Study Expands Understanding About What Life After Prison Looks Like

Research Calls into Question Whether Another Brush with the Law Should Define Evaluations of a Person’s Overall Reentry Into Society 

New research by an all-female team of experts affiliated with the University of Maryland’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJS) shows that there’s a lot of nuance that can be applied to calling a formerly incarcerated person’s reentry into society a “success” or “failure.”

Currently, if a formerly incarcerated person has any continued involvement with the legal system after they leave prison, that attempt at reintegration is considered a failure and is classified as an example of “recidivism”—whether that person’s offense is a failed drug test, or a serious violent crime. Experts in the criminology and criminal justice field have long criticized this approach, saying that  it takes time for a person who has been imprisoned to move away from committing crimes completely, a process they call “desisting from offending,” and that this approach is counter to the realities of reintegration, and  fails to recognize success in other life domains like securing stable housing, holding a job, or giving back to the community. 

“Reintegration is hard and people face a number of challenges to reintegration. We often see that as people try to reintegrate, there’s some continued offending because they haven’t fully been able to be employed to a level that they can support themselves or they lack stable and secure housing. But over time, the balance shifts, they become more involved in conventional pursuits, less involved in crime, and they are able to fully desist,” said CCJS Associate Professor Bianca Bersani, the paper’s lead author.  “If we solely rely on 'failure' as our metric and we identify any offending, regardless of how minor it is, as recidivism, it undercuts a lot of effort and other pieces of success that may be occurring, and in doing so, might thwart desistance.”

To get a fuller picture of what life after prison looks like, the researchers reviewed data from the more than 1,200 adults who were part of the Serious Violent Offender Registry Initiative (SVORI), a federally funded initiative designed to assess whether re-entry programming improved individuals’ outcomes. They looked at how each individual was faring in certain life categories—housing stability, instrumental support, work continuity, health barriers, and constructive engagement—three, nine, and 15 months after release, and grouped individuals with similar patterns into four distinct groups. 

To observe simultaneously occurring, longitudinal trends, the authors used a novel statistical approach—group-based trajectory modeling—which allowed them to see how patterns of involvement across multiple facets of life are working together. The researchers found that this group of individuals followed four general pathways. 

While all four groups exhibited some level of offending after release, for the vast majority, offending was very rare. Two groups, slightly more than half of the sample, reported doing well in the life categories studied; another group, representing about a fifth of the sample, did not report doing well in the life categories studied, but still only committed low-level offenses; and the final group did not report doing well in the life categories studied, and committed higher-level offenses.

“The fact that only a quarter of the sample exhibits continued offending at a higher level is itself a finding—most of the people in this sample who were formerly incarcerated for serious violent offenses aren’t doing the thing that folks think they’re going to do,” said Bersani, who also directs the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center. 

Individuals’ connections to family (part of the instrumental support category) were similar across all groups, indicating that familial and social ties may not be as strong of an indicator of a person successfully reentering society as one would think. Civic engagement—part of the constructive engagement category, which concerned actions such as voting and volunteering—also varied greatly across groups. Instead, housing stability, work continuity and lack of health barriers were the categories that seemed to have the greatest impact on a person’s level of offending and likelihood of a “successful” reentry to society.

“This study highlights how important it is to take a holistic approach to reentry and acknowledge that successful reintegration is rooted in the many intersecting domains of one’s life, such as one’s instrumental support, societal engagement, and health and well-being,” said School of Public Health Research Professor Elaine Eggleston Doherty, who earned her Ph.D. from CCJS in 2005.

In light of these findings, the researchers hope that the professionals who work with returning citizens at both the state and federal level look at formerly incarcerated individuals’ lives as a whole package, and strive to find ways to hold people accountable without derailing the progress they are making in other areas of their life. 

“Measuring ‘failure’ or recidivism is so much easier than trying to capture a holistic view of individuals,” said Bersani. “But I think we need to start challenging ourselves to think about how we best promote public safety. Is it through repeatedly incarcerating any level of offending, or is it understanding that desistance is a process that often includes lapses in behavior as they’re on this pathway to success? Where do we draw that line to prioritize public safety but also not derail efforts to desist from crime?”

Other authors of the paper include Rutgers University Assistant Professor Pilar Larroulet, who earned her Ph.D. from CCJS in 2020, and Susquehanna University Assistant Professor Carol Xuanying Chen, who earned her Ph.D. from CCJS in 2024.

Find the Full Paper in the Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology 

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Published on Thu, Dec 18, 2025 - 9:50AM