Customer Reviews

When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry (Studies in Crime and Public Policy)

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This book deals with the most important topic of the coming decade for the criminal justice system: what to do when all of the massive numbers of criminals we have sent to prison come home. Petersilia not only describes all of the legal and practical hurdles criminals face when they begin reintegration, but she identifies how we can actually help them return to the community. This book is an easy read with an invaluable compilation of the latest statistics and summary of the challenges of life after incarceration.
Petersilia has written an academic piece with both theoretical and policy influence. It is a must read for criminologists, but most importantly for all practitioners in the criminal justice system from police and prosecution to corrections and parole. For students, the book provides a necessary education of the implications of recent law and public policy.
This is an excellent text for all of those interested in the criminal justice system. Petersilia succinctly describes what we have done wrong, then she provides recommendations for the future.

In "When Prisoners Come Home," Petersilia not only describes parole and reentry, but also the impact the war on drugs has had on young people. In short: too many people to prison, too many prisoner returns, and in the end--too many lost lives. The author also outlines the impact of a number of unintended consequences for families, communities, and children of the prisoners coming home.

There hasn't been a book written on parole in over 30 years. This is a much needed publication and should be read by anyone interested in corrections and sentencing policy. However, anyone with even a casual interest in current correction's issues will find this book engaging, interesting, and easy to read.

When Prisoners Come Home draws on both qualitative and quantitative data to critically examine the "prisoner reentry problem," a timely and important social problem. As Petersilia explains, "we spent the last decade debating who should go to prison, for how long, and how we might pay for it, and we paid virtually no attention to how we would cope with prisoners after they left prison" (p. 14). This book, then, begins with the fact that "never before in U.S. history have so many individuals been released from prison." To quote the numbers provided by Petersilia, "95% of the 1.4 million prisons inmates now in prison will eventually be released and will return to communities-635,000 people in 2002 and at least that many in future years" (p. 1). As detailed in When Prisoners Come Home, prisoners remain largely uneducated and unskilled and usually lack solid family supports. Moreover, about three quarters of all prisoners have substance abuse problems and one in six suffers from mental illness. These facts, coupled with an increasingly punitive public sentiment and political rhetoric about prisoners and diminishing resources devoted to rehabilitation, ensure that problems abound.

When Prisoners Come Home assembles empirical evidence to describe and assess the prisoner reentry problem. Conceptualizing "prisoner reentry" as "all activities and programming conducted to prepare ex-convicts to return safely to the community and to live as law abiding citizens" (p. 3), Petersilia devotes specific chapters to skillfully examining the characteristics of U.S. returning prisoners, reviewing historical and current parole release and supervision practices, assessing of what is known about the
effectiveness of prisoner reentry programs, and summarizing parolee recidivism and its contribution to crime in America. Moreover, she masterfully details how we help prisoners through rehabilitation, how we hinder reintegration through various legal and practical barriers, and how victims do and do not play a role in the larger process of prisoner reentry. Finally, and most importantly, in the final chapter Petersilia offers twelve empirically justified recommendations on how to improve prisoner reentry.

Combined, these chapters set the stage for Petersilia's most compelling observation, which is made in the final chapter:
Having made this detailed analysis of parole and prisoner reentry in the United States, one must conclude that we could not have designed a more ineffective system had we set out to do so. For most offenders, corrections does not correct. Indeed the conditions under which many inmates are handled are detrimental to successful reintegration, and many of the restrictions we place on returning prisons prove deeply counterproductive.
For Petersilia, "the irony is that more punitive crime control policies, particularly ones that rely heavily on prisons, contribute further to the declines in social support that produced crime in the first place" (p. 245). Thus the reentry problem is not only emerging as a key policy issue because of its relationship to crime, but because of its social, political, and economic consequences to entire communities.

Posted on behalf of Michael G. Santos author of Inside: Life Behind Bars in America. Michael Santos is currently in his 23rd year inside the federal prison system. He anticipates release in 2012.

Date Read: May 6, 2009
Title: When Prisoners Come Home
Author: Joan Petersilia, PhD
Publisher: Oxford University Press (2003)
Nonfiction/296 pages
When Prisoners Come Home was the seventh book I read in 2009

What I learned from reading When Prisoners Come Home:
This was the first academic book I have read in many years, and I enjoyed reading it more than any other academic book that I can remember. The subject matter was and is of intense interest to me for obvious reasons. This book alarmed me with the horrifying statistics, some of which I knew, others of which I did not. I knew about the high recidivism rates, of course, as I have been reading for years that two out of every three released prisoners return to confinement.

What I did not know prior to reading Professor Petersilia's book was the overwhelming reluctance employers have in hiring people with prison records. She pointed to studies that showed the high percentage of employers who affirmed that they would never hire someone with a drug conviction or prison record.

Reading books like Professor Petersilia wrote validate the concerns I have had about the obstacles I expect to face upon release. That is why I must continue working hard every day. I must overcome those obstacles by preparing myself in unconventional ways. That includes improving my fitness level, strengthening my communication skills, enhancing my resume with more publishing credentials, nurturing my marriage, and building a stronger network of support that will have a vested interest in my success upon release.

