The Second Chance Act and the Future of Reentry Reform

Abstract

Mass incarceration in the 1980s and 1990s has spawned a prisoner reentry crisis in this decade. Although reentry has only recently gained currency as a national political issue, the problems associated with reentry were an utterly predictable consequence of a long-term trend toward increased reliance on imprisonment as a response to crime. Even at the height of the incarceration boom, only a tiny fraction of offenders were sentenced to death or life imprisonment, and the average prison term has remained below three years.1 Thus, nearly everyone we send away to prison eventually comes back. They return, for the most part, to a small number of low-income, urban communities that are already struggling with a host of profound social problems.2 They return, after the defunding of prison-based educational and therapeutic programs,3 with the same underlying deficits that contributed to their criminal behavior in the first place. Indeed, they are apt to return with those deficits widened as a result of their time in prison and the stigma of a criminal record.4 And they return in ever-swelling numbers, with an eightfold increase in the annual number of returning inmates since 1970 to more than 600,000 now.5 The few communities that attract the bulk of these returnees will almost inevitably experience increased crime, homelessness, substance abuse, and demands on social service agencies that are already spread thin. As the magnitude of the problem has become clearer, the political system has begun to respond. In his 2004 State of the Union Address, President Bush proposed a $300 million prisoner reentry initiative. “We know from long experience that if [inmates] can’t find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely to commit crime and return to prison,” he observed.6 “America is the land of second chance, and when the gates of prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.”7 Heeding this call, the House of Representatives recently passed the Second Chance Act (SCA), and counterpart legislation in the Senate has already cleared that body’s Judiciary Committee. The SCA would build on the Department of Justice’s Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI), a $130 million grant program that ran from 2003 to 2005, as well as a host of other initiatives that have been undertaken by federal, state, and local agencies across the country. Passage of the SCA, which appears likely as of this writing, would further galvanize an emerging reentry reform movement and highlight the increasing importance of reentry in the national dialogue on crime and punishment. Indeed, as many commentators have noted, a focus on reentry has important implications not only for the management of prisons and parole but also for the way that all actors in the criminal justice system interact with offenders,8 including at the sentencing stage. In light of the growing and potentially pervasive influence of reentry considerations on the administration of criminal justice, this issue of FSR includes a diverse range of perspectives on the challenges facing returning inmates and their families, politics and policy making in the reentry field, and the broader implications of a focus on reentry for criminal justice. I am particularly delighted that Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a leading pioneer in the reentry field, has written an introductory essay that comments on each of the articles and contextualizes them within the history and development of the reentry movement.9 In these Editor’s Observations, I first comment on the SCA itself and then discuss the potential significance of a reentry focus at sentencing. Finally, I suggest some concerns about the ability of the