By Columbia University Justice Lab, et al.

With the closing of Rikers Island, New York City has a unique opportunity to revolutionize the treatment of women and gender-expansive people who are currently at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers.

The Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, the Center for Justice, and the Columbia University Justice Lab collaborated with the Women’s Community Justice Association and HR&A Advisors on a report detailing the design, model and operations of “The Women’s Center for Justice,” a proposed first-of-its kind gender-responsive, trauma-informed facility. The report calls for New York City and State to come together to transform the Lincoln Correctional site at West 110th Street into a site for women and gender-expansive people. Lincoln, which is owned by the state, is currently not in operation and could easily be converted into a facility for women and gender-expansive individuals. Lincoln is zoned as a correctional facility and would not need to go through a lengthy land-use review process.

The report outlines a groundbreaking “Reentry at Entry” approach and holistic care model that aims to end the cycle of incarceration.

New York: Columbia University Justice Lab, 2022. 38p.

By Rachel Cordle and Eleanor Gale

This synthesis provides an overview of evidence on what works to reduce reoffending, updating evidence previously published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in 2013 and 2014. 1,2 It revisits some of the same areas as the previous reviews, including more recent evidence and incorporating new areas such as debt and community ties. Given the breadth of different activities and interventions that exist, this summary focuses upon the evidence base for some of the key areas of MoJ policymaking, but it is clearly not exhaustive. Evidence is drawn primarily from a series of Rapid Evidence Assessments (REAs) conducted by academics working in the field of reducing reoffending in 2022. REAs were used to compile sections on: Accommodation, Education, Employment, Finance, Benefits and Debt, and Community Ties. The REAs focused upon the effectiveness of these types of interventions to reduce reoffending but included some additional follow up questions such as features of effective interventions of different types, and for whom they may be most effective. A REA was also commissioned on theories of desistance. For the remaining sections, MoJ analysts conducted internal reviews of recent evidence. When assessing effectiveness, findings from meta-analyses were used where available, as there can be greater confidence in findings drawn from a series of studies than from single evaluations. Studies that included any comparison group were eligible for inclusion, with a focus on evidence drawn from England & Wales (although international studies were eligible for inclusion). Table 1 summarises the overall strength of the meta-analytical evidence base for the effectiveness by intervention type and provides an indication of the scale of the potential reduction in reoffending for some specific intervention approaches (where relevant). Some interventions appear to have potential to deliver larger reductions in reoffending than others, however it is likely the greatest reduction will be achieved where interventions are well-matched to the individual. Where the evidence base is classified as ‘insufficient’, this reflects an evidence gap and does not imply that type of intervention does not work. Table 1 includes only the results of meta-analyses when providing an indication of the potential scale of impact by specific intervention approach. In areas where there are lots of different types of interventions used (such as employment), the meta-analytical evidence base may be weakened by the lack of comparability across studies. In addition, some of the areas covered are more closely linked to reoffending than others. For example, there is evidence that reoffending is lower amongst prison leavers who find employment. In contrast, there is a more nuanced, moderated relationship between mental health and reoffending. Mental health (like physical health) is a foundational area for work with offenders but does not in itself link directly to reoffending. Note also that table 1 reviews only evidence for the potential scale of effectiveness. Readers should refer to the relevant chapter for more detail on the wider evidence base for specific interventions of interest. Evidence gaps common across the different intervention areas include a need for more UK-based evaluation, a need for individual evaluation reports to better capture programme design characteristics that can affect success, and a need for greater understanding of what works best for different groups. It would also be helpful to have more consistency in how outcomes are measured, in order to more reliably compare which interventions have the biggest impacts.

London: Ministry of Justice, 2025. 60p.

By Andrew Blum

Rise Up Industries emerged from the work of Kairos Prison Ministry in the early 2010s. During an event organized by Kairos at the Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries5 in Los Angeles challenged Joseph Gilbreath, a Kairos volunteer, to establish something similar in San Diego. In response, Gilbreath, Ross Provenzano, and other Kairos volunteers founded RUI in 2013. The mission statement of RUI reads: Rise Up Industries minimizes gang involvement by providing integrated gang prevention, gang intervention, and post-detention reentry services. RUI describes their longer-term goal for this three-pronged approach as breaking the “intergenerational cycle of gang violence.”  RUI began by launching their 18-month reentry program in 2016, after just over three years of research on the needs in San Diego and the organizations already working on reentry services in San Diego County. According to RUI leadership, they launched the reentry program first in part because alumni of the reentry program could then participate in their gang prevention and intervention efforts. RUI is currently laying the foundation for more robust gang prevention programming through a series of speaking engagements, in which reentry program participants and alumni speak with at-risk and justice-involved youth with the goal of assisting them in making more positive life choices. As part of these efforts, RUI is also developing an MOU with Monarch School. Monarch School is a school in San Diego that educates children impacted by homelessness. Participants in the program will continue to regularly visit the school to speak with the students. RUI’s future plans for its gang prevention and intervention initiatives will be discussed in more detail below. 

