The Effectiveness of Prison Programming: A Review of the Research Literature Examining the Impact of Federal, State, and Local Inmate Programming on Post-Release Recidivism

On behalf of the First Step Act Independent Review Committee, the author wrote this review of available research about the recidivism reduction effects of federal, state, and local prison programming in an attempt to determine to what extent such programming can fairly be described as evidence-based. Looking at the available evaluation research on the BOP programming, he focuses on the 18 "national model" prison programs identified by BOP and also examines the much larger body of evaluation research conducted on the recidivism reduction effects of state and local prison programs.