Reintegration Services for Long-Term Dangerous Offenders: A Case Study and Discussion

Abstract

Successfully reintegrating long-term prisoners back into the community often presents significant challenges for service providers. Ex-prisoners typically experience high levels of social stigma; present with multiple needs; and can struggle to find meaningful employment, stable accommodation, and to maintain supportive relationships. There have, however, been relatively few published evaluations of the outcomes achieved by postrelease services on managing the risk of reoffending and, as such, it is difficult for service providers to meet these multiple and complex levels of need in ways that might be considered to be evidence based. In this article we describe a specialized prerelease support, reentry, and reintegration service that is offered to long-term prisoners, many of whom have been legally labelled as “dangerous.” The current model of service delivery is reviewed and discussed in the context of current theories of offender rehabilitation and reintegration. These are then used to discuss the way in which services for this group of offenders might best be conceptualized.

KEYWORDS:

• long-term prisoners
• offender reintegration
• postrelease services
• rehabilitation

Notes

Note. Adapted from Smith et al. (2009).

One volunteer staff member was unavailable at the time of the visit.

The terms client and offender are used interchangeably in this article. This is intentional and reflects the tension between working with people in ways that aim to give them control over the services they receive, while also recognizing the need to assume responsibility for their offenses.

A wide range of factors have also been identified as of critical importance to the reintegration process; for example, it has been suggested that vocational education and employment programs may be effective in reducing recidivism (Harrison & Scher, 2004; Taxman, 2004), as is stable housing (Graffam, Shinkfield, Lavelle, & McPherson, 2004), and family support (Naser & La Vigne, 2006).