Part of the purpose of Justice Reinvestment Initiatives (JRIs) involve a focus of funds and effort toward implementing practices that increase the chances of successful reintegration of people recently released from incarceration. Similar to other jurisdictions, Oregon's JRI has taken a number of forms of reintegrative efforts. In 2016, JRI funding opened a services hub and reintegration/reentry center in a rural county. The Center offers a central location for reentry services, such as employment and housing assistance, but is not a requirement of an offender's supervision. Relying on the risk-need-responsivity framework, this program aims to reduce recidivism by mitigating barriers for offenders to access services offered by the county and to target and treat needs. The purpose of this study is to conduct a preliminary evaluation of the Center's effectiveness using propensity score modeling. Data used in this evaluation includes 1,727 people who visited the Center who were compared to 3,486 people from a historical sample by creating matching pairs. Post-matching, this was reduced to an even 1,669 offenders in each group. Further analyses such as binary logistic regression are used to further understand the differences between those who were able to visit the Center, and those from the historical sample who would have been equally likely to choose to visit, had it been available to them. Results show that visiting the Center does have a reducing impact on recidivism. Compared to offenders from the historical sample, those who were able to visit the Center reduced their odds of being rearrested by 80%, their odds of reconviction by 90%, and their odds of reincarceration by 99%. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on voluntary reentry programs and shows preliminary positive results to Clackamas County's Transition Center.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-6170 |
| Date | 10 July 2019 |
| Creators | McKay, Alicia |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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