Abstract
ObjectivesThis article provides a description and preliminary assessment of the Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment (MOVE), a randomized housing mobility program for former prisoners designed to test whether residential relocation far away from former neighborhoods, incentivized through the provision of a housing subsidy, can yield reductions in recidivism.MethodsThe MOVE program was implemented as a randomized controlled trial. Participants were recruited from four different Maryland prisons and randomly assigned to experimental groups. In the first iteration of the experiment, treatment group participants received 6 months of free housing away from their home jurisdiction and control group participants received free housing back in their home jurisdiction. In the second iteration of the experiment, the treatment group remained the same and the control condition was redesigned to represent the status quo and did not receive free housing. Analyses were conducted of one-year rearrest rates.ResultsWith respect to reductions in recidivism, pilot results suggest that there is some benefit to moving and a benefit to receiving free housing. Rearrest was lower among the treatment group of movers than the non-movers, and was also lower for non-movers who received free housing versus non-movers who did not receive housing.ConclusionsTo the extent that pilot results can be validated and replicated in a full-scale implementation of the MOVE program, policies that provide greater access to housing assistance for formerly incarcerated individuals may yield substantial public safety benefits, particularly housing opportunities located far away from former neighborhoods.
Highlights
1 in every 100 adults in the United States is in prison or jail at this very moment, with more than 1.5 million individuals serving time in state and federal prisons, and another 730,000 in local jails (Kaebel and Glaze 2016)
To test whether voluntary residential relocation to a new city would lower the likelihood of recidivism and thereby reduce the level of harm inflicted upon the communities where ex-prisoners reside, we developed a housing mobility program for newly released prisoners called the Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment (MOVE)
In Design 1, we find that none of the treatment group of movers were rearrested within the 1-year follow-up period, whether in the full sample or the subset of compliers
Summary
1 in every 100 adults in the United States is in prison or jail at this very moment, with more than 1.5 million individuals serving time in state and federal prisons, and another 730,000 in local jails (Kaebel and Glaze 2016). More than 600,000 prisoners are released from U.S prisons each year, and estimates suggest that two-thirds of these individuals will be rearrested and half will be reincarcerated within 3 years (Durose et al 2014). The public health consequences of high levels of criminal recidivism are dire. Recidivists tend to be high-rate criminal offenders who contribute substantially to the total volume of crime in a community (Hipp and Yates 2009). Estimates reveal that active parolees account for between 15% and 28% of all arrests for violent crimes in the United States (Rosenfeld et al 2005). A relatively small proportion of active offenders account for the majority of crimes committed (Piquero et al 2010; Sherman et al 2016; Wolfgang et al 1972). Neighborhood crime, violence, is a stressful condition that can have a variety of detrimental physical and mental health consequences for residents, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and impaired cognitive functioning (Aneshensel and Sucoff 1996; Buka et al 2001; Margolin and Gordis 2000)
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