Maggie VanDerMolen
May 9, 2014
SWRK 258
Second Chance Act
During the last four decades, the prison population in the United States as swollen
to an unprecedented size. As recently as 2010 the incarceration rate was five times
greater than was in 1972 and currently there are about 2.3 million people imprisoned in
the US (Zimring, 2010) (National Association of Advancement of Colored People, 2008).
The continual increase in the incarceration rate and the exponential growth of prison
populations has placed an incredible burden on the U.S. economy. This unsustainable
demographic shift was the catalyst for the creation of the Second Chance Act of 2007:
Community Safety Through Recidivism Prevention, or commonly known as the Second
Chance Act (SCA).Through the creation of this act, the US government hoped to improve
the services provided to individuals transitioning out of prison by government agencies
and non-profits, and thereby reduce the national recidivism rates.
The SCA is expected to reduce the national recidivism rate by providing
additional support for individuals transitioning from prison back to their communities.
Hopefully this support will minimize the rate at which these individuals commit crimes
once again. Although programs that assisted offenders during their transition back to their
communities existed before the implementation of the SCA, the creation of the SCA as
an expansion and improvement on those programs is believed to bring about a reduction
in the rate of recidivism before its implementation. Based off the knowledge that the
punitive nature of the American criminal justice system has exponentially increased the
amount of its prisoners, the SCA intends to provide more integrated rehabilitative support
in the hopes of reducing recidivism rates.
Given the need for substantial change in the criminal justice system, the SCA was
created to develop long-term solutions for the reducing rates of recidivism. No expiration
or time limit was placed on the act, and given its lofty long-term goal of reducing the
recidivism rate by 50%, the SCA will probably remain in effect for quite some time until
recidivism rates are significantly reduced from their current state.
The framework that the SCA established in the hopes of achieving this long-term
goal has changed over the course of its existence. In the initial stages of the act’s
implementation, states had to apply for SCA funding, which they would then redistribute
amongst agencies and non-profits. Each state would be responsible for developing ways
to quantify the outcomes of their programs along an annual, five year and ten year
continuum (Schultz, 2006). From the content of recent applications for SCA funding, it
seems that aspect of the application process has changed, and now non-profits and
agencies can apply directly for SCA funding, rather than through their states. If a
government agency or non-profit receives SCA funding from the National Institute of
Justice (NIJ) for the SCA, it will either be through 12 month, 24 month, or multi-year
contracts.
Organizations that wish to receive SCA funding must prove that their programs
can reduce recidivism rates through the following support systems for offenders:
strengthening family ties between offenders and their families, during incarceration and
after reentry into the community, address mental health issue and substance abuse, and
provide transitional housing, literacy, vocational and service placement, alternatives to
incarceration and generally comprehensive reentry services. The funding provided to
these programs is expected to provide economic opportunity and status redistribution for
individuals transitioning from the prison system back into their communities.
The ultimate goal that the SCA set out to achieve is the increase in public safety
through the reduction of recidivism, with this long-term goal being measured by a 50%
reduction in recidivism (measured within a 5 year period post release). As the act was
new and therefore had reliable way to measure the potential effectiveness, when it was
adopted in 2007, no time limit was set for this specific goal.
The SCA did outline two intermediate, more achievable goals for the reduction of
the recidivism rate though. The first aims to reduce the recidivism rate by 2% within the
first 5 years of the SCA’s implementation. The second aims to reduce the recidivism rate
by 5% within the first 10 years of the SCA’s implementation. As noted earlier, the vast
increase in the incarceration rate over the three decades prior to the SCA’s adoption, a
reduction of recidivism rates by 5% within the first 10 years was certainly a stark
departure from the contemporary demographic trends (Zimring, 2010).
While these long-term and intermediate goals are helpful in terms of tracking the
SCA’s success, the majority of the content of the SCA focuses more specifically on the
advancement of short-term goals. The primary short-term, and ongoing, goal of the SCA
is the development and the support of “evidence based programs and practices” that
provide goods and services to individuals who are transitioning out of the prison system.
Perhaps the support of these organizations is better described as an “immediate goal”
rather than a short-term goal, as the framework of the SCA is built to support his goal
throughout its foreseeable future existence. Through achieving its short-term, or
“immediate goal” of providing consistent support to organizations that are effectively
aiding and affecting individuals transitioning out of the prison system, the intermediate
and long-term goals are more feasible as the national recidivism rate begins to reduce one
program participant at a time.
