at a particular time, the opportunity for criminal activity presents itself to a person who is 
predisposed to seize such opportunities. This does not mean, of course, that police and 
correctional agents should ignore means of reducing the criminal tendencies of offenders, 
whether through effective treatment programs, employment opportunities, or family support. In 
fact, those supportive, guardianship-based strategies are vital to any successful reentry plan. 
What it does suggest is that manipulating the offender directly is not the only way to combat the 
risks he poses. It also suggests that responsibilityand opportunityfor public safety can be 
found in the places people inhabit. 

Lest we think this approach too complex, consider that most parents have considerable 
experience with it. Responsible parents realize that it is unrealistic to expect a toddler to navigate 


a world in which locations havent been prepared for the childs presence and objects of curiosity 
haven't been protected from the childs interest. Instead of sending a child into rooms filled with 
open electrical outlets or breakable pottery, parents alter locations and remove fragile or 
dangerous items from their childs reach. Gradually, as the child grows, these safeguards become 
unnecessary and are removed, since they are no longer required for the childs safety or the 
safety of the items once endangered by the childs presence. 

Similarly, when offenders first reenter communities, they themselves are vulnerable, for 
all of the reasons that have been suggested in literature on reentry: mental health problems, lack 
of family connections, drug and alcohol addictions, lack of education and employment The list 
goes on and on (Petersilia 2003). They lack skills and experience in managing the ordinary risks 
and temptations we all face daily. Fixing these problems is often implausible, as is the 
inference that in so doing, public safety will result. Instead, we can alter environments, remove 
temptations, mobilize guardianships, and ideally, as supervision ends, remove formal safeguards 
hoping that by then former offenders will have become habituated into behavior that satisfies 
them and does not threaten us. 

Simple though the concept may be, fear of owning the problem of public safety has 
dissuaded more than one agency from making the institutional and philosophical changes 
necessary for advancing public safety as we define it. It is easier to own more modest goals: 
the payment of restitution, adherence to conditions of release, and compliance with court orders 
(Dickey and Smith 1999). Of course, a commitment to public safety carries with it the risk of 
accountability for any failure to achieve it. To be fair, there are serious obstacles to the creation 
of public safety by police, prisons, and parole agents. Foremost are issues of organizational 
structure, legal authority and the availability of useful and useable informationmatters that can 


have a profound effect on purpose, strategies, and success. We will elaborate on these obstacles 
and how they can be overcome, exploring how the capacity to advance public safety around 
known offenders can be developed. 

Organizational Obstacles to Advancing Public Safety 

Organizational structure is one of the most pervasive obstacles to the implementation of 
problem-oriented approaches to public safety. While place-based organizational models can 
enhance efforts to reduce the risks presented by returning offenders, all too often agency 
structures limit the strategies, information, and resources available to jails, prisons, police 
departments, and correctional agencies. 

Ideally, reentry planning should begin in jail or prison. In reality, the organization and 
orientation of prisons and jails severely limit their capacity to advance public safety. As a result, 
such institutions admittedly play a limited role in our model because they have little to offer. Cut 
off as they are from the circumstances and communities to which offenders will return, prisons 
do best to recognize their limitations. 

Many of these limitations are tied directly to purpose. Prisons punish and incapacitate. 
They do not problem solve, restore, or strategically mobilize community forces to surround those 
in need of structure and support. Often overburdened, prisons are frequently unable to meet even 
the most serious medical, psychological, and addiction-related needs of those under their control. 
It is unrealistic to expect that they can or will make the community safer by connecting offenders 
to necessary community resources well beyond the prisons reach. 

Prisons can best contribute to public safety by minimizing the obstacles they present to its 
advancement. This can be accomplished in two key ways: by strategically assigning prisoners to 
local institutions and by facilitating contact between prisoners and their parole agents. Of 


primary importance is the connection between reentering prisoners and the communities to 
which they will return. It is impossible to create appropriately detailed supervision plans for 
prisoners located hundreds of miles away from their communities, and since it is the interaction 
of offenders in the community with which we are particularly concerned, proximity is a critical 
ingredient to successful reentry. Second, prisons should facilitate communication between parole 
supervision agencies, offenders, and possible guardians of reentering offenders. Prisons and jails 
can provide a vital service by assisting agents in gathering information about the offenders 
needs, the risks he poses to the community, and the identities of family or other support people 
with whom the agent can consult. Police and parole agencies can use this information to further 
public safety by adding to it the information they gather about the places in which the offender 
will find himself upon release. 

Some will argue that this information is readily available from prison records. After all, 
correctional institutions are forever conducting risk assessments and prisoner evaluations. The 
problem with relying on information from institutional records is that such information is 
oriented to a unique environment: the institution. An offender who poses significant safety risks 
in prison may present different or lesser risks when located in a different placein the 
community, for example. The opposite is equally true: offenders who make model prisoners 
often make risky and unsuccessful parolees. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the information 
collected and used by correctional institutions usually serves one purpose: to control offenders in 
an institutional setting. While this type of information promotes institutional safety, it does not 
follow that it will also promote public safety. Unless the utility of additional information is made 
clear, it is unlikely that prisons will seek out information not of use to them, relevant to a 
moment and place in the future, and currently unknown and inaccessible. 


If, however, correctional institutions provide parole agents with access to prisoners under 
their supervision, agents themselves can gather the types of community-specific data that will aid 
in release planning. This type of planning, when it occurs, typically focuses on identifying 
housing, determining eligibility for community programs (including medical assistance and drug 
and alcohol treatment programs), and locating potential sources of employment or vocational 
training (see Taxman et al. 2002). Ideally, correctional agents will also have access to analytic 
police intelligence about the possible locations to which an offender may pose risk upon his 
return. This information would permit agents to identify the environmental triggers most likely to 
increase the risks presented by the offender, as well as the sources of local guardianship 
available, his or her potential victims, and the places he or she will be found. 

Confusion about Clients and Purposes 

For community corrections agencies, variations in organizational structure are often 
explained by an agencys unarticulated answer to the key question: who is the client? The answer 
matters profoundly, since it will often affect purpose, available strategies, and their public safety 
consequences. Answers to the question vary, but three are frequently cited: the court, the 
offender, or the community. 

Some correctional agents report directly to the court and treat the judge as their client. 
Predictably, for those agents, the purpose of supervision is often the enforcement of court orders. 
This purpose is an even more likely choice if the parole agency is structured as a subdivision of a 
court (rather than as an autonomous executive agency). 

Many parole agencies claim the offender as client. Such agencies often deploy agents to 
neighborhood centers or streets, where contact with those under their supervision is facilitated. 
While increased contact with offenders has many benefits, this offender-centered orientation may 


encourage some agents to resist those problem-oriented efforts that emphasize place over 
offender. In a sense, such agents have selected a single strategy for achieving public safety and 
reject more complex combinations of strategies, even when these combinations promise greater 
safety. 

Another choice of client, embraced with much less frequency, is that of the community. 
Under this model, the objective is the safety and security of all community members, including 
but not limited to the offender. Police and correctional staff who view the community as client 
are more likely to focus on specific neighborhoods. Within their neighborhoods, these officers 
and agents tend to solve public safety problems through partnerships with area residents, 
businesses, and service agencies. Working together, members of these partnerships identify and 
assist the places and people that, in combination, are responsible for local threats to public safety. 
By altering these troubled locations (shutting down houses of prostitution, installing better street 
lighting, etc.) and providing appropriate guardianship and services to troubled individuals, 
agencies are able to further their goal of providing their client with greater safety. 

Case Assignment and Office Orientation 

The method for assigning cases is another variable with public safety consequences. In 
the most common structure, parole agents receive assignments based on the overall workload of 
each agent and the intensity of supervision required by the offender whose case is being 
assigned. This is not, however, the only model for allocating supervisory responsibility. 

During a recent visit to Minnesota, we had the opportunity to interview a probation and 
parole agent who, as part of a pilot program in community corrections, is assigned to offenders 
based on the locations in which their crimes were committed. He has responsibility for a 
geographic section of the city (one which includes the intersection of Chicago and Lake), and 



supervises offenders with the goal of promoting public safety in those places. He engages in 
active supervision, having frequent contact with offenders in the places they live and work. The 
agent also communicates closely with local police to ensure that officers are aware of the risks 
offenders pose and that he is aware of places in which those risks are most likely to pose a threat 
to public safety. His proximity to people and places of concern facilitates his ability to develop 
and implement a public safety plan that addresses the unique needs of the Chicago and Lake 
Street area. 

Police agencies face many of the same organizational hurdles as their correctional 
counterparts. Geographic distribution of officers, whether in centralized precincts or in 
neighborhood stations, affects the ability of police to see and understand the threats to public 
safety created by particular people, places, and circumstances within their communities. 

Linked to an agencys choice of geographic distribution is the agencys organizational 
philosophy and orientation. Both vitally impact capacity. A police agency oriented around calls 
for service is likely to be more poorly situated for proactively addressing public safety concerns 
than a problem- or community-oriented agencyat least insofar as the community-oriented 
office is accustomed to approaching safety issues as problems instead of isolated events. As is 
the case with correctional agents, the more contact officers have with the locations and people 
whose safety they wish to ensure and the more information they have at their command, the 
more likely they will be to develop responses to local problems that will plausibly address the 
public safety risks presented in the areas for which they have responsibility. Clearly, an agency 
wishing to develop its capacity for delivering public safety needs to develop some level of 
organizational localization. 



Legal Authority 

The legal authority of correctional agents also affects purpose and strategy. Legal 
authority determines what access parole agents have to offenders and the amount of control and 
discretion they have in responding to the risks offenders pose in the community. For police, 
issues of legal authority affect the degree to which they can deal proactively with threats to 
public safety. 

A primary area of concern for both corrections and police is the ability to place and 
enforce conditions on offenders following their release into the community. Although over 80 
percent of prisoners are released conditionally, subject to compliance with various requirements 
and expectations, an increasing percentage of prisoners are being released without any legally 
binding conditions, either through unconditional discretionary release or, after having served the 
maximum sentence permissible under law, through a mandatory release process (Travis and 
Lawrence 2002). For those committed to public safety, this trend should be a cause of significant 
concern. 

Admittedly, some ex-prisoners pose little risk to public safety and therefore are most 
appropriately discharged without condition. Many, however, are likely to pose significant risks at 
the time of reentry, both because institutional isolation has limited their experience of prosocial 
behaviors and because confinement alone is unlikely to have reduced the propensities for 
criminal harm that led to their initial incarceration. Often these propensities are compounded by 
the vulnerability of the locations to which offenders return, some of which are positioned not 
only to tempt, but to encourage any antisocial tendencies the offender may possess. 

Police officers faced this problem while working to improve a troubled area in downtown 
Austin, Texas. Efforts had been made by various community members to improve public safety 


along 6th Street, an area plagued by drug-dealing, aggressive panhandling, and auto theft. 
Success was limited in part by the constant influx of recently released prisoners into the area. 

Returning prisoners were being dumped into the downtown neighborhood without parole 
supervision or support of any kind. Upon inquiring, the community-based prosecutor discovered 
that other prosecutors from his own office, eager to obtain plea agreements, were agreeing to 
sentences without periods of postrelease supervision, at the request of defendants. Although 
parole agents operating in the area were successful in limiting the access of parolees under 
supervision to the particularly vulnerable 6th Street region, they lacked legal authority over these 
fully discharged prisoners. Ultimately, prosecution practices were changed to ensure postrelease 
supervision, but the problem was not solved without difficulty. 

Although unconditionally released offenders are not subject to formal supervision, public 
safety requires that individuals not be permitted to fade into anonymity upon release from prison 
or jail. The burden of supervising these offenders therefore falls largely on police officers to 
monitor the public safety risks posed by these individuals in the places they go. In order for 
police to perform this supervisory function successfully, they require a means of discovering the 
identities, propensities, and locations of unconditionally released prisoners. Prisons or parole 
agents should routinely provide police with this information. 

