Do temporary releases reduce re-offending?
Temporary releases from prison are generally meant to lessen the impact of institutionalisation, facilitate transition into civilian life, and also help prisoners achieve offence-free lifestyles by strengthening or re-establishing family and social ties. This practice also potentially allows for offenders to make arrangements for accommodation and work.
The practice is widespread. For example, a survey of 49 correctional agencies in the US revealed that all but one had a formal re-entry programme in place. The majority of these programmes targeted job readiness, community resource, housing, and family reunification. The practice of temporary release in England and Wales is also growing, and in 2002 there were over a quarter of a million temporary release grants with the overwhelming majority of these being for family reasons.
Despite its widespread use in both North America and Europe, the question remains as to whether, and to what extent temporary release fulfils its intended aims, rehabilitative or otherwise.
Although this practice was condemned in the mid 1970s (along with almost every other rehabilitative initiative), little attention appears to have been paid to evaluating temporary releases up until comparatively recently, and those reviews which had been published were far from comprehensive or systematic.
In an attempt to fill this knowledge gap, Cheliotis (2008)1 has published what he terms a “systematic review” of this area.
Selecting only evaluations which were carried out to a reasonable standard of methodological rigour, he considered five evaluations of home leave schemes which met the criteria for inclusion in the review, and 12 studies in the area of work release which met the inclusion criteria.
On the basis of the evidence in the home leave evaluations, Cheliotis was able to conclude that such schemes can be effective in decreasing return to custody and post-release arrest rates, but there was insufficient evidence to draw any conclusions with respect to reconviction rates.
The review also analysed the outcome for those prisoners who had been granted work release and evaluated their downstream offending, finding that work release schemes could be effective in decreasing return to custody and post-release arrest rates of ex-offenders. Moreover, this finding also received strong support from a variety of studies which were not formally included in the review because of methodological weaknesses.
1: Cheliotis LK, (2008), Reconsidering The Effectiveness Of Temporary Release: A Systematic Review, Aggression and Violent Behaviour, 13, pp 133-158.
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