R E S E A R C H
R E P O R T

Mapping Prisoner
Reentry: An Action
Research Guidebook
Second Edition

N O V E M B E R

Nancy G. La Vigne, Ph.D.
Jake Cowan
Diana Brazzell

2 0 0 6

research for safer communities

URBAN INSTITUTE

Justice Policy Center

URBAN INSTITUTE

Justice Policy Center
2100 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
http://www.urban.org/

© 2006 Urban Institute

This project was supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and by grant # 2003-IJ-CX-1012 from the
National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings and conclusions
contained herein are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the official position of the
United States Department of Justice, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Urban Institute, its trustees, or
its funders.

Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the many individuals who have provided advice and input in the preparation of
this report. First and foremost, we thank the project staff from the twelve Reentry Mapping
Network sites highlighted in this report: Terri Bailey, Matt Barry, Christie Donner, and Elaine
Smith in Denver; Charlie Bruner and Syed Noor Tirmizi in Des Moines; Malia Sieve in
Hartford; Bob Cross and Cynthia Cunningham in Indianapolis; Anneta Arno and Ed Basham in
Louisville; Michael Barndt, Jim Pingel, and Todd Clausen in Milwaukee; Junious Williams and
Rob Hope in Oakland; Pat McGuigan, Jim Vandermillen, Jim Lucht, Nick Horton, and Marshall
Clement in Providence; Julie Wartell and Cindy Burke in San Diego; David Solet, Nita
Heimann, and B. G. Nabors-Glass from Seattle; Kathleen Mantilla from Washington, DC; and
Alvin Atkinson, Sharon Glover, Sylvia Oberle, and Mike Carmichael in Winston-Salem.
We also thank Tom Kingsley and Kathy Pettit of the Urban Institute, who shared their lessons
learned from the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership and provided tremendous
guidance on the development and operation of the Reentry Mapping Network, much of which is
embodied in this report. Michelle Scott of the Urban Institute helped develop the content for the
“Creating Reentry Maps” section of this guidebook. We appreciate the constructive feedback on
an earlier draft of this report provided by Lisa Brooks, Vera Kachnowski, and Jenny Osborne of
the Urban Institute. Last, we thank Cindy Guy of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who kept us on
task and whose employer generously funded this report.

i

Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................................................................... I
CONTENTS ................................................................................................................................................................II
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................... IV
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................1
SECTION 1: WHY MAP PRISONER REENTRY? ................................................................................................3
PRISONER REENTRY IN CONTEXT ..............................................................................................................................3
Housing ................................................................................................................................................................3
Employment and Income ......................................................................................................................................4
Substance and Alcohol Use..................................................................................................................................4
Health...................................................................................................................................................................4
Families and Children .........................................................................................................................................4
WHY MAP PRISONER REENTRY? ...............................................................................................................................6
Where Are Prisoners Returning? .........................................................................................................................6
What Are the Characteristics of Areas with High Concentrations of Releasees?................................................6
Are Resources and Services Accessible to Those in Need?..................................................................................8
Are Reentry Programs Succeeding? ....................................................................................................................8
THE REENTRY MAPPING NETWORK: AN ACTION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP ...........................................................10
SECTION 2: CREATING REENTRY MAPS........................................................................................................14
OBTAINING REENTRY DATA ....................................................................................................................................14
Identifying Data Sources....................................................................................................................................14
Deciding What Data to Request .........................................................................................................................16
Overcoming Barriers to Data Acquisition .........................................................................................................19
Interpreting the Data .........................................................................................................................................21
OBTAINING CONTEXTUAL DATA .............................................................................................................................23
Sources of Contextual Data ...............................................................................................................................23
Primary Data Collection....................................................................................................................................25
CREATING MAPS .....................................................................................................................................................27
Geocoding Accurately........................................................................................................................................27
Communicating Effectively with Maps...............................................................................................................30
Types of Maps ....................................................................................................................................................31
Avoiding Common Mapping Pitfalls ..................................................................................................................35
SECTION 3: USING REENTRY MAPPING TO PROMOTE COMMUNITY WELL-BEING ......................39
BUILDING A REENTRY MAPPING PARTNERSHIP .......................................................................................................39
Leadership..........................................................................................................................................................39
Involving Other Stakeholders.............................................................................................................................40
Potential Partners ..............................................................................................................................................41
THE REENTRY MAPPING INITIATIVE ........................................................................................................................48
Convening the Partnership ................................................................................................................................48
Setting Priorities ................................................................................................................................................48
Guiding Mapping and Analysis..........................................................................................................................50
Disseminating Findings and Initiating Change .................................................................................................51
Creating a Sustainable Reentry Mapping Partnership ......................................................................................51
USING ANALYSIS RESULTS TO INFORM ACTION ......................................................................................................53
Promoting Community Education and Awareness.............................................................................................53
Guiding the Planning and Implementation of Reentry Initiatives ......................................................................57
Influencing Public Policy...................................................................................................................................58
Improving Service Delivery................................................................................................................................60

ii

CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................................................................62
REFERENCES ..........................................................................................................................................................63
APPENDIX A: THE REENTRY MAPPING NETWORK CASE STUDIES......................................................67
RMN SITE CASE STUDIES .......................................................................................................................................68
Denver, Colorado...............................................................................................................................................68
Des Moines, Iowa...............................................................................................................................................72
Hartford, Connecticut ........................................................................................................................................75
Indianapolis, Indiana .........................................................................................................................................78
Louisville, KY .....................................................................................................................................................81
Milwaukee, WI ...................................................................................................................................................85
Oakland, CA.......................................................................................................................................................90
Providence, RI....................................................................................................................................................94
San Diego, California ......................................................................................................................................100
Seattle, Washington..........................................................................................................................................104
Washington, D.C. .............................................................................................................................................108
Winston-Salem, NC ..........................................................................................................................................111
THE REENTRY MAPPING NETWORK MODEL ..........................................................................................................117
Technical Assistance to RMN Partners............................................................................................................117
Web Site and Email Group...............................................................................................................................118
Conference Calls..............................................................................................................................................118
Cross-Site Meetings .........................................................................................................................................119
ASSESSMENT OF THE REENTRY MAPPING NETWORK.............................................................................................120
SUMMARY .............................................................................................................................................................122
APPENDIX B: RESULTS OF RMN PARTNER SURVEY ................................................................................123
APPENDIX C: POTENTIAL DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS DATA ..................................................126
APPENDIX D: SAMPLE DATA REQUEST........................................................................................................130
APPENDIX E: SAMPLE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING .............................................................131
APPENDIX F: SAMPLE REENTRY ASSET MAPPING PROTOCOL (WINSTON-SALEM) ....................134
APPENDIX G: SAMPLE REENTRY POLICY BRIEF (HARTFORD) ...........................................................137

iii

Executive Summary
The Reentry Mapping Network (RMN) is a collaborative effort by community-based
organizations and the Urban Institute, designed to create community change through the
mapping and analysis of neighborhood-level data on prisoner reentry. RMN partners collect and
analyze local data related to incarceration, reentry, and community well-being, and work with
their communities, local organizations, and policymakers to develop strategies for addressing
prisoner reentry in their regions. This guidebook provides information on how interested parties
can understand and address prisoner reentry at the local level through mapping and data analysis.
It outlines the concepts and methods underlying the RMN and the experiences of the RMN
partners so that other jurisdictions can learn from these experiences and create more successful
reentry strategies in their own communities. The guidebook presents this information in three
sections:
Section 1: Why Map Prisoner Reentry?
The challenges associated with prisoner reentry are wide-ranging. Mapping can provide valuable
information on how prisoner reentry is affecting local communities, and the extent to which
existing resources and services are addressing the needs of reentering populations. The RMN
employs an action research approach, partnering with community members and local
stakeholders to access and analyze reentry data, create effective maps, and develop plans for
improving reentry-related outcomes.
Section 2: Creating Reentry Maps
Maps depicting the concentration of released prisoners in the local area are the foundation of any
reentry mapping initiative. Reentry mapping partnerships must access data on returning prisoners
from state departments of corrections (DOCs) and other criminal justice agencies. This reentry
information is supplemented with contextual data on the communities to which prisoners return,
as well as data on the services and resources available to meet the needs of former prisoners.
After analyzing these data, reentry mapping partners create maps and other products that convey
information on the dynamics of prisoner reentry to the public. For maps to be useful, they must
follow good design principles to ensure they effectively communicate information and are easy
to interpret.
Section 3: Using Reentry Mapping to Promote Community Well-Being
The purpose of obtaining, analyzing, and mapping data on prisoner reentry is to provide
information to the public, government officials, policymakers, service providers, former
prisoners, and others on the local dynamics of prisoner reentry. These stakeholders can then draw
on this information to improve and refine local policy, service delivery, and community
responses to reentry. A reentry mapping initiative should form a partnership of local
stakeholders, to guide this process of disseminating reentry mapping to improve communities.
The partnership can advise on the research, analysis, and production of maps and other products;
educate community members and important stakeholders about the findings; and devise and
implement strategies to respond to prisoner reentry based on the information gained in the
project. A diverse partnership, representing a range of community and institutional perspectives
and resources, is ideal, and strong leadership is needed to keep the activities of the partnership
coordinated.
iv

Introduction
The importance of understanding and addressing prisoner reentry at the community level cannot
be overstated. With 656,000 prisoners released from state and federal correctional institutions
each year,1 the return of these prisoners to their neighborhoods and communities poses
significant challenges. These include increased public safety concerns and the limited availability
of jobs, housing, and social services to meet the needs of returning prisoners. Moreover, today’s
intense cycle of arrest, removal, incarceration, and reentry, frequently followed by rearrest and
reincarceration, has had a disparate impact on a relatively small number of communities around
the country. Over the past decade, a rising number of released prisoners have returned
disproportionately to major metropolitan areas. Providence, for example, makes up 17 percent of
Rhode Island’s population, but more than a third (36 percent) of the people released from Rhode
Island prisons in 2003 returned to Providence.2 Within Providence, the effects of incarceration
and reentry were even more concentrated, with half of the sentenced offenders coming from 5 of
the city’s 25 neighborhoods. Similar concentrations have been observed in several other major
metropolitan areas. These studies have also documented that the communities receiving the
highest concentrations of returning prisoners are often among the least able to provide the
support needed by these prisoners for successful reintegration.3
Given the significant impact prisoner reentry is having on local communities, it is particularly
important to have a clear spatial understanding of the characteristics of reentry at the local level.
Mapping is one of the most powerful means of capturing important concentrations, patterns, and
spatial trends in data, especially as they relate to community well-being.4 Maps graphically
illustrate underlying concentrations and patterns that clarify the ways in which social
phenomena, such as prisoner reentry, affect communities. Accordingly, strategies to tackle
problems resulting from prisoner reentry can be more effective when they are informed by the
mapping of such information as the locations of returning prisoners, reentry services and
resources, and parole offices.
Mapping any local phenomenon, however, requires local data. Institutions in a number of cities
have successfully built data systems detailing numerous indicators of community well-being that
have served to engage their community in local policymaking and community development.5
Applying this model to the issue of prisoner reentry, the Urban Institute established the Reentry
Mapping Network (RMN), a group of jurisdictions applying a data-driven, spatial approach to
prisoner reentry.
The goal of the RMN is fourfold:
1. To develop a better understanding of the dynamics and correlates of prisoner reentry at
the local level;
1

Harrison and Beck (2005).
Rhode Island Family Life Center (2004).
3
La Vigne and Kachnowski (2003); La Vigne and Mamalian (2003); La Vigne and Thompson (2003).
4
Kingsley et al. (1997).
5
Bailey (2000).
2

1

2. To engage local stakeholders and practitioners in developing strategies to address
reentry-related challenges;
3. To facilitate greater coordination and collaboration among state and local agencies and
organizations around this work; and
4. To promote peer learning on how communities can use data to identify and address
incarceration and reentry-related challenges.
The purpose of this guidebook is to describe the concepts and methods underlying the RMN, so
that other jurisdictions can learn from these experiences and replicate the network’s efforts in the
interest of crafting more effective and successful reentry strategies at the community level. This
guidebook specifically documents the strategies employed by the twelve earliest partners in the
RMN, based in Denver, Colorado; Des Moines, Iowa; Hartford, Connecticut; Indianapolis,
Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Oakland, California; Providence, Rhode
Island; San Diego, California; Seattle, Washington; Washington, D.C.; and Winston-Salem,
North Carolina (see appendix A for detailed case studies of each of these twelve sites).6 The first
section outlines the history and key concepts of mapping prisoner reentry and describes the
origins of the RMN and how it operates. The report then offers guidance on the development of a
data-driven, community-based prisoner reentry effort. Specifically, the guidebook describes the
steps associated with collecting, mapping, analyzing, and presenting corrections data. The report
then discusses the identification of potential partners in the community and outlines strategies to
engage these partners in efforts to inform policymaking and community-building efforts. It offers
detailed information on how to use maps and analysis results to aid in the development of reentry
programs and policy efforts, and presents strategies for building collaborations that are
sustainable over time.
Throughout the guidebook, efforts are made to provide concrete examples from the RMN sites’
experiences. It is hoped that these examples, along with a “how to” approach to reentry mapping,
will provide practical and useful information to communities throughout the country that are
interested in developing more informed and effective local responses to prisoner reentry.

