Development and Testing of a Multicomponent Evidence-Based Prisoner Reentry Program

Background: Despite well over a decade of prisoner reentry program development and evaluation, an evidence-based prisoner reentry program has not been fully established. Social work has organized around the grand challenge to “promote smart decarceration” because the profession acknowledges that 77% of people who go to prison are re-arrested for a new crime within 5 years of release from incarceration. Social work researchers and others have established that this exceedingly high failure rate is a result of inadequate post-release supports. Social workers are responding to the challenge of reducing high rates of re-arrest because re-incarceration trends have disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable and marginalized communities. The current study is the result of a first-of-its kind public-private-academic initiative developed in a school of social work in order to bring together the best available evidence and resources to create and test a highly sophisticated and potent prisoner reentry program model. This study describes the research and development of this holistic, integrated behavioral health model of a prisoner reentry program undergoing a historically large randomized controlled trial (n=1700).

 Methods: A comprehensive review of 107,598 published and unpublished studies was conducted. Two hundred combinations of search hedges using Ebsco, Web of Science, and Pubmed were used to identify the studies. Search criteria included: program, intervention, service, and randomized controlled trial. Because few randomized controlled trials have been conducted with criminal justice-involved populations, intervention studies conducted with five additional populations were also reviewed. Those populations included: people with substance use disorders, individuals with severe and persistent mental illnesses, persons who are homeless, military veterans, and juvenile justice-involved samples. Of the 107,598 initial abstracts, 1,053 met the criteria of intervention/program/service and undergone a randomized controlled trial. The remaining 1,053 were reviewed by researchers (Cohen’s kappa = .724) and a community advisory group of practitioners and individuals with incarceration histories. Evidence-based unimodal interventions addressing mental health, substance use disorders, cognitive and relational skills, life skills, and job readiness were selected by the team and braided together into one manualized curriculum.   

Results: The manualized curriculum, entitled Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model for Successful Reentry and Well-Being Development, was informed by the community advisory group and created by the research team. The curriculum includes an integrated theoretical framework, conceptual model identifying key mechanisms of action and empirical support, group and individual sessions, sample schedules and client profiles, as well as a standardized assignment process into treatment. This represents the first and most comprehensive evidence-based behavioral model for prisoner reentry undergoing the largest randomized controlled trial of its kind.

Conclusion: Social work is uniquely positioned to lead transdisciplinary efforts responding to high incarceration rates in the United States and redress social disparities rampant among these rates. Social workers’ ecological lens of social justice and behavioral intervention innovation fills a critical gap in current programming efforts for those releasing from prison. This manualized curriculum developed by a team of social workers has tremendous potential to advance the science and practice of prisoner reentry work.