Prisoner Reentry And the Life Course: The Role of Race And Drugs (Criminal Justice)

O Connell asks whether prisoners who establish social bonds in the reentry process fare better than those who do not. His analysis tests whether life course approaches to desistance are applicable to modern, largely minority, heavily drug involved criminal justice populations. By accounting for stable individual traits and testing race in separate models rather than as a variable, O Connell shows how reentering offenders with different backgrounds engage in relationships and employment, and how these relations in turn affect drug use and recidivism. Life course approaches may require modification to account for racial differences, and we need to reconsider our definitions of success and to think in terms of harm reduction in approaching criminal justice interventions.