6

The experiences of the two newest RMN partners, Atlanta, Georgia, and Chicago, Illinois, are not included in this
guidebook. Both of these sites began their projects in fall 2006.

2

Section 1: Why Map Prisoner Reentry?
Any initiative to map prisoner reentry must begin with a consideration of why such mapping is
valuable for a given community and what purposes it can serve within broader discussions of
criminal justice policy and general community well-being. Exploring such considerations at the
start can guide and focus the efforts of the reentry mapping team, and will also enhance their
ability to convince potential partners of the importance of the effort. Below is a brief discussion
of the issue of prisoner reentry, as well as some ways in which local mapping and data analysis
can enhance our understanding of the topic.

Prisoner Reentry in Context
The process of prisoner reentry has far-reaching implications, not just for the individuals being
released from prison and their friends and families, but also for the neighborhoods and
communities to which they return. To many casual observers, “prisoner reentry” may appear to
be simply a new name for something that has been occurring since the first prisoners were
incarcerated in this county over three centuries ago. Indeed, roughly 95 percent of people
incarcerated in state and federal prisons are eventually released.7 Yet prisoner reentry today
presents new and greater challenges for a number of reasons. First, prisoners are being
incarcerated and released at historic volumes. Approximately 656,000 people were released from
state and federal prisons in 2003 alone,8 a fourfold increase in the past two decades. The sheer
magnitude of released offenders has a direct impact on public safety when one considers the
odds of their reoffending: On average, two out of every three released prisoners will be
rearrested and one in two will return to prison within three years of release.9 Reentering prisoners
face a range of challenges that can inhibit their efforts to reintegrate as functioning community
members and to avoid recidivism.10 These challenges include housing, employment, drug and
alcohol addiction, health problems and access to healthcare, and family reunification.

Housing
The housing options for former prisoners who cannot rely on family and friends are limited.
Federal law prohibits many former prisoners from entering public housing and other federally
funded housing programs. Instead, they must rely on halfway houses, homeless shelters, housing
programs, or the private market, where affordability and availability may be highly restricted.
One study found that 11 percent of prisoners returning to New York City from 1995 to 1998
entered a homeless shelter within two years of their release.11 Homelessness is not new for some
returning prisoners: A 1997 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that roughly 13
percent of prisoners who were scheduled to be released in the next year had been homeless at
some time during the year prior to their arrest.12
7

Hughes and Wilson (2005).
Harrison and Beck (2005).
9
Langan and Levin (2002).
10
For an overview of the challenges of prisoner reentry, see Travis (2005) and Travis, Solomon, and Waul (2001).
11
Metraux and Culhane (2004).
12
Mumola (2000).
8

3

Employment and Income
Many former prisoners have unstable employment histories and lack job skills. According to a
study published in 2003, between 21 and 38 percent of state prisoners were unemployed just
prior to their arrest.13 Among those who were employed prior to arrest, more than one-third
reported monthly incomes of less than $1,000. Approximately 40 percent of state and federal
prisoners in 1997 had not completed high school or attained a GED.14 Adding to these barriers,
formerly incarcerated people are faced with a decreasing availability of low-skill jobs, are legally
prohibited from certain types of jobs, and often lack the identification documents necessary to
secure employment.

Substance and Alcohol Use
Many prisoners have a history of substance and alcohol abuse, and continue to struggle with
these problems upon release. A 1999 study reports that roughly 40 percent of prisoners were
admitted for drug-related convictions.15 Nearly two-thirds of prisoners reported a history of
substance abuse, and half reported being under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol at the time
of their arrest.

Health
Released prisoners suffer disproportionately from health-related problems and can pose health
risks to their family members, intimate partners, and communities. Prisoners experience
infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis (TB) at rates five to ten
times higher than those of the general public,16 and 16 percent are estimated to suffer from
mental illness.17 Health problems can also hinder a released prisoner’s ability to secure
employment.

Families and Children
More than half (56 percent) of state prisoners are parents of minor children.18 Maintaining
contact during incarceration and reuniting with family members upon release can pose
significant challenges. Former prisoners may have lost custody of their children during their
incarceration, and may be faced with a complex legal process before reunification is even
possible. Child support obligations add to these difficulties: One study of the Massachusetts
prison and parole population found that nearly 25 percent of prisoners owed an average of
$17,000 in child support arrearages upon release.19

13

Harlow (2003).
Harlow (2003).
15
Mumola (1999).
16
Hammett, Roberts, and Kennedy (2001).
17
Ditton (1999), cited in National Commission on Correctional Health Care (2002).
18
Mumola (2000).
19
Thoennes (2002).
14

4

Unfortunately, returning prisoners are less prepared for the challenges of reentry than in previous
years, with a smaller share of prisoners taking part in educational and substance abuse treatment
programs.20 These challenges are compounded by the fact that prisoners return
disproportionately to metropolitan areas,21 and within those areas, they are often concentrated in
a handful of neighborhoods that are among the least able to provide support and assistance.22
Incarceration and reentry are significantly altering the social and economic landscapes within
these neighborhoods. Knowledge of the spatial patterns of reentry is critical to ensuring that
sufficient and effective support is targeted to the communities where the costs and consequences
of incarceration and reentry are experienced most acutely. We now turn to a discussion of how
mapping and analyzing reentry related information can be useful in the development of
community-level prisoner reentry efforts.

20

Lynch and Sabol (2001).
Lynch and Sabol (2001).
22
La Vigne and Kachnowski (2003); La Vigne and Mamalian (2003); La Vigne and Thompson (2003).
21

5

Why Map Prisoner Reentry?
Clearly, prisoner reentry is an important phenomenon affecting individuals and communities in
many ways. However, the patterns and spatial distribution of reentry are not well understood.
Prior research provides some general information on reentry patterns, but targeted mapping
efforts can provide a more detailed illustration of the reentry phenomenon at the local level and
can enable local policymakers and service providers to develop more effective interventions. The
utility of reentry mapping is best illustrated through the types of questions it can help answer.

Where Are Prisoners Returning?
Analyses of prisoner reentry that are limited to the county or city level may obscure important
patterns and trends occurring within the community. More detailed mapping and analysis can
help identify areas that experience high concentrations of returning prisoners. For example,
mapping the last known address of released prisoners can pinpoint concentrations within cities
and neighborhoods, down to the city block. This information can provide local policymakers and
community organizers with the capacity to target intervention efforts and resources in the areas
that need them most. Because the use of geographic information system (GIS) software enables
spatial analysis across a variety of variables of interest, one can map not only where prisoners are
returning, but also what types of prisoners are returning to specific neighborhoods. For example,
one could map released prisoners based on whether they are under post-release supervision, as
those under supervision are more likely to be monitored and to be connected with programs and
services than their counterparts who are released unconditionally. This difference can have
implications for service delivery, in that service providers may want to target geographic clusters
of unsupervised releasees, and maps can help them do this.

What Are the Characteristics of Areas with High Concentrations of Releasees?
Identifying and responding to the challenges of prisoner reentry requires an understanding of the
nature of the communities to which prisoners return. Thus, examining neighborhood indicators
of both basic demographics and community well-being (such as educational attainment, income,
use of public assistance, race, place of birth, language, ancestry, marital status, infant mortality,
single-parent households, housing tenure, vacant housing, voter status, etc.) can aid in the
development of a measure of community resources, which indicates the extent to which
communities are equipped to address reentry challenges. The maps in figure 1 on the following
page, for example, clearly illustrate that many of the neighborhoods most affected by reentry also
have high poverty rates. These findings are consistent with other research identifying evidence of
“spatial injustice,” whereby the poorest members of society are disproportionately affected when
prisoners are released to their communities.23

23

Rengert (1989).

6

Figure 1: Prisoner Reentry and Household Income in Louisville

Median Household Income Distribution
Louisville, Kentucky 2000 Census Tracts
Ohio River
Median Household Income
$6,086 - $21,833
$21,834 - $35,000
$35,001 - $49,352
$49,353 - $73,542
$73,543 - $110,472

Copyright(c)2005, LOUISVILLEANDJEFFERSON
COUNTYMETROPOLITANSEWERDISTRICT(MSD),
LOUISVILLEWATERCOMPANY(LW
C),
LOUISVILLEMETROGOVERNMENT,and
JEFFERSONCOUNTYPROPERTYVALUATION
ADMINISTRATOR(PVA).
All RightsReserved.

7

Are Resources and Services Accessible to Those in Need?
One of the most useful applications of spatial analysis as a policy tool is the generation of maps
to guide resource allocation. Mapping the location of released prisoners in conjunction with the
services available to them can illustrate the match between ex-offender needs and service
availability. Such mapping may detect a “service delivery mismatch,” in which services exist but
are not easily accessible to their target clients. Figure 2 on the following page illustrates one such
example: In Hartford, the locations of substance abuse treatment, educational opportunities, and
other services for former prisoners generally correspond to the areas with the highest
concentration of former prisoners. However, there seems to be a lack of services in an area in the
northern part of the city (circled in red on the map) which has a high concentration of returning
prisoners.
Another example that illustrates how reentry mapping might guide resource allocation is the
need for safe and affordable housing for returning prisoners. Some prisoners have no housing
available to them after their release and have no remaining ties to family and friends who might
assist them. These housing challenges are exacerbated when prisoners return to their old
neighborhoods only to find that there are no shelters or affordable housing options for them.
Mapping the locations of shelters, halfway houses, and other affordable housing in relation to
where inmates return can illustrate the extent of unmet housing needs and provide guidance in
choosing appropriate sites for new housing options for returning prisoners.
Mapping can also inform law enforcement and parole efforts to mitigate the public safety risks
associated with high concentrations of released prisoners. For example, mapping gang activity
within the community and gang affiliation among released prisoners may help in pinpointing
those who are at greatest risk of committing violent crimes after release. The type of reentry
interventions that will benefit this subgroup of active gang members may differ from the
interventions that are most successful for the general population of releasees.

Are Reentry Programs Succeeding?
Mapping can also serve as a tool for assessing the effectiveness of intervention efforts. For
example, if an intervention involves attracting businesses to a community with high
concentrations of returning inmates, mapping the change in employment rates over time can
provide evidence that the new businesses are having a positive impact on employment compared
with other areas in the city. While this information cannot provide a basis for definitive causal
inferences, it can indicate whether or not a targeted effort may have produced the desired
outcome.
The potential applications of reentry mapping outlined above underscore the importance and
value of understanding the effects of incarceration and reentry on communities. It is important to
note, however, that maps themselves are not the end goal of a reentry mapping program. On the
contrary, the maps should be used in concert with other analysis tools to help launch a
community conversation, to engage stakeholders, and to generate support for the creation of new
resources and the targeting of existing ones. The promise that mapping holds for developing

8

effective responses to prisoner reentry is what led to the development of the Reentry Mapping
Network, the history and structure of which is described in the following section.

