A New Study Shows Why Measuring Success After Prison Needs to Go Beyond Recidivism
For decades, the conversation around life after prison has revolved around a single, blunt question: did someone reoffend or not? While this approach is simple, a new academic study argues that it badly misses the reality of what reintegration actually looks like. According to new research published in the Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, success after prison is far more complex, gradual, and multidimensional than traditional measurements suggest.
The study comes at a time when criminal justice scholars and policymakers are increasingly questioning whether recidivism alone is an adequate way to judge outcomes after incarceration. A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences sharply criticized this long-standing reliance on reoffending as the primary indicator of post-prison success, pointing out that it focuses almost entirely on failure while ignoring meaningful progress in other areas of life.
This new research directly responds to that critique by offering a more detailed and human-centered way to measure what success after prison actually looks like.
Rethinking How Success After Prison Is Measured
The study was conducted by Pilar Larroulet, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the Rutgers University–Newark School of Criminal Justice, along with co-authors Bianca Bersani of the University of Maryland and other collaborators. Instead of treating post-release outcomes as a simple pass-or-fail scenario, the researchers focused on the process of reintegration itself.
At the heart of their argument is a straightforward but powerful idea: people do not stop offending overnight, and they do not rebuild their lives in a straight line. Desistance from crime is usually gradual, uneven, and deeply tied to changes in housing, work, health, and social relationships. Measuring success only by whether someone returns to prison ignores these realities.
The researchers emphasize that defining success as “not failing” creates a distorted picture. Someone might avoid re-arrest for a short period but struggle with homelessness, unemployment, or poor health. Conversely, another person might make steady improvements across multiple areas of life while still experiencing minor legal setbacks. Traditional metrics treat these individuals very differently, even though the second case may represent far more meaningful progress.
Six Life Domains That Shape Reintegration
To capture this complexity, the study measured success across six key domains of life that are central to reintegration after prison:
- Housing stability, including whether individuals secured and maintained stable living arrangements
- Employment, focusing on consistent participation in legal work
- Health, encompassing both physical and mental well-being
- Constructive engagement, such as involvement in education, training programs, or structured daily activities
- Instrumental support, meaning practical help from family, friends, or social networks
- Offending behavior, measured not just as a yes-or-no outcome but as a process that can include reductions in severity or frequency
By examining these areas together, the researchers aimed to understand how success accumulates over time rather than appearing all at once.
A More Nuanced Method of Analysis
One of the most important aspects of the study is its use of group-based multiple trajectory modeling, an advanced statistical method that allows researchers to track patterns across several life domains simultaneously. Rather than labeling individuals as simply “successful” or “unsuccessful,” this approach identifies different pathways people follow after release from prison.
This method reflects the idea that reintegration is not a single outcome but a set of overlapping trajectories. Someone may improve steadily in employment while struggling with housing. Another person may have strong social support but poor health. Traditional measures collapse all of this variation into a single statistic, while trajectory modeling preserves the complexity of real lives.
Data from a Major Federal Reentry Initiative
The study drew on data from adults who participated in the Serious Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI), a federally funded program designed to evaluate whether enhanced reentry services improve post-release outcomes. SVORI collected detailed, longitudinal data on individuals both before and after their release from prison, making it particularly well suited for this kind of multidimensional analysis.
Importantly, the researchers supplemented standard binary indicators of offending with measures that capture desistance processes, such as reductions in criminal activity. This allowed them to see not just whether someone reoffended, but how their behavior changed over time.
Why Recidivism Alone Falls Short
The study strongly reinforces a growing consensus in criminology: recidivism is a limited and misleading measure of success. It treats any post-release offense as complete failure, regardless of context or progress in other areas of life. It also fails to recognize that many people cycle in and out of minor legal trouble even as they move away from more serious criminal behavior.
By contrast, a multidimensional approach recognizes incremental successes. Securing housing, maintaining a job, improving health, or building supportive relationships are all meaningful achievements that reduce long-term risk and improve quality of life. Ignoring these factors not only misrepresents individual progress but can also lead to poorly designed policies and programs.
What This Means for Policy and Practice
The implications of this research are significant. If policymakers continue to rely on recidivism as the primary measure of success, programs that genuinely improve lives may appear ineffective simply because they do not immediately eliminate all offending. This can result in underfunding or dismantling interventions that are actually working in important ways.
A broader measurement framework could change how reentry programs are evaluated, funded, and improved. Tracking multiple life domains over time would allow policymakers to see where interventions are helping, where additional support is needed, and how progress unfolds in the real world.
The study also aligns closely with desistance theory, which views stopping crime as a long-term process shaped by social bonds, stability, and opportunity. Measuring success across multiple domains brings evaluation practices closer to what theory and lived experience already suggest.
Expanding the Conversation Around Reintegration
Beyond its immediate findings, the study contributes to a broader shift in how society thinks about punishment, rehabilitation, and public safety. Moving beyond failure-based metrics opens the door to more humane, realistic, and effective approaches to reintegration.
Rather than asking only whether someone has fallen back into crime, this research encourages us to ask better questions: Are people gaining stability? Are they building healthier lives? Are they moving, even slowly, in a positive direction?
By answering these questions, researchers and policymakers can gain a clearer understanding of what success after prison truly looks like—and how to support it more effectively.
Research paper: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-025-00278-5
