Offenders Leaving Prison Essay

Visher& Travis, 2003). Most offenders leaving prison lack a competitive resume, under-skilled relative to the general population, and suffer from a debilitating stigma that is attached to their criminal history (Pager, 2003). Owing to these deficits, parolees face significant challenges finding work (Petersilia, 2003). Some, however, rely on family members to procure job arrangements, and it is through this mechanism of job attainment that family ties are thought to be instrumental in altering post-release behavior (Glaser, 1964). Data sources reveal that offenders who have close ties with family members and maintain a steady job are less likely to revert back to criminal behavior upon release from prison. Taken together, the literature suggests that good quality social ties with family lowers the risk for recidivism, in part, by facilitating job attainment (Glaser, 1964; Visher, Debus, &Yahner, 2008). In other words, by connecting …show more content…
Social control models assume that people’s motivation to offend is restrained by their relations to society, conceived of as social bonds (Hirschi, 1969). Existing research provides strong empirical evidence that the family often serves as a “buffering agent” for a newly released prisoner (Irwin 1970).Family ties represent a source of social control in that they connect reentering offenders to the conventional social order and in doing so thwart their impulses to recidivate (Laub& Sampson, 2003). In the words of Glaser (1964, p. 335), these ties are “insulation from the criminal influences” that reentering offenders encounter in free society. For instance, family ties structure offenders’ daily routines, placing restrictions on where they go to socialize, with whom they associate, and the types of behaviors they engage in while socializing (e.g. heavy drinking, partying in bars and clubs, and drug use) (Warr,