1994). Jails for short term sentences provide few opportunities for education or work for inmates, while prisons for those serving longer sentences can offer more resources for prisoners to better equip themselves to return to society.
One reason for recidivism seems to be that many prisoners are merely housed in prisons in a violent, abusive environment which mixes first offenders with hardened criminals where they have to earn how to survive. A large number of prisoners come from impoverished environments where life on the streets and a criminal career were the only choices open to them, and they don't know how to change this (Miller, 1999). Many studies have shown that in prisons where inmates are given education and work opportunities, their self-esteem rises and they are equipped to take a meaningful role in society once they leave prison. They can get a job with a future and rise above the conditions that led to their imprisonment.
In Hampden County, Massachusetts, prisoners are prepared for their release from the day they arrive. Prisoners are given academic and vocational programs to prepare them to reintegrate into society. Inmates progress from maximum security to a work release program, working outside the prison by day, and sleeping there at night. In the last three months of their sentences, inmates sleep at home, go to work, attend evening class at a day reporting center, and are electronically monitored. The program has significantly reduced the recidivism rate.
A Texas program known as RIO -- Re-Integration of Offenders -- provides job training and life skills in 85 of its 112 prisons (Baldauf, 2000). The program offers classes that help inmates learn work values, interview-taking techniques, how to get along with supervisors, and anger management. In the first two years of the program, the recidivism rate for those who took the program was 16 percent, compared to 23 percent for those who did not t...