San Diego: University of San Diego, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice,  2022. 25p.

By David Spencer 

We need more prisons. Amongst the “small stratum of intellectuals, semi-intellectuals and hooligans” who have a “politically motivated contempt for law and order” , it may well be fashionable to suggest otherwise. However, a lack of prison places has led to the Government choosing to release prison inmates earlier than they would otherwise have been. Police officers have been instructed to consider “pausing” arrests due to the lack of prison space. The judiciary have been told to consider prison capacity limits when sentencing those convicted of criminal offences. The most prolific offenders, when convicted of ‘indictable-only’ or ‘eitherway’ offences, are imprisoned on only 46.2% of occasions. A substantial majority of the public, 80% according to recent polling, believe the country should build more prisons. The Labour Party’s 2024 General Election Manifesto said: “Labour recognises that prisons are of national importance and therefore will use all relevant powers to build the prisons so badly needed.” In this report, we outline: 1. The current state of the prison estate and Prison Service: demonstrating that the English and Welsh prison system is in an utterly parlous state and as a result failing across almost every aspect of its core purpose. A wholesale change in leadership and culture across the Prison Service is required. 2. How many more prison places the system requires: recommending a substantial increase in the size of the prison estate with an additional 43,000 prison places (and an additional 10,000 prison cells to eliminate overcrowding) over the next decade. 3. The costs involved: to deliver the substantial increase in the prison estate, we recommend a reallocation of funding from other Government departments, with an increase in public spending on prisons of approximately £6.5bn in capital expenditure and approximately £1.7bn in annual resource expenditure. 4. The necessary changes to the regulatory regime: the Government has announced that it intends for prisons to receive planning permission through the Crown Development Route in order to reduce the amount of time taken for new prisons to receive planning permission. All future prisons should receive planning permission through this route. 5. What type of prisons the Government should deliver: the substantial prison building programme we propose will require an expansion of all types of the male prison estate, with new standards in the design and a shift in the location of the estate to ensure that every prisoner is able to undertake the necessary training, education and rehabilitation we envisage. Building a new generation of prisons is a challenging prospect. A great, or an even greater challenge, will be simultaneously creating a prison system which treats those in the State’s care in such a way that on release prisoners have a greater chance of leading productive lives, without continuing to commit crime. Properly incentivising prisoners towards such an objective is vital – that is why we condemn the current practice of automatic early release for almost all prisoners. We recommend a shift to a system of ‘earned early release’. In addition, the Government should examine previous recommendations in this domain made by Policy Exchange – relating to sentencing reform, prison reform and a bolstering of the entire community sentence regime.8 On additional funding: there is no scope to increase overall government spending. So any increase in funding to finance additional prisons must come from reductions in other sorts of public spending. This paper does not lay out in detail what other spending ought to be cut, but with government spending as a share of GDP at a post-war high, there is ample scope for the level of savings that would be required. Civil service staffing, the benefits bill, overseas aid and the regime for uprating pensions should all be reviewed. This Labour Government has come to believe that it has only a ‘narrow path’ to tread when it comes to law and order. On one side maintaining the confidence of the law-abiding majority; on the other acting in the interests of the ‘stakeholders’ and noisy activists who seek a more ‘progressive’ approach to those who choose to commit crime. This is exactly the kind of challenge that Labour Party strategists will have to navigate amidst its own internal ‘coalition politics’. It is also a debate which readily plays out in the Parliamentary Labour Party. On one side are those MPs, often hailing from the ‘Red Wall’, who understand that only a Labour Party that is “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” has any chance of retaining and winning support beyond a narrow sliver of ultra-progressives. On the other side are the Labour MPs who have, amongst other activities, vigorously campaigned against joint enterprise laws (which are key in the fight against crime) and claimed that some communities are “over-policed” despite those communities simultaneously being ravaged by knife and gang crime. Labour’s challenge in Government is to show to ordinary working people that it understands that the greatest threats they face come not from State oppression in the form of more prison places, but rather from an insufficiency of law and order – thus empowering the criminals and gangs who wilfully immiserate their lives. Too often Ministers, senior civil servants and the judiciary are insulated from the real-life consequences of their decisions relating to law and order. Many do not live or walk on dangerous and messy streets, or have to live next to those who have made criminality and anti-social behaviour a way of life. If Government wishes to genuinely serve the public – the vast majority of whom are living productive and law-abiding lives – Ministers must recognise that a less permissive environment for crime is required. Central to that is that the minority of people who do commit most crime should be far more likely to be in prison than is currently the case. This report shows Ministers how to deliver on a core element of such a plan     

London: Policy Exchange 2025. 55p.