Figure 2: Prisoner Reentry and Services for Returning Prisoners in Hartford

9

The Reentry Mapping Network: An Action Research Partnership
In recent years, mapping has become an increasingly popular tool in the fields of law
enforcement and criminology, as well as local planning and policy development. In many cases,
these mapping efforts are conducted within an “action research” framework. Action research
diverges from the traditional research model by producing research that addresses problems of
practical importance and is more thoughtful about the connection between research and
practice.24 To increase the efficacy of the resulting research, action researchers partner with the
people who are directly affected by the problem under study to collaboratively design,
implement, and interpret the research.25 The action research model is mutually beneficial, in that
researchers can produce more well-informed findings and are more likely to see their research
having an impact on practice, while community efforts can be strengthened by the involvement
of a partner with research and analysis capacities. Research partners can contribute technical
expertise, academic knowledge of the problem, or knowledge of best practices and possible
solutions from the literature. Both parties——the researchers and the action partners——present
each other with new perspectives and insights on the research topic.
In the mid-1990s, a new model for local action research emerged. Organizations in several
communities throughout the country began to assemble neighborhood-level data and help
community actors apply this information to motivate positive change in distressed areas and aid
in program and policy development.26 In order to learn from each other and promote the model
to other cities, these organizations joined together with the Urban Institute in 1996 to form the
National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP).27 Using data on various conditions and
trends at the neighborhood level to identify spatial patterns of problems and opportunities, the
NNIP partners have engaged their communities on issues ranging from welfare reform to vacant
housing to public health.28
In an effort to apply this successful NNIP model to the topic of prisoner reentry, in 2001 the
Urban Institute developed the Reentry Mapping Network, a partnership working to strengthen
the capacity of communities to understand and address local problems related to prisoner reentry.
The Urban Institute designed the network to support sites in the use of mapping and data analysis
to explore the local dynamics of reentry. The RMN also assists and advises sites on the
development of community strategies to address the challenges accompanying reentry. Partners
were selected based on a review of their existing data collection and analytic capabilities, the
reentry issues they planned to explore, and their experience working with community
organizations and local agencies to develop action agendas. The RMN partners joined the
network in phases, with the first six beginning work in 2002, followed by a second phase of six
partners in 2004, and a third phase of two partners who joined in 2006. Summaries of the RMN
24

Gilmore, Krantz, and Ramirez (1986); Lewin (1946).
McEwen (1999).
26
Bailey (2000).
27
Currently, there are 27 NNIP partners: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Camden, Chattanooga, Chicago, Cleveland,
Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Des Moines, Grand Rapids, Hartford, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Louisville, Miami,
Milwaukee, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Oakland, Philadelphia, Providence, Sacramento, Seattle, and
Washington. For more information on NNIP, see http://www.urban.org/nnip.
28
Kingsley (1999).
25

10

partnerships are included in figure 3 below, and a detailed case study of each site can be found in
appendix A.
The experiences of the first twelve RMN partners form the basis for the remainder of this report,
which is designed to guide the replication of the RMN approach in other communities. This
guidebook is also informed by previous research on prisoner reentry, mapping, community
engagement, and action research models. It is important to note that there is no definitive model
or set of processes for creating a reentry mapping partnership. As one can observe from the
diverse experiences of the RMN partners to date, an organization interested in reentry mapping
must craft its own strategy that is responsive to local conditions. Also, no predetermined
sequence of processes exists; in a successful reentry mapping project, obtaining, analyzing, and
mapping data, and efforts to develop partnerships and engage the community will move forward
simultaneously.

Figure 3: Summary of Reentry Mapping Network Sites
Denver, Colorado (joined 2004): The Piton Foundation leads the RMN project in Denver.
The Piton Foundation’s community partners participate in a community advisory committee
that provides advice and perspective on the analysis and maps that are created for the project,
and creates strategies for dissemination of the findings and for community engagement. The
committee identified five priority areas to focus both the research and the community
outreach: employment, housing and homelessness, substance abuse, mental health, and
family.
Des Moines, Iowa (joined 2002): The Child and Family Policy Center (CFPC) in Des
Moines is the lead partner for the local RMN project. The CFPC received and analyzed
address-level data for the prison, parole, probation, and jail populations in Polk County. The
CFPC has provided maps and data in support of several local reentry planning coalitions and
has produced reports on the employment challenges facing former prisoners in Des Moines.
Hartford, Connecticut (joined 2004): The Hartford RMN partner is the Community Results
Center of the United Way of Connecticut (UWC). Their data analysis focused on individuals
on parole in Hartford as of July 1, 2005. The UWC produced four prison reentry policy briefs
on reentry in general, reentry and education, reentry in relation to housing and homelessness,
and women returning from prison.
Indianapolis, Indiana (joined 2004): The United Way of Central Indiana (UWCI) and the
Local Learning Partnership of Making Connections–Indianapolis29 led the RMN project in
Indianapolis. Their analysis focused on the disparate impact of reentry on different
Indianapolis neighborhoods and the service opportunities this presents for UWCI agencies.
Their research has also helped to inform the ongoing work of the Making Connections
initiative in Indianapolis.
29

Making Connections is a national program sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It focuses on providing
support to families and communities in targeted neighborhoods by enhancing social connectedness, linking residents
to local resources and services, and strengthening community members’ financial well-being.

11

Louisville, Kentucky (joined 2004): The Community Resource Network (CRN) is the lead
RMN partner in Louisville and also serves as the Local Learning Partner to Making
Connections–Louisville. Early in the RMN project, the CRN connected with a communitywide planning effort called the Justice Reinvestment Planning Project. The CRN produced an
analysis describing the formerly incarcerated population in the Louisville area and the
existing services at the state, local, and neighborhood levels that serve this population.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin (joined 2002): The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee’s Neighborhood
Data Center is the lead RMN partner in Milwaukee. The Data Center provides data analysis
and mapping support for local nonprofit organizations. For the RMN project, they were able
to obtain time series data on prisoners returning to Milwaukee neighborhoods. The Data
Center is working with Making Connections–Milwaukee to disseminate the data and maps.
These organizations have also generated interest in reentry mapping in Milwaukee by
demonstrating its benefits to local service providers.
Oakland, California (joined 2002): The Urban Strategies Council (USC) is the lead Reentry
Mapping network partner in Oakland. The USC is dedicated to community building
advocacy. Early in the project, the USC received zip code–level data for 1998 and 2000 for
Oakland regarding parolees’ location at release. Later, they were able to obtain address-level
parolee data. The USC has been participating in Oakland’s Community Reentry Service
Provider Network and has been producing a weekly reentry newsletter, California Police and
Prison News.
Providence, Rhode Island (joined 2002): The Providence Plan and the Rhode Island Family
Life Center were joint reentry mapping partners in Providence, along with the Rhode Island
Department of Corrections. The partnership analyzed address-level data on people awaiting
trial, people who have been sentenced, and people on probation and parole. Their maps and
analysis were used in a community education campaign and two successful public policy
initiatives. They have also analyzed service access for the formerly incarcerated and created
an online referral database.
San Diego, California (joined 2004): The San Diego County District Attorney’s office, in
conjunction with the San Diego Association of Governments, lead the Reentry Mapping
Network project in San Diego. They have convened a local reentry roundtable to develop
relevant responses based on the analysis and findings from their reentry maps and data.
Seattle, Washington (joined 2004): Public Health–Seattle & King County is the lead RMN
partner in Seattle-King County. They have assessed patterns of prisoner reentry in the White
Center/Boulevard Park neighborhoods and explored disparities by race, immigration status,
and socioeconomic status. They are working with community partners to identify and
improve services for released prisoners in the community.

12

Washington, D.C. (joined 2002): NeighborhoodInfo DC leads the reentry mapping network
partnership in Washington, D.C. Established as a collaboration between the Urban Institute
and the Washington DC Local Initiatives Support Corporation, NeighborhoodInfo DC
provides community-based organizations and residents in the District of Columbia with local
data and analysis they can use to improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods.
NeighborhoodInfo DC is mapping patterns of reentry in Washington, D.C., and focusing on
obtaining better data on organizations providing services for former prisoners.
NeighborhoodInfo DC has partnered with the Faith-Based Reentry Initiative, a collaboration
of 40 churches in Washington, D.C., that provide mentoring and service referrals for
returning prisoners, to obtain data and disseminate analysis and mapping results.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina (joined 2002): The Winston-Salem Reentry Mapping
Network project is managed by the Center for Community Safety (CCS), a public service and
research center of Winston-Salem State University. CCS works with the Faith Seeds Reentry
Coalition in addressing the challenges of high concentrations of returning prisoners in
Winston-Salem’s Northeast neighborhood. Maps and other analyses from CCS are helping
the Faith Seeds Reentry Coalition plan for the creation of a Reentry Network Center, a onestop community-based service coordination center for former prisoners in northeast WinstonSalem.
Atlanta, Georgia and Chicago, Illinois (joined 2006): The Emory University Office of
University-Community Partnerships in Atlanta and the Metro Chicago Information Center in
Chicago will start reentry mapping partnerships in their respective communities in September
2006.

13

Section 2: Creating Reentry Maps
The centerpiece of the Reentry Mapping Network initiative is its use of maps as a tool for
communicating information on prisoner reentry. While traditional data analyses, charts, graphs,
policy briefs, written reports, and other products all play an important role in disseminating
information on reentry, maps are a unique and powerful tool for communicating this information.
Maps can make the spatial dynamics of reentry immediately apparent in a way charts and graphs
cannot. The following section explores the process of obtaining, analyzing, and mapping data on
prisoner reentry.

Obtaining Reentry Data
The essential prerequisite to mapping prisoner reentry is acquiring accurate and useful reentry
data. These data are almost always obtained from a government agency or other outside source.
The reentry mapping partnership must build a working relationship with the data source, which
often involves navigating data confidentiality and other political issues. The partnership also has
to determine what types of information it wants and how existing data can fill those needs.
Determining what data exists and how data can be used can actually be quite a complex task, as
it may not initially be clear what data fields are valuable. Corrections databases are generally
designed to manage offender populations rather than to inform research, and thus the structure of
the dataset and the accuracy of the data can be less than ideal for reentry mapping. These and
related issues involved in obtaining reentry data are discussed in detail below.
The RMN partners had a range of experiences obtaining reentry data. The time it took for sites to
have their data in hand varied, from relatively immediate success at securing data in WinstonSalem to a process that lasted over a year in Oakland and Milwaukee. Application of some of the
lessons learned by the RMN partners, which are included below, can help improve the process of
obtaining reentry data for other sites.

Identifying Data Sources
The most common source of data on returning prisoners is the state department of corrections
(DOC), which supervises prisoners serving time for felony convictions. Other sources of reentry
data include city or county DOCs, which supervise jail inmates awaiting trial or serving time for
misdemeanor convictions; state parole or community corrections agencies, which oversee
prisoners released to some form of supervision; and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which
manages prison inmates convicted of federal-level offenses.30
Most RMN partners were interested in data on state prisoners returning to their communities—a
much more sizable population than federal prison returnees—and thus worked with the
corrections agencies in their states to access information on these individuals. Although specific
contacts varied by site, RMN sites found that the information technology and the research and
statistics offices within the DOC or community corrections agency tended to have the most
30

While this is an important data source, we have been unable to identify a reentry mapping effort that has obtained
and utilized Federal Bureau of Prisons data.

