Indeed, given education and opportunities, ex-offenders often change their own antisocial behaviors. A rehabilitative approach more directly addresses the circumstances and attitudes that motivate individuals to commit crimes in the first place.
Another arrest compounds the problems faced by ex-offenders, creating a rip-current against re-integration that intensifies over time.
Some rehabilitative programs show promise in breaking away from this pattern. Entrepreneurship, for example, helps marginalized individualized rebuild their lives by creating wealth and channeling a healthy disregard for rules into a personal and community asset.
Efforts like the Prison Entrepreneurship Program and Defy Ventures help offenders hone their existing skills through rigorous business classes and one-on-one mentoring, the culmination of which is a complete business plan.
These programs boast recidivism rates of less than 10 percent among graduates. This statistic alone represents both a social and fiscal feat, as each ex-offender who stays out of the criminal justice system reduces crime and frees up approximately $20,000 of Florida taxpayer funding annually.
These programs provide powerful testimony to the effectiveness of well-designed rehabilitative programs for soon-to-be released offenders.
