Abstract
Objectives
This study examines the effectiveness of the High Risk Revocation Reduction (HRRR) program, a reentry program designed to reduce recidivism among offenders released from Minnesota state prisons.
Methods
Adult male release violators were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received supplemental case planning and access to community service and programs, or to a control group that received standard case management. Survival analysis was used to examine rearrest, reconviction, reincarceration for a new offense, and supervised release revocation.
Results
The results of Cox regression models showed that participation in HRRR significantly reduced the risk of rearrest but had no effect on the other measures of recidivism.
Conclusion
The results provide limited support for the program, although its effectiveness appeared to decline during the second phase of implementation. HRRR also reduced costs; however, the estimated benefits were not robust across all sensitivity analyses.
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Notes
A majority of release violators in Minnesota are returned to prison without a new sentence (89% of release violators who were incarcerated as of July 1, 2017).
This average is based on offenders released from prison in calendar year 2013.
During the first wave of grant funding (April 2011 to October 2011), the participating facilities were Minnesota Correctional Facility (MCF)-Lino Lakes and MCF-Rush City. Due to a reduction in grant funds during later waves, offenders were only eligible if they were located at MCF-Lino Lakes.
These four are the largest counties in Minnesota and central to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. About 40% of offenders released from Minnesota prisons are returned to these four counties.
The majority of offenders in the sample (77%) were incarcerated at MCF-Lino Lakes, while 19% were at MCF-Rush City and 4% (n = 23) were at other facilities. Results of supplemental bivariate analyses showed no facility differences in any of the recidivism outcomes (i.e., neither the binary indicators of recidivism nor the time to first recidivism event).
Supplemental analyses were conducted comparing control group members at participating facilities to those at nonparticipating facilities. Those at nonparticipating facilities had significantly longer length of stays, more discipline convictions, and fewer prior convictions, were more likely to be released on ISR, and were less likely to have completed treatment.
No problems with collinearity were found; the correlations between predictors were all lower than 0.5 and tolerance values for all predictors were above 0.6.
Few differences were observed between offenders with and without LSI-R scores at release. Offenders without LSI-R scores had significantly longer sentences. In addition, more LSI-R scores were missing among the control group and Phase 2 offenders.
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McNeeley, S. A long-term follow-up evaluation of the Minnesota High Risk Revocation Reduction reentry program. J Exp Criminol 14, 439–461 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-018-9330-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-018-9330-x