14

familiarity with the data systems used to extract information on returning prisoners. For example,
in the Milwaukee RMN site, the information technology office of the Wisconsin DOC was the
key data contact, while in Washington, D.C., the Office of Research and Evaluation of the Court
Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) provided data to the RMN partnership.
The data providers in many RMN cities were quite receptive to sharing their data for use in
reentry mapping efforts. In Providence, the DOC’s enthusiasm about having a new partner to
assist with achieving their research and analysis goals helped to expedite fulfillment of the data
request. Building a positive working relationship with the data source is crucial. The amount of
investment required to build these relationships will vary from site to site. The department of
corrections may be more willing to provide data if the request comes from a well-organized
reentry mapping partnership with clear goals and strong connections to and involvement with
reentry issues in the community.
The reentry mapping partners can also draw on existing relationships with corrections agencies
to facilitate access to data. In Louisville, for instance, the Community Resource Network was
fortunate to have the recently retired executive director of the Kentucky State Parole Board assist
them in their data acquisition efforts. If a government agency is a key player or even leader of
the initiative, obtaining data can be relatively painless, and may only require running a data
query in a system the agency already has access to, as was the case in San Diego.
If the DOC is not already involved in the reentry mapping partnership, staff members may be
willing to provide data if they are invited to participate at some level. This could involve formal
participation in the ongoing discussions and decisions of the partnership, or simply receiving the
maps and other analytic products of the reentry mapping partnership. If a reentry mapping
partnership is able to analyze reentry data in a way that is helpful to the DOC, the DOC may be
more willing to commit staff resources to extract data that would otherwise be difficult to access.
For example, the Center for Community Safety in Winston-Salem was able to overcome the
initial reluctance of corrections officials to provide a full set of data by giving these officials
maps that displayed the limited data that the DOC was initially willing to release. The North
Carolina DOC saw the value of the CCS’s work and agreed to provide a full dataset and to
provide updates of those data on a regular basis. In Oakland, the Urban Strategies Council
created a data dictionary for the state corrections dataset, and provided it to the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The CDCR did not have a codebook for
their data, and, in providing something useful to the CDCR, the Urban Strategies Council built
capital that has resulted in access to CDCR staff for assistance in interpreting the data.
While these positive working relationships helped the RMN partners obtain and understand the
data, a willing partner does not automatically translate into the quick transfer of data. As was the
case in Des Moines and Hartford, an antiquated data management system can complicate a data
provider’s ability to pull the necessary data from its database. RMN partners also noted that even
when a data provider is highly cooperative, the agency may have other data requests or priorities
that slow the process.
Staff turnover within the data source agency is highly likely, and can help or hinder data access.
In Oakland, turnover worked in the reentry mapping partnership’s favor, as it resulted in new

15

CDCR staff who were more amenable to providing the Urban Strategies Council with data.
Several RMN partners had the opposite experience: the departure of key contacts from their
DOCs made it difficult to proceed with data analysis because interpretation questions were left
unanswered. Access to individuals knowledgeable about and supportive of the reentry mapping
project is important for acquiring data, but these relationships should also be formalized in datasharing agreements or IRB-approved data requests, to mitigate the effects of staff turnover.

Deciding What Data to Request
Before requesting data from the appropriate agency, a reentry mapping partnership team should
carefully consider what population of returning prisoners they are interested in studying, what
time period they are concerned with, and what data items they hope to receive. It is important to
determine if the partnership is interested in prison releasees, jail releasees (who may have
substantively different reentry challenges), or both. Partners must also decide whether they will
include data on individuals who are unsupervised after release as well as those who will be
subject to some period of post-release supervision. In some states, nearly all prisoners are
released to some form of supervision, whereas in other states significantly fewer prisoners are
supervised after release.31 Partnerships should also keep in mind that post-release supervision
takes different forms and may include parole, probation, and other forms of community
supervision. These different types of post-release supervision statuses have implications for the
types of data that should be included in the analysis, as well as the source of those data. Although
a full set of data on both supervised and unsupervised released prisoners would provide the most
complete picture of the returning population, it is possible that the DOCs will only have some
portion of the data available. By determining the populations of interest in advance, partnerships
can negotiate for the most relevant data given these potential data limitations.
Most RMN partners set out to obtain a dataset of all those prisoners released from custody during
the most recent calendar year. However, given the structure of their respective DOCs' databases
and certain restrictions on the type of data they collect, the RMN partners profiled in this
guidebook ended up with very different datasets, each of which has its share of advantages and
disadvantages:
1. Release data over a specific time period. The primary advantage of requesting data on all
those released during a given period of time (typically, the most recent fiscal or calendar
year) is that it represents a discrete set of data for the specific population of interest,
providing tremendous value for analyzing and understanding current spatial patterns of
reentry. These data are desirable because they provide a snapshot of the characteristics and
locations of the population of interest in a way that is relatively easy to analyze. However,
the dataset only depicts those most recently released from prison, and that information
becomes outdated relatively quickly, requiring subsequent data requests in the future.
2. Cross-sectional data on current correctional populations. This approach is similar to the
first, but less specific in that it includes all individuals on supervision at a given point in time
31

The national average of the portion of prisoners released to supervision is 82 percent, but the number varies
greatly from state to state. California, for example, releases almost all its prisoners to supervision, while less than
half of prisoners released in Florida and Massachusetts are under supervision (Travis and Lawrence 2002).

16

regardless of when they were released. Unless the data include a field describing when the
person was released, the file cannot be manipulated to create an accurate depiction of current
spatial patterns of reentry. Instead, the location of new releasees is mixed with the addresses
for former prisoners who have been on supervision for some unknown period of time. It is
also important to bear in mind that the group of people on supervision may be substantively
different from former prisoners not on supervision, in terms of offense type, time served, and
other characteristics. As a result of these factors, maps may depict different spatial
concentrations than those produced by analyzing locations of recently released prisoners, and
may in turn have implications for how the maps inform service provision. If services are
designed specifically for recently released prisoners, such maps may lead to erroneous
decisions as to where such services should be located. On the other hand, some services—
such as substance abuse treatment centers—may be designed to serve a broader former
prisoner population, in which case these data would be useful in guiding site location
decisions.
3. Longitudinal data on correctional populations. A third option for reentry-related data is to
obtain a series of datasets on correction populations over time. The only RMN site to use this
approach was Milwaukee, which obtained biannual data snapshots of all sentenced persons
who were incarcerated or on post-release supervision from 1997 to the present. The
extraction of such a complex, multiyear dataset required significant planning and effort by
DOC staff. The advantage of this approach is that it yields a powerful dataset for tracking the
reentry population over time. However, significant time and effort are required to obtain,
manage, and analyze the data, which can stall momentum early in the project.
Once the reentry mapping partnership has decided on the who and the when for their analysis,
they can turn to the what—what data fields should be requested from the DOC? The prisoner’s
release address is the key piece of data needed for mapping, and it is critical that data analysts
understand the source of the address data. Reentry mapping partnerships should seek to obtain a
street address for each individual. However, due to confidentiality concerns, data requestors may
have to settle for records with the census block group or even the census tract list as the location
for the returning prisoner. In these cases, the data requestor should still attempt to obtain records
for each individual, rather than summarized records for the whole block group or tract.
Individual records offer much more flexibility to analyze data in a variety of ways and can also
be linked by a unique identifier to track reentry patterns over time. For example, while
NeighborhoodInfo DC only received the census tract location of each released prisoner, rather
than his or her exact address, they did receive records at the individual level and will be able to
match their 2004 dataset to future release data.
In the ideal case, the DOC will be able to provide data on the address to which each prisoner
plans to return after release, although in some cases these data are collected only for those
released to supervision. It is important to verify the frequency with which address information is
updated and whether the dataset accounts for released prisoners who were subsequently
reincarcerated. The least desirable data source is that for which only the individual’s pre-prison
address is available. While reentry partners have been known to use these data as a proxy for
release addresses when no better data are available, these addresses are likely to be inaccurate
given that close to half of released prisoners end up residing in neighborhoods different from the

17

ones they lived in prior to incarceration.32 Research has also found that a small but noteworthy
share of former prisoners move frequently after release.33 As a result, the addresses provided by
the DOC (whether pre-incarceration or post-release) should not be viewed as an exact
representation of the permanent locations of former prisoners.
In addition to address information, reentry mapping partnerships should seek additional
information maintained by departments of corrections about released prisoners in order to better
understand the nature of the returning prisoner population. Some variables of interest may
include demographic data (e.g., age, race, and gender), criminal history, educational level,
employment and substance abuse history, and in-prison program participation. Some DOCs
possess rich sources of data collected through risk management or classification surveys
conducted with inmates. The Denver RMN site was able to obtain data from the DOC’s Level of
Supervision Inventory (LSI), a standardized risk and needs assessment tool designed to pinpoint
areas of need and concern for individual inmates. The LSI data covered a huge range of
information on each inmate’s criminal history, education and employment, financial background,
family and marital issues, alcohol/drug problems, emotional and personal concerns, and attitudes
and orientation. Milwaukee’s dataset included information on released prisoners’ program needs,
work skills, and risk for drug and alcohol problems. Appendix C contains an extensive list of
variables reentry mapping partnerships may seek to obtain, along with any confidentiality
restrictions that may accompany those data. Reentry mapping partnerships should receive input
from stakeholders in the partnership to help guide decisions about what data variables would be
most useful to them.
A reentry mapping partnership should also think carefully about what geographic areas they are
interested in analyzing, and what regions should be included in their data request. Some RMN
partners obtained release data for the entire state, which proved useful for generating
comparisons between the local reentry population and the statewide reentry population.
Analyzing data for the entire state can, however, require significant additional time and
resources. Yet requesting too little data can also cause problems. The United Way of Connecticut
(UWC) only requested reentry data for the city of Hartford, and later determined it would have
been more informative to have data for the entire county or region. Hartford being a small city,
much of what happens there is closely related to what happens in the surrounding county, and the
UWC’s analysis was limited by not having data for these areas. They also found it difficult to
engage the broader community, since many local organizations target their efforts throughout the
greater Hartford area, not just the city of Hartford. Reentry mapping teams should consider the
investment required to analyze regions beyond their immediate local areas, and the added value
such analyses might supply. Data requests require an investment in time on the part of the DOC
to process and deliver the data. If a partnership has to go back and request additional data
because their initial request was incomplete, they risk damaging relationships or being turned
down altogether.

32

La Vigne and Parthasarathy (2005). Other studies have attempted to use police data on the location of arrest as a
proxy for release address. This is a highly flawed approach for a number of reasons, chief among them that arrest
location is not a reliable indicator of where a person lives at the time of arrest, much less where they would return
after serving time in prison.
33
La Vigne and Parthasarathy (2005).

18

Overcoming Barriers to Data Acquisition
Obtaining data may be as easy as making a request over the phone or via e-mail to a contact at
the department of corrections. It is much more likely, however, that significant work must be
done by the reentry mapping partnership to address data confidentiality concerns and other data
access issues. Typically, DOCs and other data providers are willing to work with reentry
partnerships to negotiate such data requests. Despite this openness, the actual delivery of data
can take months. In addition to negotiating the data access and confidentiality issues already
mentioned, the complexity of the data request and the sophistication of the agency’s data
management system will determine the length of time for the request to be filled. In WinstonSalem, for example, the project’s success in obtaining data quickly may have been closely
related to the relative simplicity of their data request as well as the level of sophistication
characterizing the DOC’s management information system. In contrast, the Data Center in
Milwaukee requested a complicated multiyear dataset, which involved significant planning and
effort by the DOC.
To protect the confidentiality of the information about released prisoners contained in the
requested datasets, DOCs and other corrections data providers may require reentry mapping
partnerships to have their data request reviewed by an institutional review board (IRB). An IRB
is a group of statisticians, researchers, community advocates, and others that ensures that a
research project is ethical and that the rights and identities of study participants are protected. All
universities and most research organization have IRBs, and any research project funded by the
federal government must be reviewed by an IRB. Several of the data requests submitted by RMN
partners had to be reviewed and approved by the data provider’s institutional review board to
ensure that necessary steps were taken to safeguard sensitive personal data. In some cases, data
requests were approved after negotiating data sharing agreements that were not subject to a
separate IRB review process. Either way, the review and approval process frequently took longer
than anticipated.
The IRB review process requires researchers to set forth a series of protocols for ensuring that
the rights and privacy of research subjects will be protected. For example, when the Center for
Community Safety (CCS) in Winston-Salem submitted their data request to the North Carolina
Department of Corrections Human Subjects Review Committee, they outlined steps they would
take to protect the confidentiality of data. These included provisions ensuring that:
1. All staff handling the data sign and abide by a staff confidentiality pledge;
2. All sensitive computerized records be transmitted via secure means (e.g., CDs shipped
via FedEx, not e-mail);
3. All materials be stored in locked file cabinets or stored in password-protected files on
password-protected hard drives using PGP brand disk encryption software;
4. Access privileges and passwords be made available only to the appropriate staff
members; and
5. The project director conducts unannounced checks to ensure that all project staff
complied with this data security plan.

