Our current criminal justice system often creates a vicious cycle for those who have the misfortune of interacting with it. At a baseline level, all the states in my data and analysis— regardless of TANF and SNAP policy—demonstrated some of the current failings of the criminal justice system. The states with the best recidivism outcomes had rates in the 20-30% range, meaning that even in the best case scenario, a quarter of people released from prison will return in three years. Most states had rates far higher than that.
With that in mind, the goal of this research was to shed some light on one of the sources of this often-overlooked issue. The nature of the data made a multivariate analysis difficult, and thus the results of that analysis did not provide much perspective as to whether enforcing or opting out of the SNAP and TANF bans for drug felons affected states’ recidivism rates. However, in looking specifically at certain states, I was able to identify a potential correlation between opting out of the SNAP and TANF bans (either fully or partially) and subsequent declines in recidivism rates.
Ideally, future research on this issue would include more complete data on US
recidivism, as well as the use at least some of the controls I highlighted in this thesis to isolate the effects of public assistance accessibility on rates of return to incarceration. A wide array of factors can affect recidivism rates, including state racial demographics, general economic
conditions, and social spending, as well as other policies more specifically related to the criminal justice system. For instance, greater parole leniency—such that a parole violation results in reinstatement of parole rather than re-incarceration—would lead to a decline in the number of people who are returning to prison after release. Further, the recent wave of criminal justice reform efforts has meant that policy changes do not occur in isolation; rather, allowing offenders
access to public assistance is often accompanied by other liberal changes to criminal justice policy, such as greater leniency in sentencing and parole. As such, it is difficult to isolate the particular effect of the PRWORA policy that I chose to study, but my results also suggest that other reforms to criminal justice may be interacting in such a way as to produce reductions in incarceration and recidivism rates over time.
Finally, a ban on access to SNAP and TANF benefits for released drug felons raises ethical questions about public assistance policy, which were not necessarily within the scope of this paper to address. Still, I want to note that criminal justice policy should not only aim to improve measurable outcomes—crime rates, criminal justice spending, incarceration and
recidivism rates, etc.—but should also consider the ethical and societal ramifications of laws like PROWRA. My results suggest that recidivism is related to the status of ban implementation; this is an important suggestion, but even if it were not the case, it is vital to consider how those attempting to reenter society may be further marginalized by the inaccessibility of public benefits. Reducing recidivism rates should be a goal not just because of prison overcrowding or the expenses of incarceration, but also because our criminal justice system should—and
purportedly already strives to—rehabilitate people and ensure that they will be able to reenter and participate meaningfully in society upon release.
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