Section B

Section B

1. What is it?

   • Criminal Justice, Employment, Health, Education, Housing etc.
   • High risk offenders, young offenders, and S&V Offenders
     • Age 14-35
   • Correctional setting, Community
   • Academic skills enhancement, alcohol and drug rehab, aftercare/reentry, group therapy etc.
   • American Federal effort to improve prospects of adult and juvenile offenders upon release from incarceration.

2. Aims & Objectives.

   • Improving the quality of life and self-sufficiency of returning offenders through employment, housing, family, and community involvement
   • Improving health by addressing substance use (sobriety and relapse prevention) as well as physical and mental health
   • Reducing criminality through supervision and monitoring noncompliance, rearrest, and reincarceration
   • Achieving systems change through multi-agency collaboration and case management strategies [Lattimore et al. 2004, 2]

3. Implementation.

   • Three phase continuum.
     • Began whilst in incarceration.
     • Intensified in the months before and after release.
     • Continued for several years post release.
   • SVORI Participants were expected to build partnerships with community based organisations.
     • Diagnostic and risk assessments
     • Individual reentry plans
     • Transition teams
     • Community Resources.
   • Focus on reentry and sustainability of violent offenders.
     • Implementation was the access to the reentry services with the support from SVORI.

4. Evaluation.

   • Lattimore & Visher (2009) found that SVORI was effective in providing access to reentry services for its participants.
     • Number of people receiving the service was smaller than those who needed it.
     • Overall results of this evaluation showed no significant difference between SVORI participants and non SVORI.
   • Many of the services to SVORI applicants had no effect on housing, employment and substance use. Some cases the effect was more detrimental than beneficial.
     • Svori program participation contributed to a 14% reduction in reoffending in adult males, 48% in adult females.
   • Overall results show a need for additional research into reentry services, need an understanding that some combinations of service could be more harmful than beneficial to the individual.
     • Rearrest rates of SVORI participants.
       • 85% of adult males under SVORI were arrested within the follow up period
         • 54% ended up back in incarceration.
         • However such results show a longer time frame in between rearrest and show fewer arrests than non savour participants.
       • Only focuses on 11 of the 69 sites that SVORI was in practice,
         • Dependent on qualitative factors for success, research was conducted through interviews of participants.
           • Lack of consistency for improvement and a lack of evidence to suggest that it was as big of a failure as suggested by Lattimore and Visher 2009
             • Evidence would suggest that the programme was effective in providing the reentry services needed for participants but did not ensure the effectiveness of the programmes themselves and did not focus on the needs of the individual.