19

The data request made by the CCS also included strategies to assure that the data would not be
presented in such a way that the identity of individuals could be determined. Specifically, CCS
only mapped data that had at least five observations per unit of analysis so that outside parties
could not identify specific individuals. For example, if there were only one or two released
prisoners of a particular race/ethnicity (e.g., Asian) or age category (e.g., below 18 or above 65)
for a neighborhood or census block group, identifying the individual by name could be relatively
easy. Appendix C details potential solutions for confidentiality issues on a variable-by-variable
basis.
It may be possible to obtain aggregated data that pose few or no confidentiality concerns. These
data could be helpful in describing spatial patterns of reentry in a general way, as a precursor to
receiving more specific data necessary for producing a detailed analyses. This may be important
for maintaining momentum in reentry mapping partnerships that face long delays in receiving
data. In Oakland, for example, the USC received zip-code-level data for parolees before
eventually getting address-level parolee data more than a year later. Similarly, prior to receiving
longitudinal address-level data in Milwaukee, the Data Center received limited data about
returned prisoners on supervision that lacked detail on supervision type or status. Nonetheless,
these preliminary datasets allowed the partners to produce maps useful to community planning
efforts, although they should only be viewed as stop-gap measures to hold partnerships over until
more detailed data become available.
While an IRB will address confidentiality concerns, questions about who has rights to use the
DOC data and the products produced by the reentry mapping partnership’s analyses of those data
are best answered in a memorandum of understanding. A memorandum of understanding, or
MOU, is a formal, written agreement between two research parties that outlines the parameters
of a specific project and the role of each party in regards to that project. Some RMN sites entered
into MOUs with the agencies who supplied their reentry data (mainly state departments of
corrections). These MOUs outlined the nature of the reentry mapping project, and provided
detailed guidelines regarding ownership of the DOC data and products based on that data, and
how the data and research findings could be used and shared with others. MOUs may also
outline a formal process whereby the data provider can review the products a reentry mapping
partnership creates. A sample MOU is provided in appendix E.
Another limiting factor in accessing reentry data is availability of specific variables of interest. In
some cases, the department of corrections may not have access to the data being requested, such
as individuals’ previous incarceration records. In other cases, the data may be available, but cost
prohibitive to obtain due to the time that would be required to extract the data. In addition, staff
turnover and antiquated data systems sometimes limit access to data. Despite these concerns
about data availability, reentry mapping partnerships should not limit their data requests.
Presenting the department of corrections with a complete “wish list” of the data needed for the
reentry mapping partnership can serve as the starting point for more specific discussions with
corrections officials about what data are available and obtainable. (Appendix D includes an
example of such a wish list, which was used by the Center for Community Safety in its original
request for data from the North Carolina DOC).

20

Interpreting the Data
Each variable in a dataset usually has important background and contextual information needed
to accurately interpret it, such as the meaning of variable value codes and the dates certain fields
were entered. In some cases, this information is compiled in a data dictionary or codebook; if
such a book exists for a partnership’s dataset, they should make every effort to acquire it from
the data provider. Regardless of whether they have a codebook or not, reentry mapping
partnerships should establish in advance, to the extent possible, that they will need additional
support from their data provider to interpret the data. Below are specific interpretation issues that
arose in the data received by Reentry Mapping Network partners. Sorting through issues such as
these will result in a cleaner and more accurate database for use in analyses:
▪

If a person is released from prison twice during the period of time covered by the
data, are two records included in the data, or just one?
There are pros and cons to each approach. Including both records is an accurate measure
of the number of people released from prison during a given period. Identifying the share
of released prisoners who, over the course of a year, cycle in and out of prison is a good
proxy for the “revolving door” trends observed in many states across the county. This
approach, however, overestimates the number of unique individuals who are released. For
the purposes of planning for service provision and identifying concentrations of returning
prisoners within a community, it is usually preferable to only include the record
representing the most recent release of an individual.

▪

If data on past offenses are provided, how are cases with multiple offenses coded?
Typically, corrections data providers supply information on the most serious offense of
conviction, as well as multiple data fields indicating the other conviction offenses, if any.
Both the most serious offense and the other conviction fields are useful for reentry
mapping, particularly if one is interested in measuring the number of released prisoners
who were convicted of drug-related crimes. Because many more serious crimes are
committed along with drug crimes (e.g., aggravated assault in combination with drug
trafficking), all conviction fields should be requested and obtained to conduct this type of
analysis.

▪

How are probation, parole, and other supervision statuses designated?
In some states, there are multiple means of releasing individuals from prison, including
early release on parole, expiration of sentence, and various forms of split sentences (e.g.,
“shock probation,” for which an offender is sentenced to a short period of incarceration
followed by a term of probation supervision in the community). Each of these types of
release has implications for the challenges and resource requirements of prisoners
returning to the community.

▪

How are race and ethnicity coded?
Correctional agencies can code race and ethnicity in a variety of ways, and often the way
these attributes are coded can create analysis problems. Whereas the U.S. Census

21

accurately defines race separate from ethnicity,34 Hispanic is often miscategorized as a
race and thus presents problems for individuals who might identify themselves as, for
example, both black and Hispanic. Data obtained from providers who do not conform to
the Census’s approach are likely to depict an inaccurate race/ethnic composition of the
correctional population being studied. It is therefore critical to understand how race and
ethnicity are coded.35
▪

How often are records updated? Are multiple databases used to generate the
complete dataset? If so, when are data fields and databases updated?
As mentioned earlier, corrections data are often collected to support the primary mission
of the agency, which is to house and monitor prisoners safely and securely.
Unfortunately, from a research perspective, that viewpoint means that data fields are
often simply overwritten when updated or not updated throughout the prisoner’s tenure in
the system. For example, educational level at the time of admission could be different
from that at the time of release.36 Likewise, a prisoner’s marital status or number of
children could change during the course of incarceration. It is therefore critical that
reentry mapping partners verify with data providers which fields are updated and when
(if at all) those updates occur.

▪

How are missing values coded in the dataset and how should they be interpreted?
Administrative datasets frequently contain missing values for some records, which may
be coded as “missing” or simply left blank. In addition, many RMN partners received
datasets that were generated by merging data from two or more databases. In this
situation, the existence of records in some databases and not others will create records in
the final dataset that have empty fields. Missing values make analyzing and interpreting
the data more difficult. Researchers should determine whether to include missing cases in
statistical analyses, and must ensure that their software packages treat missing values
properly. Some software packages used to manage and analyze data assign default codes
to missing data values.

▪

Did the data provider’s data collection or data entry techniques or software change
significantly during the time period covered by the data request?
Changes in how data are collected or coded can have a tremendous impact on how the
data should be interpreted. If codes or classifications used to identify inmate
characteristics were changed, it is important to find out how the change was applied
across the dataset so that comparisons are consistent across data entered at different
times. If new data items were added, researchers should be aware of when the new data
collection was implemented so that records for which no data was collected can be
identified and excluded from analyses of these new variables.

34

For more information about how race and ethnicity are coded in the decennial census, visit
http://www.census.gov.
35
The National Neighborhood Change Database project has developed a methodology for coding data sets with
multiple race categories for individuals. A description of the methodology can be found in Tatian (2003).
36
In Maryland, for example, 13 percent of released prisoners increased their educational level during their most
recent term of incarceration (Visher et al. 2003).

22

Obtaining Contextual Data
To gain a full picture of prisoner reentry in a given community, a reentry mapping team will
need data about the neighborhoods to which prisoners are returning. This contextual data
includes basic demographic information, such as income and employment levels, as well as more
detailed information, such as the locations of service providers and potential employers.
Mapping contextual data provides insight into the ways neighborhood conditions may impact a
returning prisoner’s chances of success or failure. The specific datasets that must be assembled
depend on the reentry mapping partnership’s priorities and analysis plan. This section describes
some of the types of data that are most commonly used in reentry mapping, provides guidance on
identifying sources for those data, and discusses some potential problems related to using the
data.
Many organizations in cities across the country already collect and manage several types of
contextual community-level data that they and others use on a regular basis in local research and
policy projects. Members of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), for
example, have built such data warehouses using many of the data sources outlined below.37
Eleven of the twelve RMN partners had already developed comprehensive warehouses of
contextual data about their communities prior to beginning their reentry mapping work, and the
twelfth, CCS in Winston-Salem, was in the process of developing similar data capacity. Reentry
mapping partnerships will benefit greatly if they are able to include in their stakeholder group a
local research organization that has already compiled contextual community data. This
organization could be a nonprofit group or a local university’s urban planning or GIS
department. However, the inclusion of an organization with an existing collection of community
data is not necessary for a reentry mapping effort to succeed. Provided that the research team
includes at least one staff person with a background in community-based research and GIS,
contextual data such as those outlined below can be obtained specifically for the reentry mapping
project.

Sources of Contextual Data
Demographic Data
The U.S. Census Bureau is an excellent source of information that provides comprehensive data
on indicators of community well-being. The census provides baseline information about
neighborhoods, including population demographics such as age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital and
family status, children, and education level, as well as characteristics of communities, such as
employment rates and percentage of renter-occupied units. The Census Bureau maintains a web
site where this data can be downloaded free of charge (http://www.census.gov/). The primary
drawback of using census data is that neighborhood-level data are collected only every 10 years
(most recently in 2000), and thus do not reflect important changes in neighborhoods that occur
between data collection periods.

37

For more information on NNIP, see http://www.urban.org/nnip.

23

Caution should be exercised in using outdated census data that might not accurately describe
current neighborhood characteristics. However, this problem is being addressed in part with the
Census Bureau’s recent launch of the American Community Survey (ACS). The goal of the ACS
is to provide current demographic and socioeconomic data on an annual basis.38 In the meantime,
some researchers have found private vendors such as Claritas (http://www.claritas.com/) and
Geolytics (http://www.geolytics.com/) to be a useful source of annual demographic data
estimates.
RMN partners have used census data to highlight differences between neighborhoods with a high
concentration of returning prisoners and those with fewer returning prisoners. In Des Moines, for
example, the CFPC has used census data to highlight challenges that neighborhoods with high
concentrations of returned prisoners face in addressing prisoner reentry, including high
unemployment and poverty rates.
Boundary Data
In addition to census data, information about communities can often be obtained from city or
county planning departments or multi-jurisdictional councils of government. These data sources
include some of the basic data needed to create maps, such as data on neighborhood boundaries
and the locations of bus routes and other transit stops, schools, and police and fire stations. The
best place to start looking for this information is on the local city or county government’s web
site. In some cases, these data can also be obtained from the local university research center or
other local research organizations.
Service Provider Data
The majority of RMN partners collected some data on local service providers, either by
accessing existing databases or by building their own. Many communities have multiple printed
and electronic databases listing service providers, and some have automated information and
referral systems (I&R or 211 systems) that offer comprehensive details on providers. The local
United Way or other service provider umbrella agencies can also be a useful source of this
information. In addition, some state corrections departments maintain data on services for former
prisoners, and several vendors maintain databases available on a per-record fee schedule. In all
these types of service provider datasets, information about organizational and program-related
goals, target populations, client-eligibility criteria, services offered, fees, and programmatic
capacity for each available service are desirable if available. This information can be mapped to
identify service delivery gaps and overlaps, and potentially can be used to prepare or expand
upon a service directory as a resource for returning prisoners.
Data from individual service providers about their clients can also be useful in better
understanding the former prisoner population and in planning for their return. For example, a
food kitchen, homeless shelter, or employment training center may note in their client files
whether a client is a convicted felon. These data can be used to estimate how services are
accessed and used, and in some cases outcomes for these clients can be tracked. As with the
department of corrections, these data are extremely sensitive, and any request for the data should
38

More information on the American Community Survey can be found at http://www.census.gov/acs/.