A noteworthy aspect of this immediate goal is that the SCA’s emphasis on the
support of “evidence based programs and practices” which clearly and statistically prove
that their methods work to reduce recidivism among their clients. This precept is at the
heart of the SCA’s efforts to reform the programs aimed at helping individuals
transitioning back into their communities post prison release. Not only will organizations
with more effective strategies help the SCA reach its long-term goal of reducing
recidivism by 50%, the support of effective organizations can also have a strong
economic effect. Therefore, the SCA’s immediate goal of supporting effective
organizations further supports two goals of the SCA; the first, and obvious, goal being the
reduction of recidivism and the second being the saving of money in the long run. To
ensure that the organizations that the SCA supports are truly effective, it requires that
organizations which wish to apply for SCA funding agree on a particular framework by
which the organization will be judged for effectiveness. On top of the obligation of each
organization to report on the state of each individual they are serving, the NIJ has
contracted with various research agencies and institutes to specifically conduct studies on
the effectiveness of particular organizations that have received SCA funding. The NIJ,
which is housed under the National Office of Justice Programs, is responsible for
processing applications for the SCA. The NIJ is also responsible for the oversight and
evaluation for the programs which are awarded SCA funding. While the NIJ has created
multi-million dollar contracts with these research institutes such as the Urban Institute
and Social Policy Research Associates to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs,
the hope is that through the effective establishment of the programs within these
organizations will ultimately lead to programs that effectively reduce recidivism rates
long-term, thereby saving the government the cost of keeping those individuals in the
prison system.
The importance of the SCA’s successful implementation of thoroughly evaluating
programs’ effectiveness, which the hope of establishing programs that achieve a longterm level of effectiveness, becomes more clear when the cost of maintaining the prison
system is compared with the cost of healthcare. Excluding federal costs, counties in the
U.S. spend more than $70 billion from their own taxes and revenues on criminal justice,
while they spend $68 billion of their own money on healthcare (National Association of
Counties, 2013). While some Americans may believe that they have no connection to
criminal justice, the sheer cost of the criminal justice system that comes from tax-payer
dollars shows otherwise. If the evaluations of organizations are successful in deeming
which programs are effective and therefore deem further funding and which are not
effective, the SCA could encourage the growth of a higher percentage of programs that
show statistical success in the reduction of recidivism rates, and thereby a reduced cost
on the criminal justice system. This immediate goal of evaluating these organizations can
have a significant impact on the American economy and society overall.
Through this narrowing of the organizations that can receive grants awarded by
the SCA for sufficiently meeting its standards of effectiveness, the SCA is ideally able to
starve ineffective organizations to death and support the growth of effective
organizations. Part of the growth supported by the SCA of these successful programs is
the programing provided for prisoners during incarceration as well as post release. This
wholistic integration of programing for pre and post release prisoners within
organizations can aid to the ease and fluidity of individuals transitioning back into their
communities from prison. Overall, the SCA saves money by paying effective
organizations to preform more services, than more organizations to perform less effective
services.
While the goal of reducing the costs of the criminal justice system may couch
some attitudes that cutting the cost of the criminal justice system is the primary goal of
the SCA, the overall goal of reducing the rate of national recidivism is just and can
contribute to greater social equality. In no way is the goal of reducing the rate of
recidivism undemocratic or tyrannical, as the methods with which the SCA intends to
reduce recidivism involve the direct social and economic empowerment of individuals
transitioning from prison back into their communities. (DeFina, The state of the Economy
and the Relationship between prisoner Reentry and Crime, 2010)
Overall, the implementation of the goals the SCA outlines would result in the
redistributions of resources through the employment opportunities and thereby the
advancement or support of the individual’s status. The economic effects of incarceration
on an individual are drastic; individuals earn 40% less annually post incarceration than
they did before their arrest (Justice Center: Council of State Governments, 2013). These
statistics are likely due to the fact that generally employers are wary to hire individuals
with a criminal history. The aid and support that programs funded by the SCA are able to
give these individuals can help prepare them to either reenter the job force they once
were a part of or prepare for a new job through job training. With the job skills that these
individuals earn, the have more job opportunities in which they can be financially
successful, and thereby support their status as an employed individual.
The goals of the SCA are also targeted toward the population they intend to serve
through their support of mental health screenings and healthcare and drug treatment.