By Robin Olsen, Constance Hull, Barbara Pierce, Ashlin Oglesby-Neal

Many states have enacted comprehensive justice system reforms to reduce the use of incarceration and community supervision with the aim of focusing resources on people at higher risk of reoffending and investing in strategies to achieve better outcomes for people and communities. Missouri (in 2012) and Oregon (in 2013) passed legislation to implement earned discharge from supervision for people who fulfill their supervision conditions. The states use two different approaches; Missouri’s approach awards credits automatically for each month of compliance while Oregon’s approach includes a review of compliance at the midpoint of supervision to consider earned discharge and gives local supervision authorities discretion over implementation of the policy. We conducted interviews with stakeholders and analyzed administrative data in both states to examine the implementation and effects of the earned discharge policy reform. Our analysis found that people who receive earned discharge serve less of their original supervision sentence (2 years shorter on average in Missouri and 13 months shorter on average in Oregon) and less of their sentence when compared to people who successfully complete supervision in other ways. Importantly, rates of the use of earned discharge can vary across a state when discretion at the individual or county-level is a large component of the policy design. The analysis also found that people closing their supervision terms through earned discharge or earned compliance credits have similar recidivism rates compared to people who were otherwise eligible for earned discharge but who successfully complete supervision in other ways. This brief offers recommendations that Missouri, Oregon, and other jurisdictions can consider to build on these reforms, including clearly and simply defining eligibility for earned discharge, and reducing the discretion of judges or supervision staff to determine people’s eligibility to ensure consistency and equity in the application of earned discharge.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2022. 51p.

By Jane Mitchell

In today's polarized political climate, criminal justice reform remains one of the few issues that spans partisan divides. Voices from across the political spectrum agree: the United States needs a new approach to incarceration. Our current system of mass incarceration is costly, ineffective, and inequitable. It perpetuates intergenerational cycles of crime and poverty and pushes communities deeper into destitution.

This Article proposes a radically new approach. It presents a diversionary alternative-to-prison model for people facing serious felony charges — the majority of the prison population today. The approach calls on courts to divert felony offenders away from prison toward 501c3-run campuses. Instead of going to prison, offenders live and learn at a residential campus for one to three years. While there, they engage in a holistic, evidence-based program targeting their individual needs. In exchange for completing the program, participants have their prison sentences suspended and records expunged. Participants return home with the skills, mindsets, and support networks needed to succeed in modern society. Critically, government agencies hold campuses accountable for outcomes using an administrative structure similar to that used by high-performing urban charter schools — incentivizing stakeholders to reduce recidivism and alleviate poverty.

After laying out the model on paper, this Article presents a case study of The Reset Foundation ("Reset"), a non-profit organization I launched to pilot the model in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2018. Reset's experience suggests the model is a potentially powerful one for diverting felony offenders away from prison toward better life outcomes: with its first cohort of ten students, Reset eliminated ninety years of prison time. The case study simultaneously shows the complexities and challenges of implementing a model as comprehensive and systemic as this. To increase the chances of successful adoption, the public sector should instigate this work, not the non-profit sector, with significant support from local communities.

Kentucky Law Review, Volume 113, No. 2 (2025), 63p.

By Marco Castillo∗ Sera Linardi† Ragan Petrie‡

Many previously incarcerated individuals are rearrested in the months and years following release from prison. We investigate whether encouragement to use reentry support services reduces rearrest. Field experiment participants are offered a monetary incentive to complete different dosages of visits, either three or five, to a support service provider. The incentive groups increased visits compared to the control group, with those in the 3-visit treatment completing the most. Intent-to-treat effects on rearrest are null in the full sample, but Black participants who complete 3-4 visits are 21.8 percentage points less likely to be rearrested.

Unpublished paper, 2024. , 44p.

