Reintergations Case
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Reintegrating back into society is one of the most difficult things that someone has to do after being incarcerated for a number of years. One major reason that many offenders fail to complete their parole is their lack of social capital. In 1997, nearly half of all the state prison inmates did not have a high school diploma or GED (Harlow 2003, p.1) Harlows study (2003, p.10) also found out that less educated offenders, regardless of age, were more likely to recidivate. Also in this analysis, Andrews et al. (1990, p.350) found out that most promising intermediate targets included those that focused on changing antisocial behaviors. These targets include promoting family life, increasing self-management skill, reducing chemical dependency, and promoting the rewards of a non-criminal lifestyle through positive familial, academic and vocational achievements, more than 90% of state prisons provide some form of educational reintegration programming (Harlow 2003, p.1).There are many types of programs offered to offenders before and after release from prison, some of these programs include; basic life skills, GED, vocational and college level courses. These courses teach offenders valuable job marketing skills that they can use to compete in the job market, but none of these skills are useful if they dont get out of prison and use them.
The parole population has grown substantially from 203,800 in 1995 to 391, 300 in 2005, of that same population, 38% returned back to prison, either for a new crime at 12% or for a violation of their parole at 25%. The very poor success rate of people getting out of prison and completing his or her parole is a testament of just how bad it is needed for more personalized reintegration programs through out our prison system. There is one program that has shown some to be successful upon release form prison and that program is,”Project RIO (Reintegration of Offenders).” Project RIO began as a pilot program in 1985, and is still today helping ex-offenders reintegrate back into society. services for Project RIO participants include job skills training, education services, gathering employment documentation, and job placement (TDCJ et al. 2006, p.5). These services are available for inmates who are going to be released within 6 months and these services can still be used after two years of their release. We cant just throw people into prison and expect things to get better or for people to change, we are going to have to do something to make things change, I believe in “faith without action is dead”, we can talk about a change for years to come, but if we keep putting garbage into our prison system, we are only going to get garbage out. Also, people are being released from prison back into society without any education or vocational skills, its not just the persons fault, but it is also the prison system fault also because it should be mandatory that all inmates