It is in precisely such situations, when offender cooperation with risk-reducing conditions 
cannot be legally required, that the advantages of a problem-oriented approach to public safety 
become most evident. Without changing the behavior of former offenders, police agencies can 
work to reduce opportunities for crime within the community. Even so, the additional challenges 
posed by unconditional release argue in favor of sentencing systems, whether determinate or 


indeterminate, that build in periods of noncustodial supervision, providing correctional agents 
with the legal authority to supervise and guide prisoners reentering their communities.8 

8 Although the keystone of determinate sentencing structures is their insistence on service of the majority (if not all) 
of the custodial sentence imposed on an offender, some truth-in-sentencing systems have included postrelease 
supervision as a mandatory requirement for all determinate sentences. See, for example, Wis. Stat.  973.01 
(mandating a period of extended supervision following all custodial sentences of one year or more in length). 

Like organizational structure, legal authority can constrain or expand the strategic choices 
available to parole agents. The degree to which agents are permitted to sanction and reward those 
under their supervision has an important effect on an agencys ability to effectively promote 
public safety. This is most evident in agent responses to violations of parole conditions. In 
jurisdictions where the only permissible sanction for a parolee is revocation and incarceration, 
correctional resources will be deployed differently than in jurisdictions where parole agents have 
more complex authority to provide sanctions corresponding to risks the offender poses and the 
people and places vulnerable to those risks. 

In terms of public safety, not all violations are of equal concern. There is a difference in 
the safety impact of an ex-forger who violates a curfew requirement by an hour (especially if it is 
an hour for which he or she can legitimately account) and an ex-stalker who violates a restraining 
order against his or her former victim. In order to advance public safety through the enforcement 
of parole conditions, it is necessary for agents to (1) understand the purpose for which the 
conditions at issue were imposed (see Smith 1998) and (2) possess the necessary authority to 
respond proportionately to violations of those conditions. The ability to respond with appropriate 
sanctions is essential for the agent who sees public safetyand not mere compliance with orders 
and conditionsas the purpose of the supervision he provides. 

Furthermore, similar violations may affect public safety to differing degrees, depending 
on the underlying connection between the violation and the risk posed by a particular offender. A 



brief relapse into alcohol abuse may be an anticipated and manageable step in one offenders 
recovery process, while for another, whose periods of intoxication are linked to acts of domestic 
violence, it may be a violation that cannot be tolerated. Again, without legal authority to provide 
specific, purposeful sanctions, correctional agents may be forced to choose between ignoring the 
violation or revoking the offenderneither of which may advance public safety in a particular 
case. 

The Minneapolis probation and parole officer mentioned above provides a good example 
of the way in which courts can confer on agents the ability to reward clients for success and not 
merely punish them for failure. Over time, the agent established a relationship with the 
community court judge in the area to which he was assigned. As a result of the trust that had 
been established, the judge would routinely order that the agent had the power to furlough court-
ordered work requirements at his discretion, effectively making release contingent on the agent 
and not on the judge himself. 

This practice, which essentially provides the parole agent with the key to the county jail, 
risks abuse of authority. It permits the agent to incarcerate (through revocation of the furlough) 
and to release (through exercise of the furlough). Since these decisions occur outside the 
transparent authority of the courtroom, they run the risk of being made capriciously. However, 
granting parole agents the ability to make these decisions has significant advantages. Allowing 
the authority closest to the offender and the places he may go to determine the proper moment 
for safe release and the conditions into which such release should occur provides a way of 
safeguarding the community and the offender from unnecessary risk. By increasing the agents 
arsenal of rewards and sanctions, the court assists the agent in his efforts to motivate and control 
the offenders under his supervision. Since the agents ability to provide effective control is an 


important (though not determinative) contribution to the success of any public safety effort 
involving former offenders, the flexible use of court orders is an option that should not be too 
quickly dismissed. 

While in general the legal authority accorded to police is broad, it is not as great as that 
accorded to many correctional agents engaged in the supervision of offenders. For police officers 
wanting to promote public safety, and not just respond to breaches of it, closer relationships with 
correctional agents are highly desirable. Parole agents are likely to possess legal authority the 
police lack, and such collaboration will foster the type of problem-oriented information gathering 
that leads to enhanced public safety. Partnerships between police and parole agents, such as those 
formed in Minneapolis around the problem of Chicago and Lake, assist both agencies in better 
promoting public safety. 

Conclusion 

We all share the inclination to define problems in terms of the solutions at hand for 
solving them. It is daunting, after all, in personal and professional life, to define problems in 
terms for which solutions are yet unknown. When it comes to promoting public safety through 
prisoner reentry, we are not practiced at developing strategies centered on places and people, 
instead of just offenders. Furthermore, we think we already know how to successfully control 
offenders returning to our communities from jails and prisons. As a result, we all too often limit 
our reentry efforts to establishing, enforcing, and measuring control of those offenders. 

Promoting public safety in the places we inhabit is a more complicated challenge. It 
requires us to adopt new methods of organizing agencies, gathering information, and allocating 
authority throughout the criminal justice system. However difficult, facing that challenge and 
broadening our approach to managing risk permits us to seize the opportunity reentry affords to 


create and enjoy, for ourselves and others, safe neighborhoods and communitiesthe objective 
to which we ultimately aspire. 


References 

Cullen, Francis T., John E. Eck, and Christopher T. Lowenkamp. 2002. Environmental 
Corrections: A New Paradigm for Effective Probation and Parole Supervision. Federal 
Probation 66(2): 2837. 

Dickey, Walter J. et al. 1996. Governors Task Force on Sentencing and Corrections Final 
Report. Overcrowded Times 7(6): 517. 

Dickey, Walter J., and Michael E. Smith. 1999. Dangerous Opportunity: Five Futures for 
Community Corrections. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice 
Programs. 

Felson, Marcus, and Ronald V. Clarke. 1998. Opportunity Makes the Thief: Practical Theory 
for Crime Prevention. London: Home Office. 

Goldstein, Herman. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. Philadelphia: Temple Hill University 
Press. 

Kleiman, Mark A. R. 1999. Community Corrections as the Front Line in Crime Control. 
UCLA Law Review 46:190925. 

McGarrell, Edmund F., Natalie Hipple, and Duren Banks. 2003. Applying Problem Solving 
Approaches to Issues of Inmate Reentry: The Indianapolis Pilot Project, Summary 
Report. Final Report Submitted to the National Institute of Justice. 

Morris, Norval. 1997. Task Force Report A Breath of Fresh Air. Overcrowded Times 8(1): 3, 
13. 

Petersilia, Joan. 2003. When Prisoners Come Home. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Robinson, Laurie, and Jeremy Travis. 2000. Managing Prisoner Reentry for Public Safety. 
Federal Sentencing Reporter 12(5): 25865. 

Rodriguez, Nino, and Brenner Brown. 2003. Preventing Homelessness among People Leaving 
Prison. New York: Vera Institute of Justice. 

Taxman, Faye S. et al. 2002. From Prison Safety to Public Safety: Innovations in Offender 
Reentry. Final Report Submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Travis, Jeremy. 2000. But They All Come Back: Rethinking Prisoner Reentry. Washington, 
DC: U.S. Department of Justice. 

Travis, Jeremy, and Sarah Lawrence. 2002. Beyond the Prison Gates: The State of Parole in 
America. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. 



Scott, Michael S. 2003. Problem Oriented Policing: Reflections on the First Twenty Years, 
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing 
Services. 

Seiter, Richard P. 2002. Prisoner Reentry and the Role of Parole Officers. Federal Probation 
66(3): 5054. 

Smith, Michael E. 1998. Let Specificity, Clarity, and Parsimony of Purpose Be Our Guide. 
Law and Policy 20(4): 491525. 

. 2001. What Future for Public Safety and Restorative Justice in a System of 
Community Penalties. In Community Penalties: Change and Challenges, edited by 
Anthony Bottoms et al. Devon: Willan Publishing. 

Smith, Michael E., and Walter J. Dickey. 1998. What If Corrections Were Serious about Public 
Safety? Corrections Management Quarterly 2(3): 1230. 

. 1999. Reforming Sentencing and Corrections for Just Punishment and Public Safety. 
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. 

Visher, Christy, and Jeremy Travis. 2003. Transitions from Prison to Community: 
Understanding Individual Pathways. Annual Review of Sociology 29: 89113. 

Von Hirsch, Andrew. 1997. Why Return to the Indeterminate Sentence? Overcrowded Times 
8(1): 3, 2021. 



Reentry Roundtable  Working Paper 

TURNING WEEDS INTO SEEDS 

Alan Mobley 
University of California, Irvine 

Abstract: The literature on community policing makes one thing plain: there is no clear 
definition of what community policing actually is. The identity of criminals and exoffenders 
is similarly uncertain. This paper takes advantage of this confusion and offers some 
contextual data regarding former prisoners and how they have been led to view the world. This 
rendering does not leave community policing out of the picturefar from it. By and large, 
former prisoners live in the persistent embrace of police agencies. For ex-offenders, escaping 
from the corrections sphere is as unlikely, and in some instances, as unappealing, as escaping 
from oneself. This paper forgoes all but a few anecdotal accounts of former prisoners who 
peacefully coexist (and sometimes thrive) in association with progressive policing. Instead of 
dwelling on some of the attendant details of their personal stories, this paper moves up one level 
of abstraction to describe aspects of a perceptual schema common to persons subjected to 
punitive incarceration and reentry. 

This paper, unfortunately, is not the how-to guide that may be implied by the title. What 
it intends to be is a discussion of both what is and of what might be in the world of criminal 
justice and prisoner reentry. I justify this broad, ambitious statement of purpose by saying simply 
that there is no crime without criminals, and this working paper is a piece of their story: a 
story of weeds who might be seeds. 

The literature on community policing makes one thing plain: there is no one clear 
definition of what community policing actually is. The identity of criminals and exoffenders 
is similarly uncertain. In this paper I have decided to take advantage of this confusion 
to offer some contextual data regarding former prisoners and how they have been led to view the 
world. This rendering does not leave community policing out of the picturefar from it. By and 
large, former prisoners live in the persistent embrace of police agencies. For ex-offenders, 



escaping from the corrections sphere is as unlikely, and in some instances, as unappealing, as 
escaping from oneself. The following accounts will forego all but a few anecdotal accounts of 
former prisoners who peacefully coexist (and sometimes thrive) in association with (or perhaps 
even as an element of) progressive policing. Instead of dwelling on some of the attendant details 
of their personal stories, I will move up one level of abstraction and describe aspects of a 
perceptual schema common to persons subjected to punitive incarceration and reentry. 

Similarly, selected aspects of the perceptual world common to criminal justice 
practitioners and researchers will be detailed. Interestingly, attentive readers may even notice 
some overlap in the perspectives of persons who otherwise gaze at one another (and the world) 
from across the custodial divide. 

A disclaimer: what follows is, by design, not the whole story of the souls who populate 
our ex-offender nation. Sadly, neither you nor I can handle their whole story. This, then, is a 
palatable bite, an introductory meditation on getting to know your delinquent neighbor. It is also 
an empathic look into what it might be like to be branded a weed and plucked from the garden to 
make way for seed. 

Discussion Question: How Should the Police and Ex-Offenders Work Together? 

I am honored to participate in this forum and to address such a wonderfully loaded 
question, one full of significant and implicit assumptions. I convened a series of focus groups 
with former prisoners so that I might compile some impressions, if not reach an informal 
consensus, on the issues at hand. The information obtained from these cyber, telephonic, and 
actual physical meetings, is condensed below. 

Getting right to definitions, it seems that the discussion question itself requires a bit of 
unpacking before we can continue. Such clarification exercises can be quite helpful, yet they still 



should be approached with caution lest they replace the substantive discussion itself. Indeed, 
deconstruction can be risky business. It can devolve into hotly contested, destructive debates and 
semantic confusion. But deconstruction can also provide conceptual openings into the nature and 
theoretical underpinnings of the inquiry. Then (if required), the discussion can go on to the real 
substantive issues. 

Rereading the title query: How Should the Police and Ex-Offenders Work Together? It 
would seem prudent that, at a minimum, we ask the following: 

1. Who are the police? 
2. Who are ex-offenders? 
3. What sort of work are we talking about? 
4. What does it mean to be or to act together? 


For the purposes of this discussion I assume the vantage point of the former prisoner, a 
subject position with which I have some experience. Let me briefly list and comment upon who 
might be constituted by the above categories, and then go on to construct working definitions of 
the relevant terms. 

