The Revolving Door: Exploring Public Attitudes Toward Prisoner Reentry

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A typical day of TV programming offers a wide selection of news and entertainment programs focusing on crime, police work, arrests, trials, and incarceration. The depictions may not be accurate, but the overall process is constantly in the public eye. On that same day, however, approximately 1,600 inmates (mostly men) will come out of prison to find their way back into society, typically with little planning, counsel, or support.1 Yet compared with other aspects of the criminal justice system, there is almost no public discussion of prisoner reentry. The availability of public opinion research follows precisely the same pattern; there is considerable survey data on crime and punishment overall, but virtually none on prisoner reentry.

To gain a better perspective on public attitudes about this issue, The Urban Institute’s Reentry Roundtable asked Public Agenda, a nonprofit organization dedicated to nonpartisan public opinion research, to develop a small-scale pilot project. In addition to support from The Urban Institute and Public Agenda itself, funding was provided by Open Society Institute, The George Gund Foundation, and Arthur White.