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About 700,000 federal and state prisoners return home each year in America, and most soon commit more crimes. A 2002 Department of Justice study found that over 67 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within three years; about half, in the same three years, get locked up again. Recidivism—the propensity of ex-offenders to be rearrested, reconvicted, or reincarcerated—has long vexed policymakers. What’s new is that the current recidivism rate is high (5 percentage points higher than in the 1980s) and that prison expenditures are crippling state budgets. It’s unlikely that social scientists will soon agree on either the cause of high recidivism rates or a large-scale way to reduce them. But mayors around the country are promoting a small-scale response: government-run “reentry” programs that seek to assimilate ex-offenders into society. The programs’ approaches vary, but many adopt a philosophy called “work-first”—that is, getting ex-offenders jobs quickly.

Mayors have begun to experiment with work-first reentry for several reasons. One is that the older reentry model—an expensive cornucopia of social services for ex-cons, including housing assistance, drug treatment, family counseling, therapy, and support groups—hasn’t succeeded. Another is that foundations—and, more recently, the federal government—have been embracing the employment model.

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