1. From the former prisoner perspective, who are the police? 

. All sworn law enforcement officials: federal, state, county, and local police. 
. All court personnel: prosecutors, probation officers, diversion officials, judges. 
. All community corrections personnel with client supervision responsibilities, 
including parole officers. 
. All social service providers forced by legislation or administrative policy to supervise 
and report on the affairs of justice system clients. 


Law enforcement collaborations under community policing plans expand the definition 
of police even more. One Stop reentry centers and reentry induction programs, such as 
Californias PACT (Police and Corrections) Teams, add service providers to the accustomed 
custody and care squad. Finally, neighborhood watch, neighborhood councils, and other 
community policing partners expand the surveillance of ex-offenders to include all who serve 
as their monitors: drug testers, employers, concerned family members, and active informants 
(common in high-crime neighborhoods). 

Others with potentially significant power to do harm to the lives of ex-offenders, include 
neighbors, teachers, romantic partners, or anyone else who might be asked for information 
relating to the ex-offenders conduct. Such persons would not be viewed by ex-offenders as 
analogous to police, but would be considered threatening, and sources of vulnerability, if only 
hypothetically and situationally. 

2. From the former prisoner perspective, who are ex-offenders? 

Everyone who has a criminal record or is likely to acquire one in the foreseeable future is 
an ex-offender. Place matters. In certain neighborhoods, especially the urban, mostly minority 
areas most important to reentry policy planning, this means a high proportion of male residents, 
their friends, and associates. What they have in common is a certain set of experiences, but what 
may be more important is that they have a common identity among police agencies. They are 
lumped together, classified as high-risk suspects. In the suburbs, a former felon can hide fairly 
easily and do all right. In neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of felons and a high police 
presence, lying low and trying to maintain a semblance of dignity and social significance is more 
problematic. Finally, since so many prisoners of the past become prisoners again in the future, 


the distinction between former, current, and future prisoner takes on something of a surreal, or 
even academic (i.e., irrelevant) character. 

3. From the former prisoner perspective, what sort of work are we talking about doing with 
police? 

Lets assume that the number one job assignment of both ex-offenders and police is 
keeping the former prisoner out of crime and prison. But no, that would be an absurd 
assumption, since it flies in the face of lived reality for a large number, if not the majority, of ex-
offenders. Of course, colloquially, working with the police equates with working against the 
interests of ones contemporaries. It means being a rat, snitch, or informant, or acting like a 
cop. 

The work of police seems to be ever expanding. In Los Angeles, a multiagency task force 
cleans up Skid Row by ridding it of its high concentration of parolees. Immigration agents are 
now commonly based in police stations, and jail deputies are assigned INS functions. Such 
mission creep adds a new layer to the law enforcement threat matrix. 

National security concerns and depictions of urban gang suspects as domestic terrorists 
(police dont negotiate with terrorists) further militarize law enforcement and recreates suspected 
criminals as implacable enemies of the state. Reconfiguring the Drug War as a central aspect of 
the War on Terror links suspected urban drug dealers and users with terrorist groups supposedly 
bent on destroying the American Way of Life. Such a positioning by the police leaves little room 
for compromise or accommodation with the enemy (ex-offenders). 

What then might we assume is the common work, task, or bond between ex-offenders 
and police in the context of facilitating reentry? Working to improve quality of life, perhaps? 


Public safety? Maybe a cooperative attempt at lessening the sting or lightening the load of a 
disadvantaged existence? Hard to say, but we will return to this question and its attendant issues. 

4. From the former prisoner perspective, what does it mean to be or to act together with 
police? 

How are we to interpret together? Would it necessitate trust? Does together suggest 
sharing a time and place while working toward a common goal? Would a dont ask, dont tell 
arrangement constitute working together? 

Factually, police and ex-offenders work together on a regular basis to achieve a multitude 
of tasks. Such things as fingerprinting a suspect, attending a line up, stepping into or out of a cell, 
applying handcuffs and shackles, obtaining personal information and bodily fluids or physical 
(genetic) specimens; each of these tasks is usually performed collaboratively. Indeed, such tasks 
and the routine steps used to complete them denote the traditional, accustomed relationship 
norms for police and ex-offenders. Stepping outside these norms in furtherance of some more 
novel goal or assignment means treading on unfamiliar ground, if not uncharted territory. 

Addendum to Unpacking the Discussion Question: Repulsion and Desire 

Psychologically, for ex-offenders the Man is everywhere there is a uniform or 
government desk. Judges, police, prosecutors, parole officersall are suspect, all are perceived 
as seeing the ex-offender as a means to an end (with common ends being career advancement, 
positive press, political advantage). Once you have seen the inside of the system and know its 
reality: the hypocrisy, selective enforcement, disparities, perjuries, manipulation of evidence, 
racial preferences, class distinctions, influence peddling, conflicts of interest, etc., it is hard not 
to harbor an ever-ready attitude of distrust, resentment, and wariness. 



In short, all police are perceived as having agendas that far outstrip their interest in public 
safety or cost control. Ex-offenders simply want to avoid becoming fodder for any aspect of this 
corrupt system. 

But many former felons do find peace and success working together with police. They 
do so by staying within the system in approved, supportive roles. Their positioning as drug 
counselors and gang intervention workers is usually defined by their motivation: to give back to 
their communities, to make a contribution where they can, and to use their experience and 
wisdom in productive, helping ways. But for some, their new roles are not so different from the 
old days when they were model prisoners. Back then, experience or influence permitted them 
to find a niche or otherwise work the system to their relative advantage. In the joint, for 
example, the smart con who worked as factory clerk responded to the factorys closing by 
obtaining a position that offered many of the same advantages. The substantive tasks of the 
respective jobs were not nearly as important as the perks he derived from them. 

When the paramount goal is avoiding harm, all moves are pragmatic, all substantive 
interests negotiable. The prize is relative safety, comfort, and advantage, and dignity based on 
the currency of ones peers and social milieu. None of this is to say that the old prison roles were 
pleasurable, or that the new ex-offender opportunities are a con. Just that the new system 
positioning isnt entirely new: it is the reaction of a severely traumatized being, one adapting to 
changing circumstances in order to survive. It is a form of accommodation, but it is a form of 
resistance as well. 

Resistance and Reentry 

It behooves us to know that ex-offenders have an agenda, and that first and foremost is 
always to live with dignity. Lower numbers on the list, such as shelter, food, love, and work, 



may come into conflict with this primary goal, even subsume it at times, but that does not mean 
that goal number one goes away. When and if an ex-offender sets dignity aside it is no more than 
a tactical retreat, a maneuver to provide a more tenable position for the long run. Like the 
plantation slave who avoids a beating by giving deference to his master, or the street youth who 
avoids the same fate by cowering in mock subservience before an accosting law officer, 
downtrodden ex-offenders use what they have available to advance their goals. Luckily for them, 
an abundant and ever-ready resource is the arrogance and perceived omnipotence of their 
overseers. 

Resistance from oppression is not a deviant offender characteristic to be overcome. It is 
an attribute to be recognized as perpetual, universal, and as having tangible effect. Perhaps most 
importantly, resistance deserves our respect. For without it, who would we be? Compliant 
drones? Lifeless functionaries who live, produce, and reproduce children who know their place 
and accept their limitations? If this is what we want and if this is what we achieve, where, 
then, would we be? 

Parole and other reentry agents may implore clients to work with me, but they still give 
ex-offenders plenty to resist. Agents consider it a duty to remind their clients that they are not 
free: that parole is a conditional release, and that they are still technically in custody. Sure, it 
doesnt feel that way to the parolee, but who is he to decipher reality? Skillful personal 
repression ensures that resistance will take many forms. In the case of reentry, loosening the 
shackles of bondage and allowing the restoration of freedom provides a vehicle for a resistant 
offenders vindication. The reentry scenario, in other words, can be an outlet for rage: What? 
Yesterday you had me living under the gun, as a public menace, and today you feel safe to turn 
your back, to set me free? What changed? Not me. 



Living in the free world provides former prisoners the chance (at long last) to engage in 
enhanced social expression. Now the ex-offender can distinguish herself in new ways. She can 
do more than wear her pants several sizes too big, leave her shoes untied, and scrawl provocative 
or enigmatic signs upon her skin. A new array of tools, a fresh and refurbished palette of skills, is 
available to her. Some are petty and benign, surely, but others are much less so. Circumstances 
will indicate which she will use. (In prison, her quiver of survival technologies included a pipe, a 
shank, the strength of her associations, and her wits. Some were used often; others she held in 
reserve. Events and her evaluation of them dictated her course of action, her fate.) 

For the most part, those of us who comprise the unsuspecting public do not want to know 
what ex-offenders know. Now that they are out here, we want them to forget all that they learned 
in there and adopt our ways. Of course, we prefer that they start at the beginning, or to put it 
differently, at the bottom of the socioeconomic laddereven if they are 40 or 50 years old! 

Perspectives, Perceptions, and Objective Reality 

Since this wo rking paper is so concerned with ostensibly subjective perceptions, I think it 
fruitful to explore the ex-offender perspective further. One way we can do this is by looking at a 
best case scenario: an example of ex-offenders who have chosen to work together with police. 

Before we do, however, it should be noted that although the other papers at this meeting 
discuss organized groups and their possible relations with police, ex-offenders are not the same 
kind of group. Ex-offenders do not have any organizing body, profession, or source of 
institutional legitimacy in the way that parole, sentencing authorities, community groups, and 
others do. Nor are ex-offenders permitted one, for all practicable purposes. Ex-offenders are not 
an invading army or an advancing plague. They are relatively powerless (structurally speaking) 
individuals who are supposed to blend into the social fabric, to reintegrate themselves into the 



societal mainstream. Legal, productive living, however, is obviously quite difficult for persons 
burdened with the stigma of a felony conviction. Most of the success stories that I know of are 
persons such as those mentioned above: people who are, for better and worse, caught in a never-
ending correctional relationship. 

Although choosing to remain a cog in the criminal justice system is one way to 
postrelease success, we need to be clear that there are many risks inherent in such a bold, 
unconventional undertaking. The psychological vulnerabilities assumed by the gang intervention 
worker or drug counselorrenegade former outlaws alltake a noticeable toll. The stresses and 
strains of actively working through the trauma of penal subjugation while giving back to others 
tempers my otherwise whole-hearted call for an organization dedicated to the welfare and 
political empowerment of ex-offenders. The costs borne by individuals partaking in these 
troubled relationships might be ably illustrated through reference to the recently emerged 
position of one of their ilk, the (ex-)convict criminologist. 

Two-Legged Data 

Criminology is a curious business, and it is not clear where, or if, the convict 
criminologist fits in. There are several difficulties. 

The norms of academic discourse discourage the personal. Some scholars forbid their 
students use of the first person altogether, and permit themselves only the plural. We, often 
referred to as the royal We is indicative of the traditional scholarly stance, which holds that the 
scholar is detached, yet never alone. He or she stands upon the shoulders of those who came 
before, writing not as an individual, but as a representative of a discipline and master conveyor 
of a body of knowledge. Individual scholars make personal contributions to this textual body, but 
personal advancement is not supposed to be the point. The point of scholarly work is not self-


fulfillment or self-expression, and certainly not self-knowledge. Consequently, throughout the 
decades and the various theoretical epochs, the subject matter of criminology has invariably 
remained something out there. 

The situation for the convict criminologist is much different, as he or she is both speaking 
subject and object of study. As subject, the authority of the convict criminologist is almost 
certainly called into question, as he or she clearly lacks credible objective detachment, having 
gone native as a convict long before succumbing to the lure of the academic fraternity. The 
convict criminologists claim to the profession thus faces a perhaps insurmountable a priori 
challenge. 

As a speaking subject, the convict criminologist is atypical of criminological objects of 
study. With rare exception, criminals voices are muted not only by scholars, but by every aspect 
of the criminal justice encounter. Our American adversarial system of justice all but requires that 
defendants allow their representatives to speak for them. Following conviction, criminals are 
legally held incommunicado in a number of jurisdictions. Even when convictions are overturned 
after many years, such as in the justly celebrated case of Hurricane Carter, human subjects 
other than the accused are credited with principal agency. 

