Criminal justice reform has been a bipartisan issue in recent years, with Congress and state legislatures taking important steps to reduce the prison population and ensure those in the justice system are given the opportunity needed for effective reintegration. At the same time, we still have a long way to go. Recent efforts at rehabilitation have fallen far short of success, with more than two-thirds of the nearly 600,000 people exiting prison every year in the United States arrested again within 3 years of their release. Why the recidivism rate has remained so high has puzzled criminologists, practitioners, researchers, and justice authorities for decades.

In 2019, the American Enterprise Institute convened a group of scholars to take a fresh look at the problem. In January 2020, AEI Resident Fellow Brent Orrell released a new edited volume, Rethinking Reentry, which develops key working group insights. Featuring leading voices from the last 30 years of reentry research, the volume discusses what has worked, what hasn’t, and what can be done to improve both reentry efforts—and the future of returning citizens. With a foreword by former Speaker of the House and AEI Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Paul Ryan, the volume provides a framework for evidence-based reentry programming that will enable more people to leave the revolving door of the justice system behind for good.

For more of the Institute’s work on criminal justice and to download the full PDF of Rethinking Reentry, visit aei.org/criminal-justice-reentry/.