Does it Pay to Invest in Reentry Programming
for Jail Inmates?
John Roman
Aaron Chalfin
Justice Policy Center
The Urban Institute
Presented at:
The Urban Institute
Jail Reentry Roundtable
Washington, DC  June 27th, 2006
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be
attributed to The Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
URBAN INSTITUTE
Justice Policy Center
Study Findings
Under a variety of conditions, jail-based reentry
programs would have to reduce recidivism by less
than two percent to offset the additional cost of jailbased programming.
• Estimate 70% of the benefit will accrue to the
public, from reduced victimizations, and
• 30% of the benefit will accrue to the criminal justice
system.
• However, for CJ systems to recoup gains, they must
plan for benefits.
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Study Design
Our goal is to estimate the economic impact of providing jailbased reentry services to jail inmates.
Standard cost-benefit analysis to determine:
(a) the likely effects of providing reentry programming to jail
inmates
(b) the conditions under which reentry programming is most
cost-beneficial
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Study Design
Study consists of the following steps:
1) Estimate the costs of providing reentry services (CRS)
2) Estimate costs of new crime from expected offending:
– Develop estimates of the costs of processing offenders in the
criminal justice system (CJS)
– Develop estimates of the costs of new crimes to victims (CV)
•
Use 1 and 2 to estimate the amount of expected crime that
would have to be prevented in order to make investment in
jail-based reentry programming cost-neutral
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Study Design
Breakeven Recidivism Rate (r) = CRS/ (CV+CJS) where:
Thought experiment for ‘Capital City’
Invests $200,000 in new reentry services
Costs of expected crime are $1,000,000 to crime victims
Costs of expected crime are $1,000,000 to CJS
r= $200,000/ ($1M+$1M) or 10%
So, Capital City would have to see a recidivism reduction of 10%
to break even.
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What are the costs of reentry
programming?
First, estimate the costs of providing reentry services (CRS)
The costs of providing reentry services include:
• Life skills counseling
• Substance abuse counseling
• Employment and education services
• Healthcare
• Other services
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Expected costs of reentry services
The cost of providing reentry services varies by jurisdiction due
to differences in length of stay, service costs
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What are the expected costs of new
crimes?
The benefits of providing reentry services include:
• Averted costs to victims (CV)
– Lost wages
– Medical care
– Pain and suffering
• Averted costs to the criminal justice system (CJS)
– Investigation
– Arrest and Prosecution
– Incarceration
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What are the expected costs of new
crimes?
Steps to calculating expected costs:
1) Estimate expected costs to criminal justice system:
•
•
processing;
incarceration.
2) Estimate costs to victims;
3) Estimate distribution of new crimes;
4) Sum it up!
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What are the costs of processing new
offenders in the CJS?
Cohen, Miller & Rossman (1994) estimate the cost of arrest and
processing offenders for a variety of offense categories in
Miami-Dade County:
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What are the costs of processing new
offenders in the CJS?
Allen County, IN (2004) estimates costs of arrest and processing offenders
in their county. Combined with Miami data yields:
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What are the costs of new crimes for
victims?
Based on estimates from McCollister (2004) the average cost to
victims for each offense type are:
• Violent offense: $145,332
• Property offense: $3,144
• Drug offense: $8,595
• Public order offense (includes DUI): $13,179
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What are the total costs of new crimes?
The total cost of a recidivism offense to society is summarized by
the following chart:
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
What kinds of new crimes do we
‘expect’ released inmates to commit?
Aos (2001) provides a portfolio of “expected” recidivism
offenses for a given instant offense type:
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Assessing Reentry: Four Hypothetical
Jurisdictions
Crime varies by jurisdiction deals. Construct four plausible
scenarios.
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Breakeven Recidivism Rates
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
How much of the benefit accrues to
government agencies?
Approximately 70% of the benefits of reentry services accrue to crime
victims But modest reductions in recidivism from reentry services
remain cost-effective for government agencies.
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Will jails be able to demonstrate gains to
policymakers?
Tangible gains to jails can not be estimated.
Since 1990, crime has declined almost 20%. At the same time,
jail capacity has increased every year and total capacity has
doubled.
So if declining crimes leads to increases in jail inmates, how
can any savings occur?
Solution
Resources will never remain on the table, they must be taken
off the table before they are spent.
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center
Can the system be incentivized to yield
tangible gains?
Inmates already have their behavior incentivized.
At the CJS level, must adopt policies that determine who is
responsible for certain behaviors.
Individuals in the system must have incentives to engage in
pro-reentry activities.
Agencies in the system must ‘own’ inmate behaviors pre- and
post-release and be accountable.
URBAN INSTITUTE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Justice Policy Center