STUDY FINDS JOBS AFTER PRISON DON'T CUT RECIDIVISM

Of 14,000 Freed Annually, Half Return in Three Years

Maryland prisoners who land jobs after they are freed are no less
likely to commit more crimes and return to prison than those who don't
find work, according to an Urban Institute study released yesterday.

The study tracked 324 state prisoners for six months who returned to
Baltimore in 2001, with the goal of determining what factors affected
their chances for successfully re-entering society.

Within six months of their release, one-third of the prisoners studied
had been rearrested and 10 percent had been convicted of a crime, half
of them on drug charges. The recidivism rate was the same for former
inmates who found work as for those who didn't.

The finding, which is at odds with previous studies, surprised
researchers.

"There are a lot of dimensions to successful re-entry, and employment
is just one of them," said Nancy G. La Vigne, a senior research
associate with the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center. The
institute is a nonpartisan research organization.

The study comes at a time when Mary Ann Saar, secretary of Maryland's
Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, is calling for
better job-training, education, drug addiction treatment and behavior
counseling to lower the state's recidivism rate.

Statewide, 50 percent of the 14,000 prisoners released each year
return to prison within three years.

Previous studies have found that having legitimate employment helps
reduce the odds of former prisoners committing crimes, so the Urban
Institute researchers still support job-training programs for inmates,
La Vigne said.

She said the sample size used in the Baltimore study was relatively
small and that other factors, such as drug addiction, might have
negated the benefits of steady employment in the group studied.

Forty percent of the former inmates reported using heroin daily before
they were imprisoned. "They may find jobs and relapse, and they're
going to end up back in prison," she said.

Two-thirds of the former prisoners reported having worked for at least
one week since their release, and that work was much more likely to be
full time if they had held a work-release job. Of those who were
employed, 54 percent relied on friends and 45 percent on family to
find their jobs.

Half of former inmates settled in new neighborhoods, places they
considered safer and less likely to lead them into more trouble.

Also, former inmates who settled in new communities were no less
likely to return to prison than those who returned to their old
neighborhoods.

Titled "Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner
Reentry," the study is a pilot project intended to help researchers
refine their procedures for a broader inquiry of prisoner re-entry
issues.

La Vigne presented the findings at the Open Society
Institute-Baltimore, one of the groups that funded the study.