ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the evaluation of 12 adult Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) programs (1,697 men and 357 women) that examined if SVORI program participation improved service access and outcomes. Program participants were more likely to receive services, although service receipt fell short of 100% and declined after release. Recidivism results were mixed, and examination of the impact of specific programs and services showed some programs were beneficial, others deleterious, and some had no significant effects. The SVORI evaluation reveals multiple issues common to other correctional program evaluations: Incomplete implementation of programming (i.e., participants received some but not all services), partial treatment of comparison subjects (as treatment as usual), intermediate outcomes consistent with findings from meta-analyses of single-program efforts (e.g., 10% to 20% improvements), and recidivism outcomes over usual follow-up periods (e.g., two years) that may have been promising but not significant. The findings of significant impacts on recidivism over a longer follow-up period—along with the findings that some programs were deleterious to recidivism outcomes—suggest that more attention needs to be paid to better exposited programmatic logic models, including the sequencing of programs, realistic expectations for program success, and reconsideration of the optimal length of time to expect significant findings (e.g., Lattimore & Visher, 2009; Lattimore & Visher, 2013; Visher, Lattimore, Barrick, & Tueller, 2017).