How reading When Prisoners Come Home will contribute to my success upon release:
I am convinced that the more I know about the challenges that await me, the better I can prepare to overcome them. In reading this book, I have gained more knowledge I can use to convey to audiences I expect to address as a speaker, consultant, and teacher. I am recommending this book to other prisoners. Although Professor Petersilia wrote the book for academia, prisoners should read her work as well in order to grasp the importance of preparing for release.

Michael Santos
PrisonNewsBlog.com
MichaelSantos.net

This book disucsses the most important issue facing our neighborhoods and families over the next 10-20 years - re-entry! Re-entry is the process of prisoners returning home after years of separation from their families, jobs, and community. Joan Petersilia has conducted research on re-entry for many years. She describes the re-entry process, discusses the numerous legal issues, and identifies the day-to-day reality prisoners face as they come home.

This book is written with the general public in mind, but is grounded is solid research and valuable for policy makers. It is easy to read and hard to put down. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand the problem and impact our recent years of incarceration has had on our population.

Today, there are more than 600,000 inmates leaving prison and returning to their communities each year. This high number taxes communities, the correctional system, and the resources needed to assist in the prison-community transition. This book deals with the most important correctional topic of the coming decade: what to do when all the prisoners come home. Petersilia not only describes how we help prisoners return, but also identified all of the legal and practical hurdles they face in their reintegration challenges. It is critical that those interested in corrections, community cohesion, and saving tax dollars read and understand the challenges and opportunities that are available in improving the reentry process. There has not been a new book on parole in 30 years. Petersilia's book is the major resource available to begin this study of prisoner reentry.

Petersilia continues to define community corrections in her unique, empirically-oriented, style. Her writing is lucid, non-pretentious, and cutting-edge. Whether you are an academic or not, you will find this book totally readable and useful. This book goes through the entire parole and prisoner reentry continuum. Describing who is coming home, how well they are prepared, and what their contribution to crime in the community is likely to be. Petersilia also describes the impact on victims.
Victim advocates will find the chapter on how victims can play a
stronger role in parole and reentry as excellent.

Petersilia not only describes parole and reentry, but the impact of the war on drugs on young people. Too many people to prison, to many prisoner returns...and too many lost lives. Petersilia outlines a number of unintended consequences for families, communities, and children of all the prisoners coming home.

Petersilia identifies 12 policy recommendations for rethinking prison programs, parole release, and post-prison supervision. This book should be of tremendous use to correctional practitioners, academics, and all those interested in correctional policy. Strongly recommended.

This is an excellent book that state legislators should read. Among other points, the author articulates research on how the decreased use of parole has actually led to shorter sentences and less accountability in prisoner rehabilitation. While this book was written several years ago and a lot of research has been conducted in the interim, it offers an excellent account of how our crime policies have unintended consequences.

One of the particular strengths of this book is that it is very non-partisan. Considerable attention is paid to those who are incarcerated as well as their victims. The attention paid is also not done in an emotionally driven plea for either side but through the use of opinion polls and an understanding that victims of crimes vary in their responses.

An additional strength of this book is that in its discussions, it separates out dangerous offenders from the marginal offenders, their impact on society and what should be done about them. There are few books that offer as many concrete suggestions about what to do as does this book.

Because this book is a few years old and there has been a lot of research done since its publication, I highly recommend that it be supplemented with other books on corrections, prisons and jail, such as Imprisoning Communities or Punishment and Inequality in America.

As a victim, I really loved the chapter that outlined how victims can be more proactive in the parole process. I also liked the 12 policy recommendations -- I hope someone is listening to Petersilia on this.

"When Prisoners Come Home sets the stage for reinventing the offender pre-release planning and discharge process. Dr. Petersilia's insight is nothing less than inspiring."
--Reginald Wilkinson, Former President, American Correctional Association

"Joan Petersilia has brilliantly mapped the terrain of prisoner reentry, mixing forgotten wisdom, new data, and fresh insights into a compelling call for new approahces to the reintegration of returning prisoners."
--Jeremy Travis, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute

"When Prisoners Come Home is scholarship at its highest practical level. With about 600,000 prisoners being released each year, governments are planning massive and expensive efforts to deal with the avalanche. Dr. Petersilia's book is a necessary ally in that formidable task. To add to its attraction, it is crisply and clearly written--scholarship infused by practical experience and presented without pretension. For many decades it will dominate the literature on parole and the conditions of prisoners returning to society."
--Norval Morris, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology, Emeritus, University of Chicago

Petersilia is one of the most well-known corrections scholars in the country. She writes in an easy-to-read style that is engaging and interesting in a book that will be of interest to academics, policymakers, practitioners, and the general public.

After about a decade of imprisoning record numbers of people, we now face record numbers of parolees re-entering society. This book both describes the challenges that prisoners face as they come back to the community and how we can help them in their efforts to succeed.