The ability to speak and be heard is not the only problem with the convict criminologist 
construction. The ex-offender is no longer a convict, but an ex-convict. This point may seem of 
little consequence, as the main aim of convict criminology is to include in the conversation the 
voices of those experienced in the customer end of the criminal justice system. Yet I consider 
the distinction an important one. Those of us who emerge from prison after many years know the 
unsettling sensation of finding ourselves separated from our friends and concerns. People with 
whom I shared nearly everything lost their immediacy to me almost the moment I stepped 



outside prison walls. I was shocked by the sensation, but it was there, real, undeniable. Even as I 
knew in my innards that I was no free man, I was no convict either. Not anymore. 

The legitimacy of the convict criminologists claim to special knowledge is thus 
challenged on both ends. Inclusion within the profession is made only tentatively, at the margins. 
As for being a prisoner and possessing the insights of the imprisoned, well, the convict 
criminologist does not. The position is distinct, neither here nor there, nor is it likely that both 
subject positions can be fully assumed at once. The question of identity remains unanswered for 
convict criminologists and for others caught in the gravitational hold of the system. 

Prison and Reentry: Separable Domains or Forever Entwined? 

Ex-offenders are not alone in suffering from a conflicted identity. Much of the discussion 
surrounding reentry and the corrections system itself dwells on just this point. A foundational 
article on reentry by Travis and Petersilia (2001), two of the foremost thinkers and writers on 
reentry, examines the possibility of establishing coherent, distinct system identities. 

Travis and Petersilia (2001) tap into a deeply felt and longstanding difficulty with 
community custody when they state that prisoner reentry processes might best be viewed 
separately from the prison experience. A bifurcation, they suggest, might have the helpful effect 
of distancing the more punitive aspects of incarcerative penality from the (hopefully) more 
ameliorative community-based programs. Their idea is a sound one, albeit with a mixed history. 
Much debate has revolved around gauging the appropriate degree of separation between punitive 
custody, preventative supervision, and rehabilitative opportunities. This problem, moreover, has 
never been limited to community corrections and reentry issues. David Garland (1990), for 
example, has argued that a version of the custody versus programs conundrum troubles (as 
well as sustains) what he calls the peno-welfare complex. Garland explains how subservience 



to political considerations forces corrections officials to lower penal standards for the sake of 
administering social services. By the same token, welfare programs become compromised when 
case officers are compelled to perform police-like surveillance functions along with their more 
traditional roles as service providers. 

A true bifurcation that pushes punishment-oriented, secure custody away from 
reintegration measures complicates commonly used schemes that use therapeutic and other 
programs as carrots intended to encourage offender cooperation. It also promises to thwart 
strategies that utilize programs as actual surveillance and control techniques. Penal plans 
employing such hybrid tactics may lessen the sting of submission and domination for some 
offenders, but the bald-faced client manipulation can also engender much enmity. 

The implementation of Travis and Petersilias bifurcation proposal would involve a 
repositioning or reframing of community reentry programs. This split could be extended by 
encouraging placement of reentry programs beyond the scope of the justice system. Taking 
social services out of the hands of police agencies would remove an internal contradiction that 
has long bedeviled corrections workers at all levels. Offenders, too, suffer from the mixed 
messages and muddled outcomes of a conflicted justice system. Their frustration, anger, and 
disgust with inconsistent attitudes and zero tolerance policies have the effect of promoting 
disrespect for the law and for its guardians. In addition, the treat em and beat em paradox 
certainly leads persons on both sides to develop fatalistic predispositions regarding the 
inevitability of parole revocation. 

We should be clear that no one wants the separation of prison and parole more urgently 
than do prisoners. When offenders get out they want to be out. Any compromise or half-
measure, any hoops or hassles placed in their path, breeds resentment. Certainly ex-offenders 


need access to social services and community resources, but they should not have to engage with 
law officers to get them. After years of being thrown together, battling through a struggle that 
neither could win, the two sides should be allowed to drift apart. Each stands to benefit. 

Traviss (2000) article on reentry courts is another useful recent publication in that it 
perpetuates two misconceptions that can be constructively addressed. The first concerns his 
notion that, until they prove their trustworthiness by remaining crime-free while on parole, 
reentering ex-offenders have not yet earned a place at our table. Travis gives expression to 
what is no doubt a commonly felt sentiment and for that openness he has our thanks. The 
perspective he tacitly assumes, howevera subject position he generously extends to his readers 
through the use of the phrase our table,is that of the law-abiding public. His characterization 
is made problematic, however, by generations of criminological research that casts doubt upon 
the existence of such a purified polity. 

A more accurate representation of the social world into which ex-offenders return would 
include reference to disparate sources of violence, fraud, discrimination, and corruption, much of 
it emerging from the same social strata the authorial voice so ably represents. This more realistic 
portrayal is already ingrained by experience into the psyches of offenders. The incarcerated 
often have more than a passing interest in news from the outside world. They know enough 
about politics and justice issues to suspect that those who so readily condemn them are not so 
clean themselves. Prison inmates are not cloistered academics, nor are they justice system 
practitioners whose vision is clouded by the veil of legal legitimacy and the thin blue line. 
Convicted and incarcerated felons have experienced life at ground zero, a place where the 
messiness of actual procedures meets the more hypothetical policy road. Prisoners are the 
possessorswhether they like it or notof an arsenal of finely calibrated bull detectors. Any 


idealized notion of society presented to them as real is discredited and rejected as quickly as their 
own demonized caricatures are often accepted and even embellished. 

Consider the classic sociological literature on prisons. From Sykes to Clemmer, Irwin, 
and Jacobs, much is made of the divisions and distinctions forged by prisoners. Categories that 
play out in day-to-day prison relations divide inmates among themselves, separate prisoners from 
staff, and even cast distinctions among keepers. Such status hierarchies are taken very seriously 
by prisoners and do not magically melt away on the day of release. The value systems learned or 
reinforced in prison, whether by choice or as a survival skill, a necessary evil, makes an ex-
offender suspicious of new faces and absolutely distrustful of cops. If individual social service 
providers, including parole and police officers, are to have productive, mutually beneficial and 
reinforcing relationships with ex-offenders, it makes sense that authorities will have to make an 
effort to gain their trust. Representatives of the dominant societal faction, in other words, if they 
wish to engage with and actually serve ex-offenders, have to be willing to earn a place at their 
table. 

The second point from the Travis article to be addressed concerns the comparability of 
reentry courts and drug courts. Travis maintains that a period of supervised release can be highly 
satisfying to the offender. To bolster his claim he points to drug courts and their famously 
emotional graduation ceremonies. What Travis fails to notice, and perhaps cannot know, is that 
the joy of drug court graduation comes precisely from the fact that prison was successfully 
averted. How could we expect people who have served lengthy prison terms and then faced 
additional sanctions on the outside to feel the same way as those people who served their time on 
community supervision alone? This fundamental misunderstanding of the subject positions of 
those sentenced to community custody versus those incarcerated expresses well our collective 



failure to appreciate the gravity of prisonization. People tend to emerge from prison edgy, 
distrustful, frightened, and insecure, in addition to being broke, homeless, and without friends or 
acquaintances. That period of separation and brutalization known as prison has a profound effect 
on ones perceptions, and we are misled if we believe they will react to circumstances and events 
in ways similar to those folks who have not endured like hardships. 

Soul in the Hole 

While researching reentry on the Internet, I received a note from a colleague alerting me 
to a web site containing a wealth of information. I visited the site and downloaded several 
articles to print. When I walked over to the printer to collect the hardcopies I noticed that text 
appeared on both sides of the paper, something I dislike and had not planned. A closer 
examination showed that the words on the topside of the discharging sheets derived from a 
different source than the text on the other side. I began to read the mystery text and discovered 
that it too concerned the experiences of penal subjects, past, present, and future. The narrative 
was part of a dissertation describing the culture of pickup basketball and the persons involved 
in creating it. Thoroughly provoked, I read on. I consumed the rollicking, thumping basketball 
piece as quickly as the paper passed from the machine. I then turned the pages over and read the 
comparatively dry, abstract, yet data-rich criminology literature. The contrast could not have 
been more striking. Heres an excerpt from the right side: 

Accustomed to being told exactly what to do and how to do it, they 
[newly released inmates] often expect their supervision officers to forge a 
path for themget them a job, find the right drug treatment program. 
Disappointed when their unrealistic expectations are not met, some 
people never form trusting relationships with those who supervise them. 
As for the officers, they begin the process with no information about how 
the people they have to supervise respond to authority figures and what 
they want to do with their lives (Nelson and Trone 2000, 2) 


Now heres something from the wrong side: 

To the brothers holding it down on blacktops across America, it aint just 
about playing basketball. In fact, balling is only one instrument used by 
these street soldiers to carve a collective identity out of the unforgiving 
urban landscape. The blacktop merely serves as a semi-public platform 
for exhilarative expressions and statements of black masculinity for 
people who, due to structural opposition and a history of requisite 
deference to an unyielding dominant culture, frequently find it difficult to 
establish a meaningful identity in other ways (Mohammed 2001, 1) 

It isnt just the style of writing that sets these pieces apart: a sense of flesh-and-bone 
humanity pervades the accidental article, and that same insider realism is utterly lacking from 
the research report. Reading the intended piece, I tried to digest such things as, Accustomed to 
being told exactly what to do and how to do it, but the sentiment stuck in my throat. Common 
sense tells us that few prisoners are micromanaged this way. By all accounts, prison provides a 
(sometimes dangerous) plethora of activity options, from watching television to playing 
dominoes, to reading, sleeping, or shooting dope. Upon release, many felons do wait for their 
parole officers to make the first move, but thats because setting the terms of release, the official 
agenda, is their job. 

Being in custody necessarily places one in the role of a counter-puncher. Officials act and 
prisoners react. So its not one way: coercive custody is a dance, a creative tension between 
participants who are sometimes collaborators-in-action, sometimes antagonists, but always 
provisional partners, trapped together in time and space. To suggest that the prison scene is more 
akin to a puppet showinert mannequins brought to life by omnipotent operatorsis a 
distortion that does a disservice to all involved. Surely no puppet masters claim to walk the 
toughest beat in the state, as do the corrections officers of California. Surely the Crips and the 
Bloods, the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, Disciple Lords, Mexican Mafia, and all 


the other prison gangstas respond with something of a deaf ear to being told exactly what to do 
and how to do it. 

The contrived and artificial tone of the reentry piece (Nelson and Trone 2000) continues 
as the passage skips past the complexity inherent in creating and maintaining trusting 
relationships. I wish the authors would ask themselves how trusting they would be towards 
persons who literally hold the keys to their freedom and their futures. Do they really think that 
finding them a job and a program would establish trust? Get this: Heres your job and your 
program. Dont screw it up or Ill send you back. Hows that for laying a rock-solid foundation 
for trust? The only hacks we trust are those who willingly turn a blind eye, or are so lame they 
cant catch us when we screw up, or drop the automaton routine and act human. 

The paragraph I cite from the reentry article also vastly oversimplifies the process of 
discovering what parolees might want to do with their lives. Again, I put it to the authors (and 
to all prospective writers on reentry): if you were to start from as near to scratch as is possible in 
American society, and if you were burdened with a felony conviction, mainstream social stigma, 
an antagonistic, unyielding dominant culture, and minimal resources, what would you do with 
your life? Finally, if I were to ask myself how I respond to authority figures, in all sincerity, I 
would have to answer, It depends. I find that I often resent authority, especially when it is 
practiced arbitrarily or incompetently. 

The second piece (Moha mmed 2001) depicts its subjects not as fodder existing solely for 
the manipulation of authoritative others, but as active agents, creators in their own lives. Being 
young, black, poor, and male in America means many things, but basic to the profile is being 
roustable: police see you and others like you as fair game for a shakedown. In other words, the 


police, guardians of mainstream American freedoms, perceive young black males as primary to 
their mission. 

