ABSTRACT
The responsibility for preparing inmates for return to the community has generally been delegated to institutional corrections. In some systems, this role is shared with parole agents, although their involvement with offenders before release is usually limited to one meeting. The general purpose of this meeting is to focus on aspects of the inmate’s plans that can help the agent monitor compliance with release conditions. In practice, transitional services provided by prison or parole staff often amount to helping the inmate draft a ‘paper plan’ for his or her return to the community. Detailed and realistic release planning is left to the offender, who must find a place to live and a steady job, while re-establishing family and other social connections under a new, crime-free identity. The implied assumption is that offenders can comfortably make these preparations from their prison cells, build upon the lessons learnt from incarceration and readily pick up whatever positive pieces they left behind (Taxman et al. 2003).