24

be vetted by an institutional review board and include a detailed plan to guarantee data security
and the protection of clients’ privacy. Once those protocols are in place, obtaining data from
service providers should be relatively easy, particularly if the reentry partnership offers to
produce maps detailing where service provider clients reside, which can be used to help target
their services.
An important caveat about obtaining and mapping service provider data, however, is that these
data require the appropriate level of detail to discern between the locations of service provider
headquarters or administrative offices and the locations of clinics, transitional housing, and other
places that represent the points of delivery to former prisoner clients. Without this information,
one could map all addresses related to a service provider and erroneously conclude that services
are available in areas where they do not actually exist.
Local, State, and Federal Agency Data
Other existing datasets from government agencies can be pursued to address particular priority
issues for reentry mapping partnerships. For example, to fully analyze the housing needs of
returning prisoners, data about the housing stock can be obtained from the city or country
assessor’s office in many communities. To fully analyze the employment needs of returning
prisoners, recent employment statistics can be obtained from the federal Bureau of Labor
Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/). In addition, data about new construction projects or other
potential employment opportunities can often be obtained from a city or county office of
planning, or potentially the local workforce development council. For most issues, a local
government office as well as one or more local nonprofits can be contacted as potential data
providers and stakeholders.

Primary Data Collection
Although many types of contextual data are readily available to reentry mapping partnerships,
some may find it necessary to collect additional data themselves. Methods for primary data
collection are well documented in a number of existing manuals and guidebooks.39
The reentry mapping partnership in Winston-Salem was interested in collecting information
about the location of churches, day care centers, and other assets, as well as abandoned and
vacant housing (deficits), in certain neighborhoods. The Center for Community Safety partnered
with the Urban Institute and the local community to develop and implement a survey protocol.
The survey team, which included formerly incarcerated people and neighborhood residents,
walked the streets in the neighborhoods of interest to physically observe and record the location
of assets and deficits, information which was later entered into an asset database. See appendix F
for more information on collecting data on local assets.
Reentry mapping partnerships may also want to collect data on prisoner reentry that cannot be
found in administrative datasets. The Denver RMN partnership determined that they wanted a
fuller picture of the barriers to successful reentry than could be obtained from the administrative
data alone. They decided to field multiple surveys of people on parole and raised funds to
39

See, for example, chapter 4 in Tatian (2000).

25

support this work. The goal of the primary data collection efforts is to identify what strategies
might improve reentry outcomes for different populations and under different conditions. The
surveys are currently being implemented, and more detail on these efforts can be found in the
Denver case study in appendix A.

26

Creating Maps
Creating maps that effectively and accurately communicate information is part art and part
science. Mapmakers must make judgments about color schemes and graphics while also
applying statistics and sound geographic principles to the maps they produce. This section offers
advice on how to avoid common pitfalls in creating maps and how to choose the right type of
map to communicate your data most effectively.

Geocoding Accurately
Before one can create a map, it is first necessary to “geocode” the address data to be presented
on the map. Geocoding is the process of assigning geographic coordinates (longitudes and
latitudes) to street addresses. While all GIS software has built-in geocoding capabilities, issues of
data quality associated with incomplete or inaccurate street numbers, names, and/or zip codes
can
present
problems.
Datasets likely must be
Where Can I Learn How to Map?
cleaned before geocoding
While this guidebook recommends that reentry
can begin. Address fields
mapping novices team up with local experts (e.g.,
may
contain
errors,
universities or nonprofit data centers) to obtain
omissions, duplications, or
mapping assistance, it may not be possible or
other problems that staff
desirable to do so. In fact, some reentry mapping
may need to manually fix so
partnerships may determine that having in-house GIS
that the data is able to be
expertise is important for project sustainability.
geocoded. Once the data is
Fortunately, several affordable training options are
cleaned, a mapper will
available. Software vendors such as ESRI and
typically start by using the
MapInfo offer training workshops throughout the
built-in geocoder associated
with whatever GIS software
country for a fee (see http://www.esri.com/ and
is being employed. This step
http://www.mapinfo.com/). Beginning mappers can
is followed by “batch
also take advantage of the workshops offered through
geocoding”
or
manual
the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ’s) Crime
geocoding of the remainder,
Mapping Research Conference or the NIJ-funded
which involves reviewing
Crime Mapping and Analysis Program in Denver,
each troublesome address
Colorado. For a comprehensive list of mapping
individually to clean the
training and tutorial options, see
data and determine the
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/resources.html.
correct address and location.
The importance of effective geocoding cannot be overstated. Oftentimes, novice mappers will
simply run the GIS software’s batch geocoding function and leave it at that, with no concern
about what share of addresses are actually depicted on the map. Thus, it is always important to
make note of the “geocoding hit rate”—the percentage of all addresses that were confirmed as
accurate and depicted on the map. Hit rates of 95 percent or higher are desirable, and anything
below 80 percent should be viewed skeptically. This is particularly true because it could be that
an entire share of cases at one specific location is missing—for example, all those prisoners who
are released to a specific transitional center may not have been geocoded if the DOC simply

27

recorded the name of the center with no street address. This would result in a map that is
spatially biased, misrepresenting the concentrations of released prisoners.
Even when the hit rate is high, the locations on the map may not be accurate. For example, some
addresses may be inaccurately geocoded to locations in industrial areas, water bodies, or other
places that are unlikely to be the location of a residence. Thus, it is usually recommended that the
mapper take a random sample of point locations and check them to determine whether they
appear valid. In the future, the use of geographic positioning systems (GPS) in corrections may
make this step unnecessary, as GPS is used more often for prisoner tracking.40
In other cases, addresses may be geocoded correctly but may not represent individual residences.
The mapper should make note of “repeat addresses”—those addresses to which multiple released
prisoners are returning—and then attempt to identify those that are associated with significant
numbers of released prisoners. Common sites for repeat addresses include halfway houses,
transitional centers, homeless shelters, jails, and INS detention centers. Some of these repeat
addresses are legitimate sites of prisoner reentry, while others, like jails or detention centers, do
not represent reentry, but instead indicate transfer within the criminal justice system.
Figure 4: Repeat Addresses and False Concentrations of Returnees

40

See Karappunnan (2005).

28

In some cases, the mapper may determine that a repeat address should be eliminated from the
map because it does not accurately depict reentry. Mappers typically keep repeat addresses
associated with halfway houses and transition centers, however, as they can help inform
conversations about service delivery for former prisoners.
In the example illustrated in figure 4 above, Urban Institute researchers mapped the addresses of
all prisoners released to Chicago in 2001 and produced a density map that depicted an unusual
concentration in the southeast part of the city, where one address alone was associated with
1,158 released prisoners. A quick check of the address revealed that it was the location of the
county jail, where “released” prisoners were transferred to await other pending charges. Those
data points were subsequently removed from the file because it was decided that they did not
depict the true residential locations of returning prisoners.
The methodology used by the Seattle RMN site for tracking repeat addresses is outlined in figure
5.

Figure 5: Geocoding Repeat Addresses in Seattle
Before geocoding, addresses were cleaned by correctly parsing street, city, and zip fields.
As part of the address cleaning process, addresses representing certain kinds of facilities
such as homeless shelters, transitional housing facilities, the INS/BICE detention center,
and common apartment complexes were identified.
A “Place” field was created to preserve the name of the location if it was included in the
address field. For example, names such as “Union Gospel Mission” or “Seadrunar”
(Seattle Drug and Narcotic Center) were frequently entered in address fields. Specific
group quarters that appeared in the address files multiple times were assigned a “Place ID”
and saved in a “Places” database. An attempt was made to assign these places to one of the
following categories:
· Apartment
· Condo
· Day/Evening Program
· Drop-In Center
· Drug Treatment
· Homeless
· Hotel/Motel
· INS/BICE

· Jail/Law Enforcement
· Low Cost/Subsidized Housing
· Mobile Home
· None
· Nursing Home
· Residential Drug Treatment
· Shelter
· Transitional Housing

Addresses for which the only information entered was “Homeless,” “Transient” or some
variation were tagged as “Homeless.” These did not include records with blank addresses
which were tagged as “No_addr.” Also excluded were known homeless shelters which
were tagged as “Shelter.”

29

Communicating Effectively with Maps41
When creating maps depicting prisoner reentry and related data, it is critical to first ask a series
of questions that will help guide both the content and presentation of the map. The first question
is, who is the audience? Is it the general public, the department of corrections, a meeting of
service providers, or some combination of these stakeholders? Understanding the audience will
help to guide the level of detail and amount of information to include. An equally important
question to ask is, what is the purpose of the map? Is the purpose to depict the distribution of
released prisoners across a county, the precise locations of service providers, or a summary of
socioeconomic data in a neighborhood? Determining the purpose of the map ahead of time can
help prevent the inclusion of unnecessary or irrelevant information, which can often result in a
cluttered map that is difficult to interpret.
Once the audience and purpose of the map are agreed upon, the next question to consider is,
what information must be included and at what level of detail? Is it necessary to include offense
information? Demographics? Is street-level information required or would major arteries suffice?
A general rule of thumb is that the map should depict only those data that are necessary to get
across the intended message. When using contextual data, the mapmaker should take care to
present information that is specific and useful. For example, there is little to be gained from a
map of release locations laid over a general bus transit map, but a map of bus lines that provide
direct access to potential employment opportunities or drug abuse treatment facilities could be
very helpful.
Assuming the above questions are asked and answered, the next decision is what type of map to
make. The most common options are point maps, thematic or “choropleth” maps, and density
maps.42 Each of these maps has its share of advantages and disadvantages; while there is no
“right” map to use for all occasions, some work better for some types of data than for others.
Your map choice will also depend on scale and context.

41

This section provides general tips on creating maps that communicate clearly and effectively, as well as a cursory
overview of the types of reentry maps that can be made. For more detailed guidance on map-making principles, see
Heywood, Cornelius, and Carter (1998) and Harries (1999).
42
Another common type of map, a graduated symbol map, depicts data using symbols that vary in size based on the
value of the data items. This type of map is most commonly used in nationwide maps and therefore is not illustrated
in this guidebook.

30

Types of Maps
Point Maps
Figure 6: Example of a Point Map

The most rudimentary type of map to produce is referred to as the “pin,” or point, map. Each
point on the map represents a single entity. The advantage of the point map is that it provides
very detailed information regarding the geographic location of the subject being mapped. For
example, a point map of returning prisoners would enable one to see precisely where they are
living within a particular neighborhood.43 However, point maps also have a number of
disadvantages. First, it may not be desirable to display certain data at this level of detail if it
threatens to violate confidentiality protocols (e.g., if a pin map revealed the identity of a juvenile
43

Most GIS software estimates the exact location of an address on a given street block based on the range of
addresses on that block. Therefore, the point locations are not accurate below the block level.

31

offender). Point maps are also undesirable when mapping a large amount of data, because the
result will be too many points overcrowding the map so that no patterns can be discerned.
Furthermore, point maps mask the locations of repeat addresses; because multiple points at the
same location are simply layered directly on top of one another, one point on the map could
represent hundreds of cases. Typically, point maps are not recommended for reentry mapping
because the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
Thematic Maps
Thematic maps, also known as “choropleth” maps, are useful for depicting information across an
entire jurisdiction. They are also the only option to employ when the data being mapped is
already aggregated above the address level, such as information by census tract, police beat, and
voting district. Thematic maps can also be an appropriate choice when one intentionally wants to
mask the specific locations of cases or individuals, such as when mapping victimization data to
ensure confidentiality. Another advantage to this type of map is that it enables the layering of
information so that relationships between two data sources can be compared (e.g., a point map of
addresses of returning prisoners overlaid on top of a thematic map depicting rates of
unemployment across a community).
Figure 7: Example of a Thematic Map

32

The final advantage to thematic maps is that, because they employ aggregate data, they are well
suited for depicting rates versus volumes. The distinction between rate and volume can be
critical for the mapping of released prisoners. For example, if one is preparing a map of released
prisoners to help inform whether adequate services exist in the areas closest to where most
released prisoners live, mapping the volume, or raw number of released prisoners, is the
appropriate choice. But if one were exploring the extent to which a neighborhood experiences
the impact of reentry, it might be more appropriate to map the number of released prisoners per
1,000 residents. In Providence, the difference between volumes and rates was significant: the
Upper South Providence neighborhood received fewer returning prisoners than the West End
neighborhood, but had almost three times the rate of returning prisoners as West End (see figure
8).

