Recidivism in Released Lifestyle Change Program Participants

Abstract

A group of 291 released inmates who completed one or more levels of the Lifestyle Change Program (LCP) were significantly less likely to be arrested or incarcerated during the follow-up than a group of 89 released inmates who had been transferred or released prior to participating in the LCP. These differences persisted even after age, race, confining offense, sentence length, and amount of time at risk in the community had been controlled. Partitioning the sample by risk, program-control differences in arrest were observed for lower risk inmates (< 6 prior arrests) but not for higher risk inmates (≥ 6 prior arrests). When analyses were restricted to arrests leading to incarceration, however, higher risk participants alone enjoyed significantly reduced levels of recidivism. Survival analysis confirmedthat lower risk program and controlinmates differed significantly only on the arrest measure, whereas higher risk program and control inmates differed significantly only on the incarceration measure.