I contacted the writer of the basketball chronicle and obtained a copy of the completed 
project. It felt like discovering buried treasure. And then it dawned on me that used, discarded 
sheets of paper placed in the printer feeder (something that happens around the department when 
funds are low and fresh supplies exhausted) led to my find. I pondered the synchronicity of 
recycled rag turning out (for me) to be better than new. I was reminded of the wounded healers 
phenomenon discussed so much among prison volunteers (that is, those persons who have 
suffered great wounds often make the best healers). My remembrance of that concept brought me 
back to the assertion that trusting relationships are critical to the success of ex-offenders trying to 
make it on the outside. Of course trusting relationships are important! And who better to attend 
to parolees than their more experienced peers and colleaguesthe wounded, returned healers? 
Do we really expect that most supervising officials will ever know what their clients want to do 
with their lives? 

Getting Back On the Court 

Former prisoners who involve themselves in community justice (or justice studies) seem 
to have a visceral reaction to the common one-dimensional view of offenders. Their gut-churning 
frustration is a response to bearing witness to a professional conversation carried out in 
ignorance of the real people and lived realities behind the profiles. The exclusion from scholarly 
pages of the impassioned voices and no-frills analysis of people who are more than able, and 
very often willing, to speak for themselves, is especially grating to people of experience who 
deal for a living in the areas of prisoner reentry and rehabilitation. 


The protestations that I hear typically go like this: Here we are! Hey! Were right here! 
Youre talking about us, right? So talk to us! Hey! 

Usually, traditionally, these pleas have fallen on deaf ears. It would seem that a solution 
for these frustrations would be for ex-offenders to be more proactive and not wait to be 
recognized and asked to comment or otherwise participate in penal policy strategizing. Former 
prisoners can write themselves right into reentry scholarship. And they have. Of course, the next 
questions must be: Is anybody listening? Can anybody hear? 

Epilogue 

Lest we fool ourselves into thinking that any of this is new, I reproduce the following 
(provided by my friend and colleague, Chuck Terry): 

He is made to feel from the outset that he is a lower animal, incapable of 
thinking, acting, or doing rationally for himself. This blow struck at his 
manhood degrades his self-respect. Since those about him will not trust 
him, why should they seek to merit trust? 

He knows himself to be a prisoner, immured for acts over which he 
knows he had no possible control, and resentment rankles in his breast. 
Revenge becomes a ruling spirit in his clouded soul. Why should he have 
faith that his keepers can cure him when he realizes that they so 
thoroughly misapprehend his condition (Keeley 1897, 8990). 

Can community policing make a difference in the reentry of ex-offenders? Perhaps. 
Working to apprehend the condition (instead of the bodies) of current and former prisoners 
would make for an excellent start. 

Authorial Note: Chuck Terry, PhD, provided invaluable assistance in the preparation of this 
working paper. 



References 

Austin, James. 2001. Prisoner Reentry: Current Trends, Practices, and Issues. Crime and 
Delinquency 47(3): 314334. 

Garland, David. 1990. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press. 

Keeley, Leslie E. 1897. Opium: Its Use, Abuse, and Cure: Or, From Bondage to Freedom. 
Chicago: The Banner of Gold Co. Publishers. 

Mohamed, A. R. 1999. Blacktop Basketball as Site of Resistance. Unpublished dissertation. 
University of California, Irvine. 

Nelson, Matt and Jennifer Trone. 2000. Why Planning for Release Matters. New York, NY: Vera 
Institute of Justice, State Sentencing and Corrections Program. 

Travis, Jeremy. 2000. But They All Come Back: Rethinking Prisoner Reentry. Sentencing and 
Corrections: Issues for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 
Office of Justice Programs. 

Travis, Jeremy and Joan Petersilia. 2001. Reentry Reconsidered: A New Look at an Old 
Question. Crime and Delinquency 47(3): 291313. 



Reentry Roundtable Report 

THE REVOLVING DOOR: EXPLORING PUBLIC ATTITUDES 
TOWARD PRISONER REENTRY


Jean Johnson and John Immerwahr, Public Agenda 

Abstract: Current attitudes about crime and law enforcement are a backdrop to a more detailed 
discussion of attitudes about incarceration and prisoner reentry. The presentation draws on 
current polling from respected research organizations including Gallup, Harris, ABC News, and 
others. It will also include observations from a Public Agenda/Urban Institute Reentry 
Roundtable pilot study that looked specifically at attitudes about prisoner reentry. Designed to 
stimulate discussion and provide hypotheses for further research, the pilot study used focus 
groups to probe public awareness of prisoner reentry issues. The research examined existing 
public perceptions of what happens to prisoners after release and explored potential public 
support for reentry programs, along with possible concerns and barriers. While hardly any 
respondents in the pilot study had thought extensively about prisoner reentry issues, more were 
aware that prisoners often face daunting obstacles returning to the community and establishing 
a noncriminal life-style. In addition, most seemed to think that reentry is an important issue that 
deserves decisionmakers attention. At the same time, nearly all the respondents voiced some 
level of concern about what kinds of prisoners might be included, how well reentry programs 
would be run, how effective they would be helping prisoners stay out of trouble, and precisely 
what kinds of services returning prisoners would be eligible for. 

Introduction 

A typical day of TV programming offers a wide selection of news and entertainment 
programs focusing on crime, police work, arrests, trials, and incarceration. The depictions may 
not be accurate, but the overall process is constantly in the public eye. On that same day, 
however, approximately 1,600 inmates (mostly men) will come out of prison to find their way 
back into society, typically with little planning, counsel, or support.1 Yet compared with other 
aspects of the criminal justice system, there is almost no public discussion of prisoner reentry. 

1 Travis, Jeremy. Prisoner Reentry Seen Through a Community Lens. The Urban Institute, 2001. 

The authors wish to thank Deborah Wadsworth and Steve Farkas at Public Agenda; Jeremy Travis and Amy 
Solomon at The Urban Institute; and Susan Tucker, Eric Cadora, and Eddie Ellis at Open Society Institute for the 
ideas they contributed to this project. We would also like to express our appreciation to Jennifer Tennant and Alex 
Trilling at Public Agenda for their invaluable assistance in the preparation of this paper. For more information, 
please contact Public Agenda at (212)686-6610 or info@publicagenda.org. 



The availability of public opinion research follows precisely the same pattern; there is 
considerable survey data on crime and punishment overall, but virtually none on prisoner 
reentry. 

To gain a better perspective on public attitudes about this issue, The Urban Institutes 
Reentry Roundtable asked Public Agenda, a nonprofit organization dedicated to nonpartisan 
public opinion research, to develop a small-scale pilot project. In addition to support from The 
Urban Institute and Public Agenda itself, funding was provided by Open Society Institute, The 
George Gund Foundation, and Arthur White. 

Focus Groups in Suburban and Urban Areas 

Designed to raise questions, stimulate discussion, and provide hypotheses for further 
research, the pilot project consisted of three focus groups conducted in March 2002 in the 
Philadelphia area. To offer some insight on how Americans in different demographic groups 
might think about prisoner reentry, Public Agenda organized the focus groups to reflect different 
population segments. 

 One focus group consisted of residents of the Philadelphia suburb of Bensalem. 
The group was racially mixed, and respondents income ranged from less than 
$25,000 to more than $60,000. The group included an advertising sales 
representative, a retiree, and an employee at Wal-Mart. 
 A second focus group consisted of residents of Philadelphias inner city, primarily 
from the West Philadelphia area. The group was entirely African-American or 
Hispanic, and respondents included a legal assistant, a truck driver, and a cook. 
 The third focus group consisted of affluent Philadelphia residents. The group was 
racially mixed, and all earned more than $30,000. Respondents included the 
owner of an art gallery, a retired attorney currently doing charitable work, and a 
therapist. 



Limitations of the Research 

The responses captured in the Public Agenda focus groups are intriguing, but it is vital to 
underscore the limitations of this research. Focus groups can be useful tools for observing how 
people talk about issues and for generating hypotheses for further research. However, they are 
not reliable predictors of how many people hold a particular viewpoint, or even whether the 
majority of Americans actually share views that predominate in a focus group discussion. Whats 
more, this particular project includes a small number of focus groups confined to a limited 
geographic location. It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that the same research conducted 
among suburban, inner city, and upscale residents in Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, Dallas or 
Portland, for example, could produce different results. 

Nevertheless, some characteristic patterns of thinking seemed to emerge in all three of the 
focus groups we conducted, and many echo themes that are prevalent in the publics overall 
thinking about crime and punishment. In some instances, we are able to cite existing survey data 
to confirmor at least buttressthe observations we report from the focus groups. We relied 
particularly on Public Agenda research from a series of studies on prison overcrowding and 
alternatives to incarceration conducted for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.2 And since 
Public Agenda has conducted dozens of public opinion studies on diverse public issues, and 
since we have devoted over two decades of work to understanding how citizens typically learn 
about public issues, we have applied our own judgment and experience in interpreting the results. 
In the three sessions, we focused specifically on these topics: 

 Public awareness of prisoner reentry issues 
 

 Perceptions of what happens to prisoners after release from prison 
 Potential public support for programs to help former prisoners make the transition 
from prison to society 
 Reactions to barriers regarding employment, housing, voting, etc., that former 
prisoners face in many states 
 Potential concerns and conflicts about reentry programs 
 Future directions for research 

2 Farkas, Steve and Ethan Gutmann. Punishing Criminals: Pennsylvanians Consider the Options. Public Agenda, 
1993; Doble, John, Stephen Immerwahr, and Amy Richardson. Punishing Criminals: The People of Delaware 
Consider the Options. Public Agenda, 1991; Doble, John, and Josh Klein. Punishing Criminals: The Publics View. 
An Alabama Survey. Public Agenda, 1989.

How Important Is This to Most People? 

Opinion researchers often look at two factors to determine how important and meaningful 
an issue is for the general public. One factor is whether people bring up an issue spontaneously 
or whether they only talk about it after it has been raised by researchers. The second factor is 
whether people appear to understand an issue when it is introduced or whether they need 
repeated explanations and clarifications in order to think about it. The answers to these two 
questions have vital implications for leaders who need to launch public discussion about an 
important issue and for journalists who need to cover it. 

In many Public Agenda projects, for example, moderators open focus group sessions by 
giving respondents a clean slate and asking them to list their top community or national 
concerns. Typically, people bring up issues that have been on their minds, and that they have 
already thought, read, and talked about. Issues that people bring up spontaneously have an 
immediacy and urgency that places them at the very top of the publics agenda. Issues that must 
be raised by the researchers are less salient to them. 

It is also important to learn if an issue is easily grasped once it is introduced. It is just a 
fact of public policy life that some problems are easy for people to understand, while others 
although they may be equally or even more important to the countrys futureare abstract and 
difficult for people to wrap their minds around. Several years ago, Public Agenda conducted an 


in-depth study on restructuring public schoolsa topic that attracts significant attention 
among experts and political leadership. The study explored public thinking about proposals such 
as vouchers, charter schools, and school privatization, but the focus groups proved to be rough 
sailing. Only a handful of participants spontaneously mentioned these topics or anything related 
to them. Virtually none understood how they would work, and the respondents puzzlement 
continued even after moderators passed out printed sheets attempting to clarify the proposals. 
This is not to suggest that these ideas are necessarily bad or unworkable, but they are difficult for 
most people to get a handle on. Consequently, they present a complex communications challenge 
for leaders and advocates. 

Rarely Talked About but Easily Understood 

Based on this series of focus groups on prisoner reentry, this is an issue that people rarely 
raise spontaneously, but it is one that most seem to understand readily once it is introduced. In 
each session, we asked our respondents to tell us about some of the main issues or problems in 
their neighborhoods. Many people spoke of schools, sprawl, taxes, housing prices, and a variety 
of other issues. Not surprisingly, several people spontaneously mentioned crime and drugs, but 
their concerns seemed to focus more on broad social issues facing the neighborhood, rather than 
the explicitly personal fears of crime so prevalent in focus groups a decade ago. Respondents in 
these groups reflect what national polls have shown for the last several yearsthe publics fear 
of crime has declined, and most Americans name issues such as education and health care as 
higher priorities for national government.3 

3 Gallup Organization Poll, a survey of 1,011 adults surveyed by telephone, Oct. 1114, 2001. The publics 
perception of whether there was more crime in the United States than there was the year prior dropped from 89 
percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2001; Princeton Survey Research Associates Poll, sponsored by the Pew Center for 
People and the Press, a survey of 1,202 adults surveyed by telephone, April 18 22, 2001. Fifty-five percent of 
respondents said they would increase spending used to combat crime, while 76 percent said they would increase 
spending on education and 71 percent said they would increase spending on health care. 