Figure 8. Number and Rate of Prisoners Returning to
Providence Neighborhoods, 2004
Neighborhood

Number of
returning prisoners

Rate per 1,000
residents

West End
Upper South Providence
Lower South Providence
Elmwood

168
144
70
91

10.2
29.0
12.2
7.9

The disadvantages to thematic maps involve the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), wherein
address data that are aggregated to a larger unit can mask concentrations within the unit.44
Another potential problem with this type of map is that GIS software typically uses arbitrary
value breaks (as shown in the legend) to identify different ranges of data. While the map
designer has the option of choosing a number of ways to make those value breaks, each can
change the interpretation of the map.45
Density Maps
The final type of map that may be used to display data on prisoner reentry is the density map,
which is sometimes referred to as a “hot spot” map. The density map employs GIS software that
transforms address-level data into small pixels, and interpolates those data across the geographic
landscape being mapped. Because it is derived from a point map, this map enables the depiction
of multiple incidents at the same address. It also provides for a cleaner display than the point
map and allows for the layering of additional information similar to that described in the
discussion of thematic maps.

44

For a more detailed description of MAUP and how it can affect map interpretation, see Professor Jerry Ratcliffe’s
discussion and listing of related references at http://www.jratcliffe.net/research/maup.htm.
45
For more information on this point, see Monmonier (1991).

33

Figure 9: Example of a Density Map

There are, however, disadvantages to this type of map. First, the “smoothed” surface generated
by the GIS software gives the impression that points exist in places where there are actually no
data. Second, the production of density maps requires the map designer to choose the density
function and bandwidth used to generate the surface. The default values employed by the GIS
software may not always be an appropriate choice, and modifications to these choices can
change the resulting surface rather significantly, revealing or masking concentrations depending
on the parameters employed.46

46

For more information on selecting the parameters for a density map, see Williamson et al. (1999).

34

Figure 10: Essential Elements of a Map
The following six items are essential for every map created, especially for those distributed to
other organizations during meetings and conferences. Maps in PowerPoint presentations can be
modified to fit the screen better; however these elements are still important to include:
► Title
► Legend
► Scale Bar

► Date
► North Arrow
► Source and Notes
Title
The largest type
size on map.
Located in visually
pleasing and easily
seen portion of
page. Provides
overview of what
the map displays.

Scale Bar
Provides sense of
distance. Usually
positioned near
the bottom of the
map.
Legend
Needs to be
easily understandable and
positioned so
it balances the
rest of the
elements.

Source: City X Department of Juvenile
Services, July 1, 2004–June 30, 2005

Source and Notes
Acknowledge and/or reference any pertinent
information about how the map was made,
who made it, and the dates associated with the
data presented in the map.

North Arrow
Provides
orientation. It is
especially
important if North
is not “up.”

Date
Some maps are time sensitive.
The date of creation helps
determine how current the map is.
35

Avoiding Common Mapping Pitfalls
No matter what type of map one employs, there are certain basic principles of map production
that should be followed to ensure that the map communicates clearly and effectively. Novice
mapmakers often fall victim to mapping too much data (the “everything but the kitchen sink”
approach). As figure 11 illustrates, too much detail makes the map difficult to interpret, often
masking spatial patterns and relationships.
Figure 11: Example of an Ineffective Map

Clearly, the map in figure 11 does not communicate effectively for a number of reasons:
•
•
•
•
•

The general purpose of this map is unclear because there is no title or legend.
The viewer is unable to determine what the points, other symbols, shaded areas, or lines
symbolize.
It is difficult to see all the symbols because there are so many points and overlapping
symbols.
The area and data displayed are not appropriate for the use of a point map.
The colors used are visually jarring.

36

While the above example illustrates what can happen when one maps too much data, it is equally
problematic when not enough information is included on a map. A standard guiding principle of
map making is that any map created should have sufficient information so that it can serve as a
stand-alone document. The user should be able to understand the map without any accompanying
text and also know the source of the data presented on the map and who created it. This is
important, as maps are often widely disseminated and can easily be taken out of context without
this accompanying information (see figure 10: Essential Elements of a Map).
Color is another important decision when creating a map, as it can often influence the user’s
understanding of the map. One basic example is the depiction of rivers and forests. Typically,
rivers are colored blue and forests are colored green. If a mapper colored rivers gray and forests
red, then the user could mistake the rivers for roads and forests for urban areas. Another
important point about color is the way it is used with thematic maps. When mapping quantities,
darker colors or gray shades should be employed for higher values and lighter colors for lower
values. Shades and colors should also be selected so that each category is easily discernable from
the others. Map colors should be complementary rather than visually jarring (see figure 12). Map
designers often consult a web site called Color Brewer (http://www.colorbrewer.org/) for
assistance in choosing the best color scheme for a map.

Figure 12: Example of Poor Map Color Scheme

In this map, poor color and symbols have been used. For example, the ocean should be blue,
not orange, and streets should be plain lines rather than a symbol typically reserved for
railroad tracks. Symbols for hospitals, grocery stores, and libraries are too large and dwarf
the rest of the map.

37

Mapmakers should also be aware that colors can convey meanings. For example, density maps
came to be known as “hot spot” maps by crime analysts and police officers who generated and
used density maps of crime. Given the name and the nature of the data being mapped in this
context, crime hot spots are typically depicted in shades of red. Depicting the concentrations of
returning prisoners in red, however, may carry with it the unintended message that these
returning prisoners are a threat or that they will generate crimes in the neighborhoods to which
they return.
As with color, the shapes and patterns of symbolism chosen to depict various types of data on a
map can also influence viewers’ perceptions of what is being communicated. Using a “+” to
depict locations of schools, for example, may confuse viewers who assume the cross is
associated with the location of a church. Thus, symbols should bear some natural relation to the
feature being represented. While there are many built-in symbols available in GIS software,
these symbols should be used with care so that they do not detract from the map’s main purpose.
Symbols also should be of appropriate size so as not to dwarf other data on the map. The
symbols are too big for the size of the map in figure 12, and clutter the map without providing
helpful information.

38

Section 3: Using Reentry Mapping to Promote
Community Well-Being
Obtaining, analyzing, and mapping data on prisoner reentry, as described in section 2, is not the
only goal of a reentry mapping partnership. The purpose of these mapping activities is to provide
information to the public, government officials, policymakers, service providers, and local
residents, including former prisoners and their families, on the local dynamics of prisoner
reentry. The ultimate goal of any reentry mapping effort is to improve and refine public policy,
service delivery, and community responses to reentry. The process of using reentry mapping to
engage communities and inform local policy and practice will vary based on the resources
available to a partnership and the local context surrounding their work. Nonetheless, there are
some common issues that arise in any effort to use reentry mapping research as a springboard for
local action. The following section explores some of these issues, outlining the process of
identifying interested stakeholders, building partnerships, and working with these partners to
disseminate research findings and use the findings to improve policy and practice.

Building a Reentry Mapping Partnership
To produce useful research and effectively apply that research toward community improvement,
an action research initiative on prisoner reentry must involve multiple local partners with a range
of resources and capabilities. Both the “action” and the “research” capacities must be represented
in the reentry partnership, and the partnership should include organizations and individuals with
a diverse set of perspectives and interests. The success of any collaborative initiative will depend
on who is involved and what resources they can contribute, as well as how these individuals and
groups come together and work as partners.

Leadership
A reentry mapping project requires leadership to convene the project, recruit stakeholders, build
momentum, and coordinate the activities of the partnership. Following the action research
framework, a reentry mapping initiative is most likely to succeed if its leadership includes a
research and a community/action component. In some cases, an organization may have strengths
in both areas and can singularly serve as the lead agency. For example, the Urban Strategies
Council in Oakland had both the research staff and the community connections necessary to lead
the reentry partnership from its beginnings. In other cities, two or more organizations with
complementary capabilities may partner to lead the project, as was done in Providence, where
The Providence Plan (research) and the Rhode Island Family Life Center (action) worked as coleaders.
Another model, common among the RMN sites, is the partnering of a research organization with
a community coalition to jointly lead the mapping efforts. Winston-Salem’s Center for
Community Safety partnered with a faith-based reentry coalition, while the Community
Resource Network in Louisville linked up with a community-wide reentry planning initiative that
was just forming. In areas without a reentry coalition or history of community organizing around
reentry, a research partner may have to recruit local stakeholders and community members to
39

create a reentry coalition. For example, the Piton Foundation in Denver convened a community
advisory committee, which involved several local organizations interested in the issue, to guide
and utilize its reentry mapping work. Creating such coalitions can be challenging, as can
generating community-based momentum to address reentry. The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee
was able to bring key service providers to the table over the course of its project to review maps
and guide analysis, but to date no external community-based group has taken leadership or
ownership of the issue.
Equally important to having one or two lead organizations is the need for an early champion for
the reentry partnership. This champion could take the form of a charismatic individual (such as
the head of an agency or service provider) or an influential foundation or advocacy group. The
nature of the champion is less important than the fact that some individual or organization with
power, influence, and connections is on board to help get the ball rolling and encourage other
key stakeholders to participate.

Involving Other Stakeholders
Once leadership determines that they are interested in pursuing a reentry mapping project, they
should begin work to bring other stakeholders into the partnership. In the next section, we outline
several groups that are connected in some way to prisoner reentry issues and therefore may wish
to become involved in a reentry mapping initiative. The stakeholders that can contribute to an
initiative’s success will differ in each local context. Organizations that are interested in
collaborating, dedicated to addressing reentry issues, and able to devote time and resources to the
project will obviously make better partners. Partnerships with a broad, diverse array of members
have a greater range and depth of perspectives, resources, and expertise to draw on, and can
create more comprehensive, multi-dimensional strategies.
A reentry partnership that does not involve former prisoners or members of the communities
most affected by incarceration and reentry will likely find itself lacking expertise and legitimacy.
It is also important that the partnership include individuals with a background in or familiarity
with prisoner reentry issues, and those who can connect the research findings to crucial funding,
program, and public policy decisions that affect former prisoners. Also critical for the
partnership is the involvement of an organization or individual with expertise in creating maps
and working with neighborhood-level datasets.
The leaders of a reentry mapping initiative can recruit partners by drawing on their existing
networks and relationships, as well as inviting local reentry stakeholders to a kickoff meeting to
explain the project and how these stakeholders can participate. The RMN leadership must
highlight for potential partners—especially those who may not currently be involved in working
on reentry issues—why the topic of reentry and this project specifically are relevant to their
organization’s mission and goals. Presenting preliminary maps that illustrate the relationship
between reentry and other measures of community well being is often an effective method for
explaining the purpose of the project and demonstrating the utility of mapping for understanding
reentry.

40

The earlier in the reentry mapping process that stakeholders become involved in, or at least
aware of, the initiative, the more likely they are to feel ownership over the results. However,
RMN partners frequently found that additional organizations became interested in partnering
after they observed early results of the project. Because of this ongoing influx of new
stakeholders, it is important to periodically evaluate the stakeholders involved in the partnership
to determine how various constituencies are being represented.
Excluding key organizations or constituencies from the process can create problems if the
involvement of those entities is needed later to implement policy, programming, or community
changes. However, in some cases, excluding certain groups for a period of time may be a
strategic choice. In Winston-Salem, the community coalition that guided much of the project
excluded service providers in the initial stages of its work, to develop a plan that reflected the
goals of community members and the formerly incarcerated. While this strategy was effective in
attracting grassroots participation, it did make it more difficult for the coalition to involve service
providers later in the process. Decisions about who to include in the partnership must involve the
careful weighing of the benefits and drawbacks of each possible path.
When exploring the possibilities for partnership, a reentry mapping team should carefully
consider the overlap between its own goals and those of a potential partner. Many RMN sites
made strategic choices about how to conduct their projects, choices which may or may not be
compatible with another organization’s work. For example, in Oakland the Urban Strategies
Council (USC) declined to take a position on issues related to sentencing and incarceration
regulations. This was done to maintain the positive relationship with the California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation that was necessary for access to both data for research and
inmates for programming. This choice was appropriate for the USC’s goals, but may not have
been compatible with the methods or purposes of other stakeholders, even though the end vision
of better outcomes for the formerly incarcerated was shared by all parties.

