Transforming Offender Reentry into Public Safety: Lessons from OJP'S Reentry Partnership Initiative

• Author: Douglas Young,James M. Byrne,Faye S. Taxman
• Published date: 01 December 2003
• Date: 01 December 2003
• DOI: 10.3818/JRP.5.2.2003.101
• Subject Matter: Article

reentry Partnership Initiative • 101

*Transforming Offender Reentry intoTransforming Offender Reentry into

Transforming Offender Reentry intoTransforming Offender Reentry into

Transforming Offender Reentry into

Public Safety: Public Safety:

Public Safety: Public Safety:

Public Safety:

Lessons from OJP’sLessons from OJP’s

Lessons from OJP’sLessons from OJP’s

Lessons from OJP’s

Reentry Partnership InitiativeReentry Partnership Initiative

Reentry Partnership InitiativeReentry Partnership Initiative

Reentry Partnership Initiative

Faye S. Taxman

Douglas Young

University of Maryland, College Park

James M. Byrne

University of Massachusetts, Lowell

JUSTICE RESEARCH AND POLICY, Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 2003

© 2003 Justice Research and Statistics Association

This project is sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) under grant

2000IJCX0045. All opinions are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinion of the

sponsoring agency. The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions and efforts

of each of the eight Reentry Partnership Initiatives that provided a fruitful learning envi-

ronment, and Ms. Janice Munsterman, the NIJ Program Officer.

*Abstract

The Reentry Partnership Initiative (RPI) was one of three early efforts by the Office

of Justice Programs (OJP) to explore community-based models for offender reinte-

gration. This article describes the RPI concept as developed in eight sites, and the

issues that are encountered in reframing reentry to focus on community-oriented

public safety goals. It begins with a discussion of the RPI concept and presents a

reentry model that incorporates features identified by the researchers and practi-

tioners as the core components of the RPI approach. Following a discussion of the

methods used in the study, results of the sites’ efforts to design and implement the

reentry model are presented, including potential implications for future efforts.

102 • Justice Research and Policy

With over 600,000 offenders scheduled to exit the nation’s federal and state

prison systems annually and return to the community, it is not surprising that

offender reentry has become a concern. Reviews of past and present efforts in

corrections underscore the difficulties of building transitional and discharge plan-

ning into correctional programs, and highlight the tremendous challenges faced

by correctional agencies confronting community reintegration issues (Petersilia,

2003). As long as correctional agencies continue to conceptualize the problem

of reentry organizationally (single area of responsibility) rather than systemati-

cally (shared responsibility for reentering offenders), it is likely that they will

continue to muddle through reentry alone.

The Reentry Partnership Initiative (RPI) was one of three early efforts by

the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) to explore community-based models for

offender reintegration. (Other models include reentry courts and some Weed

and Seed projects.) These early programs were precursors to more recent ef-

forts—such as OJP’s Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI)—

that signal a new approach to reentry that moves outside the organizational

sandbox to form systemwide partnerships involving an array of governmental

and nongovernmental agencies. In practice, offender reintegration represents an

ideal, rather than a routine, practice for corrections, as institutional corrections

tends to be traditionally concerned with prison management. The RPI was de-

signed to connect governmental and community organizations in the design and

implementation of both the policies and operations underlying the process of

reintegrating offenders into the community. At the policy level, the emphasis is

on the roles and resources of different organizations or entities (e.g., housing,

transportation, parole, treatment, faith-based, etc.) involved in the reintegra-

tion process. This process focuses on the barriers to reintegration, such as hous-

ing, employment, transportation, and other areas where access by offenders

may be difficult. (For a discussion of the changes in federal regulations and/or

policies in these areas, see Petersilia, 2003, and Taxman, Byrne, and Young,

2003). At the operational level, the partnership focuses on creating seamless

processes for addressing and managing the offender’s risk to the community.

The partnership approach was conceptualized as a course of action to arm

prison administrators with partners who could supply the resources needed to

improve and maintain public safety in the community. The underlying premise

of this approach is that formal criminal justice agencies—police, the courts,

institutional and community corrections—play a role not only in immediate

offender processing and control (e.g., arrest, conviction, incarceration, release)

but also in long-term offender change (e.g., housing, employment, family, men-

tal health, substance abuse, criminal thinking, community attachments, etc.).

The partnership concept also recognizes that criminal justice agencies cannot

bring about successful reintegration alone. Long-term reintegration of the of-

fender in the community requires involvement of both formal service agencies—

employment, community-based service providers, housing—as well as informal