President Approves $300 Million Inmate Re-Entry Plan

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act in April after the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the bi-partisan sponsored legislation designed to improve rehabilitation and reduce recidivism.

The Reducing Recidivism and Second Chance Act of 2007 authorizes more than $320 million in federal funding for states and nonprofit organizations to provide vocational and educational training, substance abuse treatment, mental health services and other support programs to help offenders reintegrate into their communities following release.

“More than 2 million people are serving time in our federal and state prisons, and sooner or later, the vast majority — 95 percent — will be released,” says Sen. Biden, D-Del. Biden is the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Introduced by Biden and senators Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the act was passed by the House in November.

“Many of these offenders will re-enter our communities with insufficient monitoring, little or no job training, insufficient housing and deficient basic life skills,” Biden says. The only way to close the revolving prison door is to open another door of opportunity, he says.

Almost 70 percent of inmates released from state prison are re-arrested and returned to prison within three years for violating the terms of their release or committing a new crime, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“While I believe strongly in securing tough and appropriate prison sentences for people who break our laws, we must also do everything we can to ensure that when these people get out of prison, they enter our communities as productive members of society,” says Sen. Patrick Leahy. “We must reverse the dangerous cycles of recidivism and violence,” he says.

Second Chance authorizes $50 million for the Department of Justice’s existing state and local grant program, which incorporates evidence-based, best-practice approaches to re-entry. The justice program requires ongoing monitoring, measurement and reporting of performance outcomes.

The bill also authorizes $110 million in grant funding per year for state and local governments and nonprofit organizations to develop and implement comprehensive programs in substance abuse and mental health treatment, academic and vocational training, and life skills counseling. Grantees are required to establish performance goals and benchmarks and to report outcomes.

Approximately $2 million in grants will be awarded annually for research and best practice-development in areas, including innovative substance abuse treatment methods and the causes of recidivism. Grant funding will be available on an annual basis for research into methods of improving education and vocational training during incarceration.

“In 1982, American taxpayers spent approximately $9 billion on corrections. In 2002, that number increased to $60 billion,” says Sen. Sam Brownback. “We must stop subsidizing prison programs that do not work and instead focus on programs that will help combat high rates of recidivism,” he says.

In addition to initiatives at the state level, Second Chance authorizes funding to strengthen the Bureau of Prisons’ provision of re-entry services to federal inmates and establishes a task force to determine ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of federal re-entry programs.

“The Second Chance Act takes direct aim at reducing recidivism rates by improving the transition of ex-offenders from prison back into our communities. Through common sense and cost-effective measures, it offers a second chance for ex-offenders and the children and families who depend on them,” says Sen. Arlen Specter.

The legislation establishes an elderly nonviolent offender early release pilot program, which will target inmates who are at least 65 years old and have served the greater of 10 years or 75 percent of their sentence.

In addition, Second Chance will extend and improve mental health screening and treatment programs at the state and federal level.

More than half the population incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails – 45 percent of federal inmates, 56 percent of state inmates, and 64 percent of local jail inmates, suffer with mental health issues and treatable disorders, such as depression, bipolar and psychotic disorders, according to the Justice Department’s 2006 report titled Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates.

Female inmates had higher rates of mental health problems than their male counterparts — 61 percent of females and 44 percent of males federal prisons; 73 percent of females and 55 percent of males in state prisons; 75 percent of females and 63 percent of males in and in local jails, according to the report.

With the average cost of incarceration exceeding $20,000 per inmate per year, a relatively modest investment in re-entry efforts compares favorably with the alternative of building more prisons for recidivistic offenders and the Second Chance Act could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, Biden says.

“An ounce of prevention, as they say, is worth a pound of cure,” he says.