Given the fact that such a large population of prisoners are incarcerated for drug related
offenses, it seems necessary that the SCA would support drug treatment programs as a
means of reducing recidivism.
This increase in the number of prisoners incarcerated due to drug related offenses
is a result of shifting attitudes towards drugs. One organization called “DrugPolicy”
outlines how the change in attitudes towards drugs took place in a top-down way, which
resulted in the spike of incarceration rates. “In June 1971, President Nixon declared a
“war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control
agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock
warrants.” More and more individuals were sent to prison for drug related offenses due to
mandatory sentencing, which denied the court case-by-case discretion in sentencing. The
growth of drug related offenders filling prisons continued as the War on Drugs pressed on
through the 80’s. “The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the start of a long period of
skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the
drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased
from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.” (The Drug Policy Alliance, 2012).
Since much of the same laws and policies, which were responsible for the mass
incarceration of drug offenders still remain in place, it in necessary for programs hoping
to reduce recidivism rates to provide drug treatment. Fortunately, the number of
individuals who are in incarcerated for a drug offense is lower than it was in 1997. There
are approximately 237,000 people in state prisons, 95,000 people in federal prisons, and
5,000 people in juvenile facilities for a drug related offense (Sakala, 2014).
There is no evidence to support the notion that the successful implementation of
the SCA would be harmful for the larger population. While the SCA does require more
funding from tax dollars than previous programs with the goal of reducing the national
recidivism rate, the increase in cost does not appear to have a negative effect on any
particular population. In fact, the increased cost of the SCA, not only helps the
individuals transitioning back into their communities, but also help those communities
which are welcoming returning members. Part of this support has come from the
increased practice of SCA programs in engaging with and supporting incarcerated
individual’s family members while they are still in prison (Justice Center: Council of
State Governments, 2013). As individuals leave the prison system and return to their
families and communities, they are hopefully met with more of a support system than
they would otherwise have had.
Furthermore, funding provided by the SCA supports practices that are then able to
keep tabs on and support individuals transitioning back into their communities. One such
practice is the use of graduated sanctions and incentives, which essentially allows local
levels of government to enact swift sanctions on ex-offenders as a response to low-level
parole violations. The support of local levels government and community agencies makes
these sanctions possible as they can more quickly approve sanctions on individuals
deemed necessary for them. Although this practice of quickly sanctioning parole violators
seems to be in line with the punitive practices that resulted in the exponential growth of
the prison system, its practice actually has a positive effect on communities welcoming
individuals back from prison. As discussed in the article “Utilizing Behavioral
Interventions to Improve Supervision Outcomes in Community-Based Corrections,”
research shows that the immediate application of a sanction for violating the conditions
of a persons release has a greater effect on the individual’s likelihood to avoid future
criminal behavior, than the actual severity of the sanction itself (Wodahl, 2011).
Therefore, the support that the SCA provides local government agencies and non-profits
to work closely with individuals transitioning back into communities, which includes the
ability to quickly apply sanctions for violations of parole, diminishes the long-term
prospects of those individuals’ participation in crime, and creates a safer community on
the whole.
Especially given the support of local communities ability to work with returning
community members, the SCA seems to be consistent with the values of the social work
profession. The goal of the SCA to support organizations that effectively empower
individuals who are transitioning out of the prison system clearly is in line with the
efforts within the social work profession to help individuals better their living
circumstances and overall wellbeing. One potential pitfall of the SCA could be that it
applies the same practices used to reduce recidivism rates across the board, irrespective
of particular communities’ cultural practices and needs. Since the SCA does not in fact
provide services, but rather contracts with local organizations that work to empower
individuals, this pitfall of using practices that don’t apply may be avoided on the whole.
Still, there is little evidence that proves that the model of the SCA is particularly good at
promoting culturally relevant practices, and as is the case, this may be an aspect that does
not completely line up with the values of the profession of social work.
While it has been established that the SCA is well intentioned and improves the
support that local government agencies and non-profits can provide individuals
transitioning back into their communities, the actual effect that the SCA will have on
recidivism rates has yet to be seen. This fact is largely due to the lack of comprehensive
studies on the effectiveness of the programs support by the SCA overall. One reason that
the SCA may not reduce recidivism rates to the extent that it intends to is that it does not
truly challenge the status quo of the criminal justice system. Its creation is essentially an
expansion on previous policies that assumed that money spent on aiding prisoners
transitioning back into their communities was directly correlated with the reduction of
recidivism. In reality, not much has changed about the criminal justice system, and even
the programs the SCA support remain a cog in the larger punitive system which fails to
truly rehabilitate.
