Prisons as Schools for Change: Evidence from Illinois

This project involves an RCT to examine whether re-orienting every
aspect of the prison experience towards rehabilitation – by investing in
education, mental health, and physical health while individuals are
incarcerated – can reduce prison re-entry rates. The project involves a
collaboration with the Kewanee Life Skills Re-entry Center (LSRC), a
facility in the Illinois Department of Correction that houses men who are
between one and four years away from release and are at medium to highrisk
of recidivating post-release. The LSRC focuses on the provision of
educational programming, life skills courses, academic instruction,
vocational training, physical and mental health access, and humane
treatment. The goal of this project is to inform the national debate on
criminal justice reform, which has increasingly begun to focus on how to
lower the nations exceptionally high incarceration and re-incarceration
rates.