In this project, some suburban respondents talked about drugs and vandalism among local 
teens. Urban residents voiced concerns about people hanging out near convenience stores where, 
the respondents believed, they bought and sold drugs. Several inner-city residents spoke bitterly 
about open drug selling and the disastrous effects of drugs on their communities. One upscale 
urban man put it this way: 

The neighborhood popped up in my mind. Basically, in my 
neighborhood right now theres a lot of drug activity going on 
compared to when I was growing up. Im only 25 now, and the 
kids that are in high school now are going out there now, and 
theres drugs on every street corner now. That bothers me a lot, 
and theres nothing being done about it. They do it right in the 
open. Youre driving down the street, and you actually see them 
handing each other money and drugs. 

Just Throwing Them Out . . . 

Even when the discussion turned to crime directlyincluding some fairly extended 
conversations about courts, sentencing, and the local policenone of the respondents 
specifically mentioned problems that society or their community might face concerning 
recentlyreleased prisoners, nor did they spontaneously voice concerns about how returning 
prisoners were treated or whether they would be able to rebuild their lives. 

However, as soon we asked about the topic directly, we saw that nearly everyone in the 
groups understood the issue and its possible implications. Most immediately had some concrete 
observations to make about it. A suburban man responded this way: 

What were saying is, [there are] people that have done their time 
and want to better themselves, [and there should be programs to 
help them reenter society] instead of just throwing them out there 
with no kind of guide rope or no kind of help. 


Daunting Obstacles, Ineffective Programs 

As we discovered, although most respondents had not thought much about prisoner 
reentry specifically, most were aware that prisoners face daunting obstacles returning to the 
community and establishing a noncriminal lifestyle. Among the urban respondents especially, 
both inner city and upscale, there was a virtually instantaneous ability to understand the situation 
a former prisoner is likely to faceno job, minimal education, few marketable skills, no 
particular place to go, and very little support or monitoring. 

In all three groups, respondents had fairly consistent views about the experience a 
prisoner has both in prison and upon release. While some of our respondents mentioned hearing 
about some programs in prisons designed to help people change and lead a better life after 
prison, virtually no one believed these programs were widespread or particularly effective. 

Many thought that an individual might, as a result of being sent to prison, reform himself 
or herself, but almost all tended to think of this as an individual achievement and not the result of 
prison programs and policies. Those who become stronger, people seem to be saying, do so in 
spite of what they find in prison, not because of it. Nearly all the respondents saw the efforts of 
prisons to rehabilitate and educate people as poorly designed, poorly executed, and ineffective. 
One upscale urban woman said: 

There are not job opportunities; youre not taught trades. I think 
they can make license plates or some menial types of things. But I 
dont believe there [are] programs that help with education and help 
somebody make better of themselves while theyre in for X number 
of years. So if someone comes in with really low self-esteem and a 
lot of social problems, theyre not going to get any stronger and 
feel better about themselves while theyre in jail for three to six 
years. 

Another man commented: 
 


They used to have some educational programs in prison. I think up 
until about three to four years ago they took them out, and thats 
been the problem. I dont know if it was because of funding and 
stuff like that. Thats why, when prisoners come out now, they have 
nothing. They have nothing education-wise. So I think thats the 
problem. If they start putting some programs back in there, that will 
probably alleviate the situation of people coming back out and 
recommitting the crimes. 

Creating Criminals 

The respondents also believed that while prisoners had very little chance to learn useful 
skills in prison, they have ample opportunity to acquire and reinforce negative behaviors. Several 
commented on the wide availability of drugs in the prison (often, they believed, supplied by the 
guards themselves), and others stressed the degree to which prison can be a school for crime. 

One suburban male said: 

I think prison creates criminals too. If you send a kid [who] stole a 
car maybe six or seven times and he was just joyriding with his 
friends but other than that he wasn't a bad kid. Then he goes in the 
system. If he goes to a major prison you are going to turn that kid 
into a career criminal if you leave him in there long enough and 
dont give him any help. 

So what did our respondents think happens to prisoners once they are released? We found very 
little confidence in, or respect for, the supervision that released prisoners receive from the parole 
system. Several respondents said that parole officers have huge caseloads and do very little 
follow up, while others merely regarded them as lackadaisical and gullible. One suburban 
woman said: 

I don't think theyre really on them, parole officers. You meet them 
once a month, every two months. You get a urine test; you have 
stuff to clean your system out if youre doing drugs Some people 
hook them up and say theyre working for them, but theyre not 
really not. Theyre not really on them, parole officers. They dont 
check and find out. People lie and say they live at this place and 
dont really live at that place. But they know they have to meet 
their parole officer [so] at a certain time they go the house and act 


like theyve been there and lived there and stuff like that. Thats 
how it really is. 

Jobs at Chuck E. Cheese 

The respondents negative views about prisons and the parole system echo precisely what 
Public Agenda found in its earlier work on prison overcrowding and alternatives to incarceration. 
These studies, conducted in Alabama, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, revealed deep skepticism 
about the ability of the prison system to rehabilitate and the ability of parole boards to monitor 
those under their supervision. National surveys have routinely shown lows levels of confidence 
in the justice system overall. In 2000, the Gallup Organization reported that just 24 percent of 
Americans said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the criminal justice 
system.4 

4 Gallup Organization Poll, a survey of 1,021 adults surveyed by telephone, June 2225, 2000. I am going to read 
you a list of institutions in American society. Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one 
a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little The criminal justice system. A great deal, 8 percent; Quite a lot, 16 
percent; Some, 42 percent; Very little, 30 percent; None (vol.), 3 percent; No opinion, 1 percent. 

Nearly everyone in the focus groups believed that released prisoners face enormous 
obstacles, especially in finding meaningful work. One man from Philadelphias inner city said: 
And if they do get a job its like Chuck E. Cheese or McDonalds, 
nothing they can put time or effort into trying to better themselves. 
Even then you still wont be able to get a job because theres 
100,000 people that went to college and came straight out and did 
what they were supposed to do. They get the job, not the convicted 
felon. Hes going to have to sit home and wait or work at Chuck E. 
Cheese or McDonalds and make a $250 check every two weeks 
and then go out and decide to go sell drugs again and get locked up. 

Thats how it goes. 
And for nearly all the focus group respondentswhether they were in the suburban, inner-city, 
or upscale groupthe picture was as predictable as it was distressing. Prisoners leave prison 
with few new positive or marketable skills and many bad habits. They have little supervision and  


have a hard time finding a job. As a result, they fall back into the same behavior patterns that 
sent them to prison the first place. All of this, most our respondents believed, leads to high rates 
of recidivism and a virtual revolving door, with people going back into prison almost as fast as 
they leave it. Here is a sampling of what respondents had to say on this score: 

They go in there and get whatever they do, go to school or 
whatever, but they still come out, and then they cant get no job 
because of what they did. Then they see other people; theres fast 
money, so they want to do the same thing again. Then theyre back 
in there, they may still sit a little longer, but they still come out 
doing the same thing. 

Suburban female 

But the perception is if 100 come out, 80 go back. Eighty got out 
and maybe 60 of those 80 go back in. Percentage shrinks, but its 
still not a successful program. Theyre not even batting .500. 

Suburban male 

Not Aware of Many Barriers 

The focus groups also suggested that even though nearly all the respondents had a negative view 
of what happens, or does not happen, to prisoners when they are released into the community, 
many were surprised, even dumbfounded, to learn about some of the barriers and constraints 
existing in some states. Most of our respondents, for example, seemed surprised to learn that 
many prisoners cannot vote, and very few saw any point to this kind of limitation. Others thought 
provisions that bar former prisoners from driving (given the importance of driving to many jobs) 
or from entering a field such as hairdressing were both foolish and counter-productive. Heres 
what some of the respondents had to say: 

I feel youre taking a persons right away now. They did the time 
for the crime. Why should you take their right to vote? Youre 
taking their freedom away. 

Upscale urban male  


You should give them a drivers license; I believe they should have 
one. 

Inner-city male 

[You should be allowed to vote from jail] because youre still a 
citizen whether you get locked up or not. You still are a registered 
voter. So I dont understand why you cant vote from prison. I just 
dont understand it. 

Inner-city female 

They should vote; its America. Theyre going to be living in the 
community. 

Suburban male 

They cant get a job with a felony conviction. You put on there, 
Yes, Ive been convicted. Youre not going to get an answer to 
that, not unless they want you in the basement somewhere. 

Inner-city male 

Support for Possible Solutions 
Given this rather bleak perception of the problems both prisoners and communities face 
in this situation, it is not surprising that most respondents were receptive to a variety of solutions. 

Many responded very favorably to the idea of postrelease planning while people are still in 
prison, as well as for more effective supervision and support after a prisoner is released. 

A suburban male commented: 

I think [postrelease planning should begin] close to the beginning 
[of the prison term] because it creates an atmosphere of at least 
constant recognition [that] you are going to get out and what are 
you going to do. 



There was also substantial support for ideas such as halfway houses, where prisoners could have 
additional supervision while they actually start to work on a job. One inner city woman said it 
this way: 

Put him in a halfway house for two years, let him get back into 
society and try to work and get a job. Thats what the houses are 
for. When he gets out meet him halfway. Were going to put you 
in a halfway setting to see how you make it from here. 

The Preeminent Value of Work 

For nearly all the respondents, whether they were in the suburban, inner-city, or upscale 
group, helping former prisoners find meaningful work was the most crucial and urgent step. 
Respondents seem convinced that getting former prisoners into solid jobs would both help them 
as individuals and protect the community from crime. 

The strong emphasis on jobs and work is not surprising. The value of work to the 
American public has emerged strongly in opinion research about welfare and poverty, education, 
and even the central values of the country itself. One Public Agenda study looked at what U.S. 
and foreign-born parents believe public schools should teach children about American values. 
Roughly 7 in 10 of those surveyed said that an essential part of what makes the United States a 
special place is that people are expected to work hard and earn their living, not rely on 
government.5 

5 Farkas, Steve, Jean Johnson, Ann Duffett, and Joanna McHugh. A Lot to be Thankful For: What Parents Want 
Children to Learn about America. Public Agenda, 1998. A survey of 801 parents of public school students by 
telephone, September 316, 1998. Additional interviews of 200 foreign-born, 203 Hispanic, and 198 African-
American parents were also conducted. Now Im going to read you a list of American ideals. For each, please tell 
me if it is absolutely essential to you personally, important but not essential, or not that important. People should 
work and earn their livingthey should not rely on the government. Percentage responding absolutely essential: 
Parents overall, 76 percent; White parents, 80 percent; African-American parents, 69 percent; Hispanic parents, 70 
percent; Foreign-born parents, 70 percent. 

For most Americans, work offers a number of important benefits. It provides income, of 
course, but also it provides structure, meaning, identity, and self-esteem. For many Americans, 


work is seen as redemptive. Our focus group respondents applied this same line of thinking to 
the issue of released prisoners trying to establish new lives after leaving prison. Two women put 
it this way: 

I support helping them find jobs and training. Everyone needs 
money to survive in this world, and it would get them on track. If 
you set them up with a job, hopefully theyd have a mentor or some 
sort of manager that would sort of keep them in line, who would 
give them the work and give them the structure they need. They 
need somewhere to be during the day, instead of being on the 
streets or whatever. 

Suburban female 

they cant get jobs. You put programs out there or funding for 
programs or even funding for companies to hire these guys when 
they get out or provide some training to them, it will keep them out 
and maybe some of them will become productive members of 
society. Meanwhile you can always apply for grants and 
scholarships for college. 

Inner-city female 

The focus group respondents also supported other programs such as counseling and drug 
rehabilitation, but they often appeared to assign these a lower priority than anything related to 
preparing for or holding a job. The general view is that other programs are useful if a person is 
ready for them, but they rarely work unless a person is truly motivated and persistent, and often, 
they too can be revolving doors. Two male respondents remarked: 

No one is going to take treatment if they dont want it; treatment 
isnt going to be no big help. The big thing, when you do go to jail 
for drugs, you have to stop. Drugs are in there, too. But what Im 
saying, theres a lot of people who stopped in prison cold turkey 
compared to where you go to a treatment center where, if youre 
not going to want to stop, youre going to wind up doing it again 
anyway. 