The ideological assumption that spending money programs that help individuals
transition back into their communities from prison will definitely reduce recidivism rates
is not covert, but rather straightforward. It is so straightforward, that one would almost
not questions its accuracy. Yet, the studies conducted by Lance Hannon and Robert
DeFina in “The State of the Economy and the Relationship Between Prisoner Reentry
and Crime,” show that crime and incarceration is tied most closely to the state of the
economy, not the troubleshooting efforts on the part of government to reduce crime. In
their article, they quote other criminal justice scholars, writing “Research and policy
discussion of the problem of prisoner reentry commonly focuses on the deficits of
offenders that place them at a high risk of unemployment, martial instability, and
subsequent offending. However, we seldom ask how the communities to which the
prisoners are returning might affect the likelihood of obtaining a steady job,
reestablishing family ties, and staying out of prison.” (DeFina, The state of the Economy
and the Relationship between prisoner Reentry and Crime, 2010). So while the creation
of the SCA is a step in the right direction, it may not be addressing the real social
problems necessitating the need for further support of individuals as they transition from
prison back into their communities.
The feasibility of actually reduction the recidivism rate by 50% through the SCA
is unlikely due to a variety of political and economic factors. First off, there are more
political implications underlying the successful implementation of the SCA than may
appear. Although the SCA appeared to be very popular due to its bi-partisan support, the
work necessary for truly reducing the recidivism rate is not politically popular. As
previously noted, the increase in the prison population over the last 4 decades was
particularly due to shifting attitudes about drug offenses and other crimes, and the
growing support of punitive measures, rather than the stark increase in crime itself. In
fact, in the 90’s the incarceration rate increased while the rate of crime actually decreased
(Zimring, The Scale of Imprisonment in the United States: 20th Century Patterns and 21st
Century Prospects, 2010). Although the public may not particularly fear the SCA, it may
fear an act that would take further steps to provide rehabilitative care rather than punitive
action. As of now, the SCA is not on the general public’s radar, but if radical
amendments were made to it in the future, it might receive some public resistance.
Additionally, the SCA may not be economically feasible due to the current state
of the prison system. Since dramatic increase in the prison population, the U.S. has
supported the creation of several private prisons, which actually make a profit off of
imprisonment. The amount of money that the SCA should receive from the government
every year to support government agencies and non-profits is debatable, but the fact that
private prisons will fight to stay alive and make money is clear. Although private prison
owners do not determine policy, the revenue that those prisons make in comparison with
the hefty price-tag of truly reforming the prison system, may cause policy makers to
sweep the problem of the increasing prison population under the rug for the sake of
economic profit (Zimring, The Scale of Imprisonment in the United States: 20th Century
Patterns and 21st Century Prospects, 2010).
Overall, the implementation of the SCA is definitely an improvement on previous
programs trying to reduce recidivism rates. Through its dedication to support local
government agencies and non-profits and the written commitment to evaluate those
organizations, the SCA can support the development programs that successfully reduce
recidivism. The lack of clear and comprehensive reporting on the effectiveness of the
programs that the SCA support gives the impression that the act is either not fulfilling its
goals or simple not keeping good track of them. Research on individual programs that
would then be compiled into an a comprehensive study should be conducted to determine
the overall effectiveness and sustainability of the SCA.
Bibliography
DeFina, L. H. (2010). The state of the Economy and the Relationship between prisoner
Reentry and Crime. Social Problems , 57 (4), 611-629.
Justice Center: Council of State Governments. (2013). Reentry Matters: Strategies and
Successes of Second Chance Act Grantees Across the United States. New York: Council
of State Governments Justice Center.
National Association of Advancement of Colored People. (2008, January 1). Criminal
Justice Fact Sheet. Retrieved May 7, 2014, from National Association of Advancement
of Colored People: http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
National Association of Counties. (2013). Lower Jail Recidivism and Reinvest the
Savings: Support the Second Chance Act. Washington DC.
Sakala, P. W. (2014, March 12). Mass Incarceration: the Whole Pie. Retrieved May 7,
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Schultz, E. (2006). The Second Chance Act. Corrections Today , 69 (5), 22-23.
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