By Erin Thorvaldson and Kendric Holder

To address various criminal justice challenges, from 2014 to 2015, Alabama partnered with The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center to employ a Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) approach and analyze the state’s criminal justice data, interview stakeholders from across the criminal justice system, and work with policymakers to develop data-driven policy options designed to reduce prison overcrowding and increase public safety. As a result of this work, Alabama leaders enacted Act 2015-185 in May 2015, which aimed to strengthen community-based supervision, divert people convicted of the lowest-level drug and property offenses from prison to Community Corrections Programs, and ensure supervision for everyone upon release from prison to reduce recidivism. This brief explores how Alabama has addressed its JRI goals since enacting this legislation.

New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2024. 5p.

By Sophie Shanshory

For individuals on probation and those reentering their communities after incarceration, finding employment is often one of multiple challenges. It can be overwhelming to think about finding and maintaining a job when concerns on an individual’s mind might be How will I get there? What if they find out about my record? Will I make enough money to support myself and my family? Employment is an important factor in reentry but getting to a place where the focus can be on a job, education, or a career requires support in other parts of life as well. In the workforce development field, supportive services are used to respond to a range of needs, encompassing those directly related to and outside of work. These services are considered an important complement to employment-focused services provided through local workforce development systems.

The Los Angeles County Innovative Employment Solutions Program (INVEST) is designed to address the complex range of employment and supportive service needs individuals may have and support them in pursuing their employment and career goals. MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social research organization, is studying INVEST along with several other Los Angeles County–based, criminal legal system and reentry-focused programs. INVEST takes an innovative approach to providing employment and supportive services to people on probation in Los Angeles County. The program prepares staff members to understand the unique needs and challenges of people on probation while at the same time using a flexible spending approach that allows for comprehensive service provision.

New York: MDRC, 2023. 12p.

By Michelle S. Manno, Ann Bickerton, Bret Barden, Niko Leiva, Megan Schwartz

Evidence for coordinated reentry—or the coordination of services from multiple community provid­ers—shows that it is a promising approach to supporting people with mental health needs or substance use disorders who are released from correctional facilities. One such program is the Reentry Intensive Case Management Services (RICMS) program. Through a network of 29 community-based providers located across Los Angeles County, the RICMS program links individuals with prior criminal legal system involvement to community health workers—most of whom have lived experience with the criminal legal system, housing instability, or mental health issues. For about one year, the community health workers provide care coordination and help clients navigate the many services and other forms of support available to them.

This report presents findings from the RICMS evaluation, which is part of the Los Angeles County Reentry Integrated Services Project (LA CRISP), a multiyear, multistudy evaluation of services offered by the Los Angeles County Reentry Division that is led by MDRC. The RICMS evaluation includes a process study and outcomes study of the RICMS program that are based on analyses of administrative records and management information system data for people who enrolled in the program between April 2018 and March 2021; a survey of program staff members and man­agers from April 2022; and semistructured interviews with program managers, staff members, and participants that were conducted between June 2019 and August 2022. The study used a nonexperimental approach to compare the health and criminal legal system outcomes of individuals who enrolled and participated in the RICMS program with those of individuals in a matched comparison group who enrolled but did not participate in the program. In the absence of a random­ized controlled trial, this exploratory quasi-experimental analysis provides some initial information about the differences in outcomes that could be due to participation in the program.

Overall, the results suggest that the RICMS approach to coordinated, community-based reentry is promising and could improve the life experiences of program participants, especially by reducing their future contact with the criminal legal system.

New York: MDRC, 2023. 103p.

By Niko Leiva, Osvaldo Avila

As an alternative to incarceration, in 2018 Los Angeles County launched the Reentry Intensive Case Management Services (RICMS) program. The RICMS program coordinates the services of multiple community-based service providers throughout LA County. It links people who have been involved with the criminal legal system to commu­nity health workers, many of whom have personal experience with incarceration, sub­stance use disorders and addiction, and other issues RICMS clients face. These commu­nity health workers provide case management services and mentorship, and help clients navigate the many services and other forms of support available to them.

MDRC evaluated the implementation of the RICMS program and found that the program is a promising approach to improving the lives of its clients, particu­larly by reducing their future contact with the criminal legal system. As part of the evaluation, in 2021 and 2022 an MDRC research team conducted semistructured interviews with RICMS community health workers and clients to learn more about how services are delivered and about the experiences of RICMS clients. This brief presents the stories and experiences they shared.

New York: MDRC, 2023. 10p.

