Community Reentry Programs and their Effect On Recidivism:: a Study of Life Skills Clients at the Denver County Jail

Recidivism, or repeat offending, is prevalent among misdemeanants. Their sentences are usually short and become even shorter with mandates to keep county jails from overcrowding. These misdemeanants are then released from jail and go back to the same environments they were in before. Many of these people go on to commit the same or similar crimes and end up back in jail. Jails across the U. S. have begun implementing transitional programs in the hopes that providing repeat offenders with case management, counseling, and other services might enable them to break the habit of repeat offending and make better choices for their lives and their futures. This study researched one such program run by the Denver Sheriff Department at the Denver County Jail. Using a cross-sectional, quantitative approach, the current project measured recidivism rates for a sample of clients who participated in a transitional program at the Denver County Jail. This quantitative data is then combined with the Rational Choice Theory to provide an evaluation of the Life Skills program and its effect on recidivism