Upscale urban male 

I think theyve got a real good program now called Treatment 
Corps Program, like say you get locked up for drug possession or 


something like that, they put you in a treatment program for a year-
and-a-half, 18 months. They monitor your urine and you have to go 
in two or three times a week. My brother was on that and that took 
him like right out of the state that he was in and he got himself 
together. 

Inner-city male 

How to Divide a Dollar 

Most respondents in the focus groups indicated that spending more money on these kinds 
of programs would be useful, and we used their preferences about spending to gauge the relative 
importance they assigned to the different ideas under discussion. We asked our respondents to 
allocate an imaginary dollar of state revenue and tell us how much of it should be spent on prison 
versus how much should be spent on postrelease programs. Even though many of our 
respondents had already described existing prisons as overcrowded and lacking in good 
rehabilitation programs, many wanted to spend most of the money (often 80 percent) on 
postrelease programs. 

As we suggest below, this does not necessarily mean that voters will readily agree to pay 
more for prisoner reentry programs, or that the majority of citizens will automatically support 
shorter sentences for many crimes. Nor does it mean, in any literal sense, that funding could 
easily be taken from other criminal justice purposes and devoted to this cause. In real life, that 
would likely require considerable consensus building. What it does suggest is that most of our 
respondents saw prisoner reentry programs as meeting an important need. And many seemed to 
think that these programscompared to prisonmight offer a better way to help prisoners and 
protect communities from crime. 
 


Concerns and Limitations 

The views expressed by most respondents in this series of focus groups should be 
heartening to criminal justice professionals who see prisoner reentry as a weak link in the system 
and for advocates working to enhance services for prisoners returning to the community. Most 
respondents seemed to believe that this issue is important and deserves attention. Most seem to 
consider the ideas we discussed as sound, practical ways to help prisoners and community 
residents alike. Indeed, many respondents appeared to think that not having such programs is a 
recipe for more crime. And finally, very few of the respondents seemed ready to write off all 
prisoners as hopeless causes, or to believe that it is really possible to lock them up and throw 
away the key. 

Still, almost all respondents in all three groups voiced some doubts and reservations 
about what kinds of prisoners we were talking about; how well the programs would be run; how 
effective they would be in helping prisoners stay out of trouble; and exactly what kinds of 
services prisoners would be eligible for. Here are the most important caveats, questions, and 
reservations we heard during the discussions. 
The belief in punishment 

In the focus groups for this project, nearly all the respondents reacted favorably to the 
idea of helping former prisoners get back on track. Yet, based on what we observed, this interest 
in prisoner reentry did not seem to be part and parcel of a broader indictment of the criminal 
justice system overall. Many professionals and experts working on prisoner reentry also raise 
important questions about whether American society places too much emphasis on punishment; 
whether far too many people are incarcerated; and whether the get tough on crime political 
movement of the 1980s and 1990s was misguided, damaging communities and often devastating 


families and individual lives. Many question whether getting tough on crime has actually 
reduced crime at all, or whether falling crime rates are instead attributable to a better economy, 
more jobs, and changing demographics. 

But in the three focus groups conducted for this project, virtually no one spontaneously 
voiced these kinds of concerns. A number of respondents did object to what they saw as an 
ineffective use of prison spaceputting low-level offenders in prison and at the same time 
releasing much more dangerous people into the communityand many raised questions about 
drug sentencing in particular. Still, no one seemed especially outraged about the numbers of 
people being sent to prison. No one complained that the general trends in the criminal justice 
system over the last few decades have been particularly unfair. National surveys have shown a 
declining fear of crime, and there is some evidence from polling that Americans are more open 
to approaches such as prevention and rehabilitation than they were a decade ago.6 Responses in 
these focus groups and survey data suggest that a number of Americans also have questions 
about current drug sentencing practices. Yet surveys also show very high levels of public support 
for long prison sentences for those convicted of violent crimes. A 2002 survey by ABC News, 
for example, found 82 percent of Americans favor a law requiring mandatory life imprisonment 
for anyone convicted of a third violent felony.7 

6 Peter D. Hart Research Associates Poll, sponsored by the Open Society Institute, a survey of 1,056 adults surveyed 
by telephone, September 6 17, 2001. Preferred approach to crime: we need a tougher approach to crime with an 
emphasis on stricter sentencing, capital punishment for more crimes, and fewer paroles for convicted felons, or we 
need a tougher approach to dealing with the causes of crime with an emphasis on improving job and vocational 
training, providing family counseling, and increasing the number of neighborhood activity centers for young 
people. Stricter punishment, 32 percent; Deal with causes of crime, 65 percent. In 1994, the findings were: Stricter 
punishment, 42 percent; Deal with causes of crime, 48 percent.

7 ABC News.com Poll, a survey of 1,025 adults surveyed by telephone, February 27March 3, 2002. Would you 
favor or oppose a law requiring mandatory life imprisonment for anyone convicted of a violent felony for the third 
time? Favor, 82 percent; Oppose, 14 percent; No opinion, 4 percent. The ABC survey did find much lower levels of 
support (17 percent) for applying three strikes provisions to those convicted of nonviolent crimes. However, this 
suggests that while Americans might support modifications in the way these laws are applied, they have not backed 
away from the concept entirely. 


The suburban perspective 

In these three focus groups, we saw a pronounced difference between the views 
expressed by suburban respondents in contrast with what we heard from either of the urban 
groups. Given the topic of prisons and released prisoners, it is perhaps not surprising that 
suburban residents typically spoke about what they had heard from the media rather than what 
they had learned from their own circle of acquaintances. In contrast, a number of respondents in 
the inner-city group had family members or acquaintances who had been in prison, and they 
spoke from this more personal perspective. The upscale urbanites did not mention any first-hand 
knowledge, but they were well read, and most seemed fairly liberal in outlook. Reflecting 
perhaps the political make-up of the urban northeast, every one of the upscale Philadelphia 
respondents told us (by confidential note) that they had voted for Vice President Al Gore in the 
2000 Presidential election. 

Generally, the suburbanites voiced much less sympathy for the plight of prisoners, and 
they seemed more likely to support a tough law-and-order view of crime and punishment. A 
number of these respondents talked about prisoners as being coddled while they were in 
prison. As one suburban man said, prison is an easy lifestyle: three hots and a cot. In contrast 
to the urban residents who reflected an awareness that more people are serving longer sentences, 
the suburban residents tended to stress the idea that people werent spending enough time in 
prison. One of our suburban respondents complained about prisoners who got out of prison too 
soon, and several other members voiced complaints about lack of truth in sentencing: 

I think that the thing that gets frustrating is the judge hands down a 
sentence; you have five years in prison. In 14 months that person is 
out. Four or five years should be four or five years, and then you let 
them [out]. They should do the time. 

Suburban female 



Several suburban residents also spontaneously said that they wanted to see prisoners doing more 
work while they were in prison, in the road gang tradition: 

I think they should be out more cleaning up the highways or the 
trains. I take the train every day down to the city, and along the 
tracks, its disgusting, especially when you go up to New York, like 
the New Jersey side of it, its horrible. Meanwhile, the prisoners are 
probably rotting away in prison. 

Suburban male 

Although the suburban group voiced enthusiasm for redirecting efforts toward prisoner 
reentry programs, nearly all of their comments conveyed a much harsher attitude toward 
criminals and prisons. For example, most of our respondentsurban or suburbansupported 
halfway houses. The urban respondents, however, seemed more likely to believe that halfway 
houses should be substituted for some jail time. The suburbanites seemed more likely to believe 
that the halfway house time should be added to the sentence, as part of the transition back into 
society, rather than substitute for some of it. 

The question, of course, arising from this pilot project is how widespread this harder-
edged take on this issue is. National polling data over a number of years suggests that the public 
tends to support a mix of what might be considered liberal and conservative approaches to 
crime. As we mentioned earlier, recent surveys suggest that more Americans are more open to 
prevention and rehabilitation strategies than they have been in the past. But the data also 
continue to show low confidence in the criminal justice system, very high support for mandatory 
life sentences for repeated violent crimes, and majority support for the death penalty.8 

8 [[Author: this footnotes repeats text from footnote 4 and 7 above. Delete?]]Gallup Organization, a survey of 1,021 
adults surveyed by telephone, June 2225, 2000. I am going to read you a list of institutions in American society. 
Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each onea great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little. 
 The criminal justice system. A great deal, 8 percent; Quite a lot, 16 percent; Some, 42 percent; Very little, 30 
percent; None (vol.), 3 percent; No opinion, 1 percent. ABC News.com Poll, a survey of 1,025 adults surveyed by 
telephone, Feb. 27March 3, 2002. Would you favor or oppose a law requiring mandatory life imprisonment for 
anyone convicted of a violent felony for the third time? Favor, 82 percent; Oppose, 14 percent; No opinion, 4 
percent. 

ABC News poll, sponsored by The Washington Post, a survey of 1,003 adults surveyed by telephone, April 20 24, 
2001. Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder? Favor, 63 percent; Oppose, 28 
percent; No opinion, 9 percent. 


Don't reward prisoners 

The most striking reservationand the one voiced with the most vehemencewas a 
concern about fairness to those who have not violated the law. Although our respondents agreed 
that it made sense to help released prisoners finding their way back into a productive role, it was 
definitely not appropriate, in their view, to give these individuals advantages over law-abiding 
citizens. One of the clearest examples concerned whether prisoners and released prisoners should 
receive financial support to get a college education. Our respondents appeared to agree that most 
meaningful jobs today require more than a GED. But as soon as we discussed the idea of helping 
prisoners get college courses, we heard a strong negative reaction from a number of our 
respondents. One of our suburban respondents was outraged when someone in the group 
mentioned that the University of Pennsylvania was teaching classes in one of the prisons. 

Its terrible because Penn is a great school that is recognized. Most 
people cant afford to go there or arent smart enough to go there. 
But people that hurt people or stole from people can go there? That 
doesnt go with me. Community college, somewhere that anyone 
can go, fine. but to get Penn credits? No, I think thats terrible. 

Suburban female 

We heard much the same response from some of our urban respondents: 

Im not so thrilled about that idea of a college education. It almost 
sounds like youre rewarding him. If a prisoner is getting 
something that a youngster who tows the line and behaves himself 
and cant afford were giving special [privileges] 

Upscale urban male 

Youre working hard for your money to send your kids to college. 
Here you have a person just coming out of prison for whatever type  


of crime, and all of a sudden they can get free education for four 
years when youre struggling, trying to put your kids through 
college and getting scholarships and everything. 

Upscale urban male 

A few respondents also voiced similar reservations about helping prisoners get a really desirable 
job, suggesting that some job programs for former prisoners might be vulnerable, especially 
when jobs are scarce or particularly desirable: 

I think it sucks that people out here trying to get a better job, and 
then there are these guys coming out of prison who say, yes, Im 
going to be a lawyer, cool. You know? Send me for four years to 
college, make me a lawyer. 

Suburban male 

Clearly these respondents are making a distinction that is very important to them. They support 
the idea of helping prisoners get meaningful postrelease work. At the same time, they react 
negatively to the idea that a released prisoner will have an easier time than someone who has not 
violated the law. 

Violent vs. nonviolent crimes 

Criminal justice professionals involved in sentencing, probation, and parole often wrestle 
with questions about which individuals pose a danger to society, which crimes are violent or 
nonviolent and which crimes could be considered victimless, since they only affect 
individuals who chose to participate, such as buying drugs or sexual favors, for example. Yet, 
there is one important caveat from this series of preliminary focus groupsif our respondents 
are representative of the population at large, many Americans may be using somewhat different 
definitions of what constitutes violence or danger to the community. 

In these focus groups, we asked respondents to define what they meant by violent versus 
nonviolent crimes, and many tended to talk about the potential for violence or damage to 


peoples lives, rather than outright violence. Many, for example, talked about drug crimes as 
violent, even if no one was explicitly hurt. One upscale urban male said, Drugs kill people, too, 
just like guns do. Others saw drugs in terms of the violent lifestyle that goes with them: If he is 
selling drugs, he probably has a gun, and he has probably used it. 

