The most important job of the state corrections system is to keep criminals locked safely behind bars where they pose no threat to the public or themselves. That’s pretty much of a no brainer. The second most important job is helping prisoners re-enter society as productive citizens. That’s a lot harder to do.
Nationally, according to a recent Pew Center for the States study, 45.5% of all prisoners are re-incarcerated within three years. Virginia out-performs the national norm: Only 28% of Virginia’s juveniles and ex-cons are later readmitted. But Gov. Bob McDonnell has signed a package of seven bills that aim to ease the reintegration of ex-cons into society.
Said McDonnell in a press release yesterday:
An effective prisoner re-entry plan is good government. It improves public safety, reduces recidivism and victimization and improves the outcome for offenders returning to our communities. Everyone deserves a second chance. When a crime is committed, the individual responsible must be punished to the fullest extent. If you do the crime in Virginia you will do the time. But when that prison sentence is completed, and the price to society has been paid, we need to take the additional steps necessary to ensure that our prison system is not a revolving door.
Last year McDonnell appointed Virginia’s first statewide prisoner re-entry coordinator and established a re-entry council to assist state agencies in developing a coordinated statewide re-entry strategy. One of the laws just signed requires state agencies to create a transition plan for everyone released from prison. Another requires the Department of Corrections (DOC) to establish personal trust account of up to $1,000 for every inmate, to be funded by money the inmate earns in jail. Yet another measure requires prisoners be tested for HIV before release.
One thing the state still needs to do — if it does, I have not heard it — is create a system for tracking prison inmates through the corrections system and after they have been released. The purpose would be to identify the programs, whether state-funded, nonprofit or faith-based, halfway houses or training centers, that do the best job of getting ex-cons back on their feet. Some are well run, others are inept. The state needs favor those that serve their clientele well and abandon those that don’t.
Creating such a tracking system will require an up-front capital investment, but it could save tens of millions of dollars yearly by reducing the rate of recidivism. Helping keep people out of trouble, people of all political persuasions can agree, is morally preferable — and fiscally more astute — than warehousing them in jail.