The impact of education and of post release housing on prisoner recidivism

The United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world with approximately 775 prisoners per 100,000 in population.  The average rate for European countries is one seventh this rate.  The numbers of inmates in the United States has increased more rapidly than the overall population over the past three decades.  Expenditures on corrections have grown more rapidly over the past two decades than any other spending category of state budgets with the exception of health care.  Of the 650,000American prisoners released each year. 67% will be re-arrested within three years of their release.   Understanding the variables, including housing options and education level, which influence re-entry of a prisoner from prison to the community is crucial in breaking the recidivism cycle.

There is the presumption, supported by very limited research, that those with stable housing have lower rates of recidivism.  The initial literature review shows that economists have paid little attention to this important topic as no refereed economics literature was located.  Prison releasees in the United States face a number of hurdles in finding appropriate housing.   The current pattern is for the majority of releasees to return to their previous neighborhood, leading to their being likely to make the similar mistakes post-release they made to get them into prison.   Over 10% of them are homeless in the month before and after leaving prison (Langan and Levin, 2002).  Burt et al (1999) found that 18 percent of the homeless were former prisoners.  Metraux and Culhane (2004) followed nearly 50,000 releasees from New York prisons between 1995 and 1998.  Thirty three percent of the releasees who entered homeless shelter were recidivated within two years.   Nelson, Deess and Allen (1999) found that releasees in homeless shelters were seven times more likely to have probation issues during the first month after release than those with some other form of housing. 

To analyze the impact of education and housing on recidivism, this paper employs a hazard model to prisoners released from Ohio prisons.  Bayesian analysis provides a technique for facilitating the use of this less than perfect data set to analyze important questions such as the impact of housing on recidivism.  Estimates of the cost savings from postponing return to prison due to adequate housing and education will be provided. The potential for cost savings through decreasing or delaying return to prison is important given the substantial and increasing cost of incarceration.