By Gabriel Weinberger, Raul Armenta, and Elisa Nicolett

In the United States there are approximately 3.7 million people under community supervision—also known as probation or parole. People under community supervision often need supportive services, such as behavioral health (to deal with mental health and substance use disorders), education, employment, housing, and transportation services. Such services are usually provided by local governments or community-based organizations, which play a pivotal role in helping people under supervision to avoid contact with the criminal legal system. Probation officers typically provide referrals for services, though research suggests that a low percentage of people under community supervision end up receiving services. Studies have also shown that those affected by the criminal legal system, including those under community supervision, live in marginalized and under-funded communities, and lack adequate access to services. As a result, researchers, practitioners, and advocates have worked to develop programs that increase the supply of available services and lead to greater cooperation with social services providers in the community to connect people to services. Recent innovations within probation departments (about 80 percent of people under community supervision are on probation and they are the focus of this brief) have incorporated a “community hub” model where multiple service providers are located in the same places as probation offices to facilitate access to services for clients and to raise officers’ awareness of those services. This brief describes an MDRC study of a community hub model in Los Angeles (LA) County, the Developing Opportunities and Offering Reentry Solutions Community Reentry Center (better known as “DOORS”). DOORS was established inside a building where probation officers also work. The DOORS model is intended to provide probation officers with the opportunity to connect adults on probation to service providers located within the same building with the goal of reducing future involvement in the criminal legal system. However, within eight months of opening, the COVID-19 pandemic forced DOORS to shift to a hybrid model where services were provided both in person and virtually. Since study data collection ended, DOORS has expanded in LA County as a hybrid model that is not always co-located in a probation building.

New York: MDRC.2025. 20p.

By Brady P. Horn, Aakrit Joshi and Paul Guerin

Substance use disorders (SUD) are very prevalent and costly in the United States and New Mexico. Over 20 million individuals in the US meet diagnostic criteria for SUD and over 65 thousand US residents died from drug opioid overdose in 2020. It is well known that there is a strong correlation between SUD and incarceration. National studies have found that on average two thirds of prisoners have SUD and approximately 30% of inmates report having an opioid use disorder (OUD). There is growing momentum nationally to incorporate SUD, particularly OUD treatment, into incarceration systems and numerous studies have found that providing medication for opioids use disorder (MOUD) in incarceration systems is clinically effective. Since 2005, there has been a Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) continuation program within the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) where individuals who were already receiving community-based treatment could continue their treatment within the jail. Prior work has found that this program was associated with reduced crime. In 2017 this program was expanded and started providing treatment to individuals who had not been receiving methadone in the community prior to incarceration. In this study we evaluate the impact of this treatment program. Data was collected from numerous different sources, linked, thoroughly cleaned, and a difference-in-difference empirical strategy is used. Robust evidence is found that MMT initiation reduced reincarceration. Our main results find that MMT initiation is associated with a per-person reduction in 19 incarceration days in the one-year period after jail-based MMT was received. We also find evidence confirming prior studies that found MMT continuation reduces recidivism. We find that jail-based MMT continuation is associated with a per-person reduction in 31 incarceration days in the one-year period post release. Also, a heterogenous treatment effect is found where individuals that received jail-based MMT for longer periods of time had larger reductions in reincarceration. Individuals who received MMT initiation for 70 days or more were associated with 22 fewer reincarceration days and individuals that received MMT continuation were associated with 60 fewer reincarceration days.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Institute for Social Research, 2023. 43p

By Breanna Boyett, Camella Rosenberg,  Paul Guerin,

As an alternative to incarceration program, the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Community Custody Program (CCP) aims to reduce recidivism rates among non- violent offenders while decreasing alcohol and substance use for a higher possibility of successful community reintegration. The program provides community-based supervision and treatment reporting for offenders who meet eligibility criteria. This review is designed as a process evaluation and a preliminary outcome evaluation. The evaluation comprises a CCP staff survey and a review of CCP inmate records. The study found that clients who participated in CCP experienced reductions in criminal justice system contacts following CCP. Approximately 70% of CCP participants did not have a court case following their exposure to CCP during the post-period, and 70% were not booked into the MDC following their exposure period. Inmates enrolled in CCP had a statistically significant reduction in both bookings and court cases after involvement in the program. When comparing pre- and post-period bookings and court cases, both felony and misdemeanor level bookings illustrated a statistically significant reduction in the follow up cases in the post-period. Clients who recidivated had the highest number of court cases and bookings in the first year after their time in the program, with recidivism decreasing in the second and third years following their release from CCP. The average client who recidivated did so in the first year post-CCP.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Institute for Social Research , 2023. 37p.