Reentry Coalition Releases Report on the Landscape of Reentry Services in Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Reentry Coalition has released our long awaited report, “Philadelphia’s Reentry Services Landscape.” This report, co-authored by Temple University’s Department of Criminal Justice, is a comprehensive survey of more than 100 programs that serve people with criminal justice system involvement. The report reflects our strategic objectives of increasing the availability of data about reentry in Philadelphia and allocating resources to better match services to needs. The report’s findings suggest there are large gaps in Philadelphia’s reentry services, and indicate a clear need to align fragmented and siloed efforts by stakeholders across the city.
“We are excited to share research that paints a picture of reentry services in Philadelphia, which can shape how we move forward together to provide stronger supports as people come home from incarceration,” said Caterina Roman, an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University who is a Reentry Coalition member and co-author of the report.
This report is the result of research conducted by the Philadelphia Reentry Coalition, which increases communication, facilitates collaboration, and builds capacity to create a stronger reentry support network for Philadelphia’s returning citizens. The Coalition’s 120 members include community-based organizations, service providers, researchers, advocates, returning citizens, faith-based groups, and local, state, and federal government agencies. While the report does not capture all reentry programs and reentry-related resources available in the city, the 118 programs included in the survey data (run by 71 organizations) do provide a meaningful sample from which to obtain a general sense of organizational capacity, services, strengths, gaps, and needs of the reentry services landscape.
Some of the Key Takeaways of the Report Include:
Wide-ranging stakeholder participation in the Reentry Coalition reflects a shared commitment to aligning reentry efforts and goals.
Many reentry and related programs are collectively serving upwards of 36,000 people annually across the city.
Existing untapped capacity could serve more people: some programs have no waitlists and could serve more people with the resources they already have.
Many reentry programs lack, but could benefit from, formal partnerships with criminal justice agencies.
The ecosystem of reentry services is made up of many small programs and small organizations.
Across many domain areas, employment support services—not core education and training—are offered most frequently.
Key basic survival resources, and some types of education, are among the least frequently offered services.
No single funding source drives program alignment; reentry services are supported by multiple funding sources.
Stakeholders envision the Reentry Coalition shaping a shared agenda and deepening collaboration to help reentry programs achieve greater impact both individually and collectively.
This report follows “Calculating a Unified Recidivism Rate for Philadelphia,” a report published in March of 2018 by the Reentry Coalition and the Office of Criminal Justice, which (along with the release of an open data set and an interactive data visualization) analyzed new information about people who are released from incarceration to Philadelphia, including basic demographic information and one year re-arrest rates.
To read the report in full, click here.
The Philadelphia Reentry Coalition is a group of 115 Philadelphia agencies and organizations committed to reducing recidivism. To learn more, check out our website where you can subscribe to our newsletter and apply to become a member.