A woman from the inner city said the following about the connection between drug use 
and crime: 
Im just about sure two years ago when I was robbed in my 
apartment, somebody feeding for drugs probably broke in. I always 
feel like somewhere along the line drugs have some underlying 

criminal issue that just keeps on going. 
Our respondents were particularly concerned about crimes that were sexual or that dealt with 
children. For several respondents, the very first association to the thought of a released prisoner 
was Megans Law. Some representative quotes: 

Depends on what the crime is. I don't want a [halfway] house full of 
rapists and child pedophiles. But a couple of kids that were on 
drugs, robbery, whatever, and they kind of rehabilitated them, 
thats different. See, thats where the community comes in 
differently. America goes nuts if you mess with kids or rape. They 
just hate that. I wouldnt want that in my community, period. 

Suburban male 

I dont know if easing him back into society really works for 
rapists. Its a crime of anger against women. But when you can 
pound some woman like that, you have a problem with dealing with 
women. You cant talk to women to get what you want; you have to 
hurt her, almost forever. I have a real problem with that. 

Inner-city male 


If I found out my neighbor went to jail for beating his wife, yes, Id 
be a little leery of getting him upset and getting too close to him. 
But if he went because when he was 21, he walked in and stole 
something from the store, you chalk it up to he served the time, 
and hopefully hes a better person. Now I think it really depends 
on what it is. 

Suburban female 

Not at the expense of other good purposes 

We mentioned that many respondents said that they thought it might be a good idea to 
reallocate criminal justice funding away from increased spending on prisons toward increased 
spending on release programs. But in the groups we also asked respondents how they would feel 
about taking money from other social programs, such as welfare, child care, or higher education 
and directing it to providing better programs for prisoner reentry. We found very little support 
for this idea, even among the respondents most interested in addressing prisoner reentry 
problems. 

The respondents readily conceded that released prisoners are a high-risk group, and that 
intervention might pay off in reduced crime. But they simply did not leap from this premise to 
the notion that the public good might be served by spending the money here rather than in other 
areas. Many simply did not want society to focus on this at the expense of other social priorities. 
Just as many respondents were adamant that they didnt want to reward prisoners by giving them 
better treatment or advantages not available to other groups, people in the focus groups seemed 
very reluctant to penalize noncriminal groups by taking their funding to spend it on former 
prisoners. As we noted earlier, asked to divide a hypothetical dollar between investing more in 
prison versus doing more on prisoner reentry, respondents would immediately say they wanted 
70 or 80 percent to go for released prisoners. Yet asked to divide the dollar between prisoner 


reentry and more child care for people trying to get off welfare, most respondents immediately 
wanted the lions share of the money to go to child care. 

Conflicting Patterns of Thought 

When our respondents talked about these issues, they often voiced ideas and opinions that 
were in conflict with one another in important ways. In part, this may reflect some unfamiliarity 
with this issue and a lack of time to wrestle with the complexities involved. Public Agenda has 
often observed that when people have thought a lot about an issue and discussed and debated it 
with their friends and families, their views tend become more internally consistent and stable. 
Typically, if people have a firm grasp of an issue and have thought about it for some time, they 
will stick to their guns, even when survey questions are asked in different ways or when 
tradeoffs are posed. Prisoner reentry is, as we have said already, not one of those issues. People 
may be immediately attracted to many aspects of it, but they have not spent much time thinking 
about it. 

On the other hand, not all conflicts in public thinking resolve themselves with added 
exposure and deliberation. In some cases, people actually have two ideas in mind that are equally 
important to them, and they will continually attempt to balance and accommodate both principles 
as they think about a problem. This is not dissimilar to the problem judges and constitutional 
thinkers face attempting to balance, for example, protecting the rights of the accused with 
protecting the rights of a free press. Its never actually resolved; its a delicate balance. 
On this issue, we observed several interesting patterns of conflicted thinking, and it is not clear 
from this limited research exactly how widespread these are. Regardless of whether these 
conflicts occur in the thinking of many Americans or only a few, or whether they turn out to be 
 


short-lived or persistent, professionals and advocates working on prisoner reentry in the field are 
very likely to run into them. 

The desire to help versus the belief in punishment 

There was, as we have noted, a genuine desire on the part of many of our respondents to 
provide more support for reentering prisoners. As we saw in our earlier work on alternatives to 
incarceration, many Americans believe that people can change their lives, and that they deserve a 
chance to do so. At the same time, most of our respondents also expressed a strong conviction 
that prisoners have violated basic social norms and deserve to be punished. These two views 
sometimes, as we have seen, came into conflict, as for example, when people stressed that 
prisoners should be aided in getting meaningful jobs while, at the same time, expressing concern 
that prisoners should not receive advantages that those who have not violated the law do not get. 

A belief that people can change versus a desire to limit risk to the community 

As we note above, most of the respondents believed that many prisoners have the 
capacity to become constructive, law-abiding citizens even after they have gone astray, and they 
often voiced a seemingly sincere desire to help those who are trying to choose the right path. At 
the same time, there was also wide recognition that if a former prisoner is not successful in 
turning his or her life around, it is the community and innocent people who are likely to pay the 
price. This tension between giving people a chance and protecting the community from danger 
emerged in these focus groups and in our earlier work on alternatives to incarceration. For many 
respondents, drug crimes seemed to offer a particularly troubling case in point. 


Awareness of the difficulties prisoners face versus little tolerance for failure 

In these focus groups, respondents noted how difficult a task it is for people to go straight 
after being in prison. Many talked, in particular, about the tough challenge prisoners may face to 
give up the drug or alcohol habits that often propelled them into their current circumstances. 
Experts in rehabilitation often see failure as a customary phase in a persons attempt to move 
away from drug and alcohol abuse. Still, Public Agendas earlier work on alternatives to 
incarceration, along with national polling on sentencing for drug offenders, suggests that the 
publics tolerance for failure is quite limited. An ABC News poll shows that while less than one 
in 10 people approve of jail time for a first-time drug offender, almost 7 in 10 support jail time 
for repeat users.9 

9 ABC News.com Poll, a survey of 1,025 adults surveyed by telephone, February 27March 3, 2002. When a 
person is convicted for using drugs there can be a choice between sending them to jail or having them go to a drug 
treatment program instead. What do you think is the best way to deal with a drug user convicted for the first time 
jail or treatment? Jail, 8 percent; Treatment, 89 percent; Depends (vol.), 2 percent; No opinion, 1 percent. What do 
you think is the best way to deal with a drug user convicted several timesjail or treatment? Jail, 66 percent; 
Treatment, 24 percent; Depends (vol.), 9 percent; No opinion, 1 percent. 

The desire for case-by-case decisions versus skepticism about the judgment of criminal justice 
professionals 

In the focus groups, respondents repeatedly resisted the idea of blanket solutions to 
reentry issues. Most clearly wanted released prisoners to be treated on a case-by-case basis, and 
they were particularly concerned about the nature of the crime. On one hand, we heard clearly 
that not all criminals should be treated the same. When we asked our respondents how they felt 
about a convicted criminal not being allowed to become a hairdresser, a security guard, or even 
to carry a gun, respondents immediately pressed us for more details about the individuals. These 
judgments, they seemed to feel, should be made on an individual basis. At the same time, many 
 


of the respondents voiced relatively little confidence that criminal justice professionals 
adequately supervise prisoners or make valid predictions about their behavior. 

What Else Do We Need to Know? 

For public opinion researchers, focus groups are typically the first step in a more detailed 
survey project that confirms, disproves, amplifies, and quantifies observations from the sessions. 
As we note earlier, focus groups are notoriously poor predictors of precisely how many people 
hold particular points of view, and they generally provide limited guidance on how different 
demographic groups can be expected to respond. Focus groups can help seasoned researchers 
make educated guesses, and they provide a remarkable window on how people learn and think 
about issues, but they are generally considered formative, not conclusive, research. 
So, in this closing section, we offer some ideas about subsequent research steps and comment 
briefly on their benefits and possible uses. 

More focus groups 

A natural next step would be to conduct similar rounds of focus groups in different parts 
of the country. Replicating these discussions would provide added confidence that the educated 
guesses we make in this paper are worth pursuing. Conducting focus groups in different parts of 
the country could suggest whether regional differences and local political culture are particularly 
pivotal for prisoner reentry issues. One particular advantage of focus groups is that they can be 
observed by professionals and advocates now working on plans and programs, giving them a 
first-hand feel for how community residents talk and think about this issue. Howeverand we 
underscore this caveat stronglyeven dozens of additional focus groups across the country will 


not provide the quantitative results that can withstand scrutiny from the press and political 
leaders. Additional focus groups will not provide results that can be projected with confidence to 
the American public as a whole. 

A national random sample telephone survey 

In pragmatic terms, the random sample national telephone survey is the gold standard for 
determining what Americans nationwide think about an issue. A national survey provides 
reliable predictions of how many Americans hold particular points of view and how various 
demographic categories differ in their thinking about a topic. A well-done survey can attract the 
attention of press and elected officials, and surveys are a methodology that most find believable 
and useful. In short, a well-done national survey can help move an issue onto the national 
agenda. For professionals and advocates working in the field, having good, reliable survey data 
available can be extraordinarily useful in countering those who sometimes take the publics 
name in vain. Public discussions on controversial topics are frequently derailed or distorted by 
those who claim that Americans will never accept or that the public demands something 
without really having the facts in hand. 

Panel studies to pretest different plans and approaches 

The focus group research completed here suggests that most people can readily 
understand many questions about prisoner reentry, and consequently we are confident that the 
issue can be addressed quite well in a survey format. However, there may be specific plans or 
sets of programs that, because they require explanation, would be difficult to test through a 
telephone survey. Public Agenda and other research organizations sometimes use panel studies 


for this kind of research. Panels of respondents are gathered in various locations. They complete 
a pretest gauging their views on a given issue, and then they watch a videotape or read specially 
designed written materials that give more information and set out various options to consider. 
Then, panel respondents are retested to determine how they respond to the ideas that are 
presented and to see if their views shift as they receive new information. Public Agenda used this 
panel methodology in its research on alternatives to incarceration because we believed that we 
needed the chance to explain how various alternatives work in some detail. In this case, 
respondents saw a short videotape that described six different alternatives to incarceration, 
including restitution, intensive parole, and community service. Panels can help policymakers 
predict how communities will respond to specific sets of ideas and programs and can help fine-
tune the planning process to achieve broader community buy-in. 

Communication research 

Advertisers, advocates, and candidates for elective office often benefit from research 
designed specifically to help them present their ideas in the most persuasive and compelling 
fashion. The research itself might include both focus group and survey components, but the 
distinctive quality to communications research is that it focuses on just what it sayshow to 
communicate effectively. Communications research often tests alternative messages to determine 
which are most attention getting and compelling; it often tests the reliability and persuasiveness 
of different messengers or advocates. Sometimes communications research attempts to identify 
specific segments of the population that are likely to be supportive and, therefore, should be 
considered the first target in efforts to build a local or national movement. This kind of research 
is typically conducted by commercial firms on a proprietary basis. 
 


Public engagement and dialogue 

Conducting formal opinion research is costly, and it takes time. A carefully designed, 
well-executed focus group and survey project could easily take nine months to complete, not 
counting the time needed to secure funding for it. It is quite likely that some of those working on 
prisoner reentry at the grassroots level need some way to reach out to communities and the 
broader public in a quicker time frame. One way to move forward might be to use public 
engagement or dialogue techniques to stimulate local discussion. While public engagement is 
research-basedthat is, the approach and materials are designed expressly to address the 
publics starting pointit is not research. It is essentially designed to help with consensus 
building, and it is particularly useful when communities must grapple with issues that are 
unfamiliar or that are threatening or controversial. Public engage ment uses discussion techniques 
originally developed by Daniel Yankelovich and pretested by Public Agenda and other 
organizations on issues ranging from health care to nuclear arms to public education. While we 
do not have a full, quantitative understanding of where Americans now stand on prisoner reentry, 
the focus groups conducted for this pilot project do offer a good prediction of the themes and 
concerns that would need to be addressed in public engagement efforts. Our sense is that it 
would be possible to design an effective, credible public engagement effort with only a modest 
amount of additional research.