With some prisoners, a nudge is all that is needed

With nearly three-quarters of a million inmates leaving state and federal prisons each year, and an even larger number released from county jails, federal and state governments have funded and implemented a wide variety of prisoner-reentry programs.

 

But these initiatives have produced only a dent in a legal environment characterized by long criminal sentences and curtailed parole supervision. And recidivism rates have remained stubbornly high (half of inmates convicted of a new crime within three years of release).

 

The reality is that, each year, hundreds of thousands of people move from prison one day, where they acquire no experience coping with freedom or assuming responsibility, to the broad freedoms and responsibilities of civil society the next. 

 

To the average citizen, the reasons for obtaining gainful employment and obeying the law seem obvious: the freedom to pursue, and the ability to afford, the good things in life.

 

The high rates of recidivism and unemployment among ex-offenders suggest that the reasons to make an honest living—and to take the necessary steps toward doing so—are anything but obvious.

 

Is there then an effective way to place in legitimate jobs people with histories of impulsiveness and little familiarity with the world of work and its trade-offs between sacrifice and reward?

 

A residential prisoner-release program in Maryland, addresses these big problems by focusing on the “small stuff.” Realizing that neither the powerful incentives of freedom and financial solvency, nor the powerful disincentives of re-incarceration and impoverishment, have sufficiently reshaped this troubled population’s behavior, the program induces program participants, some of them serious offenders, to find and keep jobs, many for the first time in their lives, by doling out privileges such as later curfews and expanded hours for visits from family.

 

While these rewards may seem small, they have an immediacy and relevance to the inmates that the long-run rewards generated by steady, legitimate employment do not.  

 

Many jail-based training, educational, and counseling programs are judged by whether inmates earn passing scores on tests measuring their mental fitness to rejoin society. In contrast, the Montgomery County Pre-Release Center is that it makes inmates’ actual behavior the standard by which their progress is judged.

 

They soon discover that their actions, constructive and otherwise, have immediate, direct, and predictable consequences. Because staying employed brings them greater measures of freedom within the residential program, to which they must return at the end of each workday, they gradually transition from the completely controlled environment of jail or prison to the initially shocking and enduringly challenging freedoms of society at large.

 

At the very least, the salaries they earn go toward victim restitution, child support, program fees, and the inmates’ own savings accounts. At best, inmates learn, in doses small enough for them to absorb and respond to, the mainstream value of delaying gratification and its various offshoots: punctuality, reliability, and the effectiveness of effort.

 

Almost 90 percent of program participants find employment within three weeks of enrollment, and 54 percent still have the same employer two months after they have left the program.

 

The program’s insights about how behavior modification efforts achieve the goals of the criminal justice system can be used to fashion programs at other correctional institutions and parole agencies.

 

It is more time-intensive – and therefore more expensive – to instill accountability in inmates than to warehouse them. But new money should not be required if resources are shifted from one part of the correctional system to another.

 

A strategy like Montgomery County’s of “nudging” inmates to develop and demonstrate their fitness for civil society chimes with recent proposals based in the discoveries of behavioral economics. It may turn out that among the incarcerated as well, inducing rather than insisting is more effective at changing behavior.

 

Anne Morrison Piehl is an associate professor at Rutgers University and author of the recent Manhattan Institute report, “Preparing Prisoners for Employment: The Power of Small Rewards.”