Potential Partners
Figure 13 lists reentry stakeholders who may be important partners in a reentry mapping project.
More details on these potential partners and what each can bring to a reentry initiative are
outlined below.

Figure 13: Potential Partners for a Reentry Mapping Initiative
Community Members and Groups
Corrections Agencies
Law Enforcement
Nonprofit Research and Policy Organizations
Policymakers
Service Providers
Victims Advocates
Universities
Related Initiatives

41

Community Members and Groups
Community stakeholders include former prisoners and their families, residents of neighborhoods
with high rates of incarceration and reentry, local businesses, public representatives, faith-based
organizations, and other individuals and organizations affected by prisoner reentry. These are the
groups that experience the challenges of prisoner reentry on a day-to-day basis in the
community, living and working with formerly incarcerated people. As such, the reentry mapping
partnership should encourage their participation as much as possible. For example, the
community advisory committee that guided the work of the Denver RMN partnership included
residents of Making Connections–Denver neighborhoods (some of the Denver areas most
affected by incarceration and reentry) and representatives from community-based organizations
that provide direct assistance to people returning from prison, in their efforts to reintegrate
successfully.
Community stakeholders can offer important perspectives on reentry and ideas for change. These
groups will undoubtedly play a role in advocating for and implementing policy, program, and
community responses that are proposed by the partnership. Any of these community
stakeholders, or a coalition of community members and groups, may be well suited to convene
and lead a reentry mapping initiative.
Corrections Agencies
Both institutional and community corrections agencies are natural partners to include in any
reentry initiative. State and local departments of correction and/or community supervision
agencies (parole and probation) are frequently the main sources of address-level data on reentry.
Most RMN partners have spent significant time working with both types of agencies to obtain
and accurately interpret administrative data on reentry.
The role of these agencies in a reentry initiative, however, should not be restricted merely to that
of data provider. As an active participant in a reentry mapping partnership, corrections and
supervision agencies can provide input about what they are currently doing with regard to preand post-release reentry assistance, as well as what new policies and programs might be
beneficial. Ideally, these agencies will actively seek opportunities to make policy and program
decisions in collaboration with the community. In addition, using mapping for community
reentry planning may be a natural extension of the work some community supervision agencies
are already doing that uses mapping for tasks such as assigning caseloads to probation and parole
officers.47
Law Enforcement
With arrest rates for formerly incarcerated people 30 to 45 times higher than those for the general
population, contact with former prisoners is part of law enforcement’s everyday business.48
Police have an obvious role in prisoner reentry as they respond to any new crimes committed by
formerly incarcerated people. Yet police departments in some cities are beginning to take on a
47
48

Karappunnan (2005).
Rosenfeld, Wallman, and Fornango (2005).

42

broader role that focuses on preventing crime by providing assistance that can help returning
prisoners succeed and avoid returning to criminal behavior.49 Police can work with community
supervision to monitor former prisoners, and can link up with service providers and businesses to
help returning prisoners access services, obtain housing, and find employment. Police may also
be involved in restorative justice efforts, serving as an intermediary between victims and
offenders. Efforts such as these are often rooted in a community policing or problem-oriented
policing model, both of which frequently involve partnerships with local businesses, residents,
government agencies, and other community stakeholders. Prior research has found that these
types of proactive crime prevention partnerships can yield long-term crime reduction benefits,50
in addition to building trust and enhancing police legitimacy in the eyes of the community.51
Policy involvement can also enhance the work of the other partners, sending a message to both
returning prisoners and critics that the reentry initiative is by no means “soft on crime,” because
the support and assistance provided to returning prisoners also carries with it the threat of
rearrest if they return to criminal behavior. Law enforcement agencies can also contribute
datasets and mapping expertise to a reentry partnership. Many police departments collect crime
data and use GIS to map crime locations, which then helps them to allocate patrols, identify
crime hot spots, and develop crime prevention strategies.52
Nonprofit Research and Policy Organizations
Nonprofit organizations that conduct local-level research and policy analysis on issues relevant
to their cities and communities can be vital members of reentry mapping partnerships, regardless
of their prior experience on the topic of prisoner reentry. While the majority of the Reentry
Mapping Network’s lead partners are nonprofit organizations that had little or no background in
prisoner reentry prior to their involvement in RMN, taking on this issue was a natural extension
of the work in which they were already engaged. For example, the Neighborhood Data Center at
the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee has a long history of leading action research projects and
conducting research on Milwaukee neighborhoods, with a specific focus on developing strategies
to improve the quality of life for families and individuals in distressed neighborhoods. These
distressed neighborhoods are also the neighborhoods most affected by prisoner reentry, so it was
a natural fit for the Nonprofit Center to lead Milwaukee’s reentry mapping partnership.
The biggest contribution nonprofit research and policy organizations usually offer to a reentry
mapping initiative is expertise in obtaining, analyzing, and mapping data; conducting research;
and creating maps and other products to effectively convey findings. However, these
organizations often have expertise in areas other than research. They may have previously
partnered with important reentry stakeholders from government, the nonprofit sector, and the
community. Organizations that have been involved in action research projects in the past will
have experience navigating the challenges of conducting research in a collaborative manner with
multiple partners.
49

For more information on the role police can play in prisoner reentry initiatives, see La Vigne et al. (2006).
Kelling and Coles (1996). Wilson and Kelling (1982).
51
This increased legitimacy can also yield great benefits, as the public will be more willing to report crime and
engage in community crime prevention activities (Tyler 2004; Tyler and Huo 2002).
52
Mamalian and La Vigne (1999).
50

43

Policymakers
Policymakers are another key partner in a reentry mapping effort, particularly if the initiative
aims to change government statutes or administrative procedures. State agencies (and to a lesser
extent, federal agencies) provide funding and oversight for many programs and services accessed
by returning prisoners, such as workforce development programs, food stamps, and cash
assistance benefits (i.e., TANF). City governments administer programs and services including
homeless shelters, transitional housing, substance abuse treatment, and health care. Policymakers
in the executive and legislative branches of state and local government make decisions on how
funds are appropriated to support these programs and services and how the programs are
administered and delivered. Policymakers also control some legal barriers to reentry success,
such as employment restrictions and voting disenfranchisement.
While some policymakers may be more familiar with the challenges associated with prisoner
reentry than others, all of them can benefit from better data on reentry to make informed policy
decisions and target resources where they are needed most. The key role for policymakers in a
reentry mapping partnership is to implement policy, program, and funding decisions that are
informed by the data presented in reentry maps and discussions with other reentry stakeholders.
Policymakers should be welcomed to participate in reviewing and interpreting reentry maps
alongside their constituents.
Service Providers
Returning prisoners have a host of needs, from housing and employment to substance abuse
treatment and mental health problems. Figure 14 lists some of the services frequently accessed
by returning prisoners to meet these needs. Service providers who work with formerly
incarcerated populations should play a prominent role in any reentry mapping partnership. These
include government agencies and nonprofit organizations that specifically target returning
prisoners, as well as providers with a broader client population that includes formerly
incarcerated people. Providers can improve their programs and service delivery through
involvement in a reentry mapping partnership. They will learn in much more specific detail
about the location, characteristics, and needs of the population they serve and will connect with
other service providers, opening opportunities for collaboration and creating the possibility of
more targeted, coordinated service efforts. Service providers have a great deal of firsthand
knowledge about reentry to contribute, which can add qualitative context to the interpretation of
maps and other analysis. Moreover, they often have promising, creative ideas for strategies to
address reentry, as well as existing relationships with other stakeholders.

44

Figure 14: Services Accessed by Returning Prisoners
General, Dental, and Vision Health Practice
Substance Abuse Treatment and Rehabilitation
Mental Health Services
Family Counseling and Reunification
Legal Services
Credit Counseling and Repair
Transitional and Permanent Housing Placement
Food Security (e.g., access to food stamp benefits, finding soup kitchens)
Job Training, Adult Basic Education, Literacy Services
A reentry mapping partnership can benefit from participation by service provider staff at all
levels of an organization, from managers and organization executives to case workers and other
line-level staff. Different staff may have varying experiences working with former prisoners and
connections to other organizations. On the whole, service providers are top candidates to
participate in leading a reentry mapping partnership. They tend to have a number of existing
relationships with other potential partners and thus are well positioned to help convene and
coordinate efforts among interested organizations.
Victims Advocates
Having been directly affected by crime, victims are an important group to involve in a reentry
initiative. Victims have many rights that allow them to participate in prisoners’ release to the
community,53 often including:
•
•
•
•

the right to be informed about parole-related events and proceedings;
the right to be heard on matters relating to the offender’s parole and related incidents;
the right to be present at parole proceedings; and
the right to an order for restitution as a condition of parole.

Many people erroneously believe that victim participation in these processes always results in
negative outcomes for the offender. Yet victims share the same goal as other partners in a reentry
effort: to prevent future victimization by released prisoners. Toward this end, victims can
contribute important, offender-specific information to a standard reentry plan. Some victims
know their offenders well (e.g., victims of domestic violence) and, because victims may reside in
the same communities offenders return to, they may have helpful insights about how to manage
the challenges prisoners will likely face on return.

53

Herman and Wasserman (2001).

45

Universities
As with nonprofit research and policy organizations (see above), universities have valuable
research, mapping and analytic skills to contribute to reentry mapping initiatives. In addition,
they may have strong relationships with their communities, and have projects or programs
dedicated to connecting university research with community needs. The Center for Community
Safety in Winston-Salem, for example, is a group affiliated with Winston-Salem State University
that coordinates multiple community-based action research initiatives, including RMN. Several
staff members also teach at the university or facilitate service-learning and internship activities
for students.
Other Related Initiatives
Other initiatives may be working to improve outcomes for populations that include former
prisoners, their families and friends, and their community members. Initiatives such as those
listed in figure 15 offer reentry mapping partnerships the opportunity to collaborate with a wellestablished project to work towards shared goals. Many RMN partners collaborated with their
local Making Connections initiative, and others worked with the Serious and Violent Offender
Reentry Initiative SVORI or Weed and Seed projects in their area (see figure 15 for more
details). Reentry mapping partnerships can offer their services in support of an existing initiative,
and in doing so may gain access to additional resources. These parallel partnerships can also be
useful for obtaining data and convening common stakeholders.

Figure 15. Related Initiatives

Making Connections54
Many RMN partners are also involved with their local Making Connections initiative team.
Currently, 9 of the 10 Making Connections cities are also RMN partners.55 Making
Connections is a national program sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that focuses
on providing support to families and communities by enhancing social connectedness,
linking families to local resources and services, and strengthening community members’
financial well-being. To advance these goals and objectives, partners mobilize a broad crosssection of constituencies, including community members, public agencies, private
organizations, the business community, and faith leaders to obtain their support and
investment in strengthening families in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Program partners
engage these stakeholders to gather related information, identify community problems and
resources, and discuss and test various strategies. Making Connections’ partners have also
forged relationships with a wide range of stakeholders that have enabled them to produce
local change based on their findings. RMN partners in Seattle, Milwaukee, and other cities
have been able to leverage the Making Connections partnerships to support their reentry
mapping efforts.
54

Information about Making Connections is available on the Annie E. Casey Foundation web site at
http://www.aecf.org/initiatives/mc/.
55
Making Connections includes 10 organizations in the following cities: Denver, Des Moines, Hartford,
Indianapolis, Louisville, Milwaukee, Oakland, Providence, San Antonio, and Seattle.

46

Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI, also known as “Going
Home”)56
The Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative is a collaborative federal effort to
improve reentry outcomes along criminal justice, employment, education, health, and
housing dimensions, in hopes of promoting productive social roles and reducing the
likelihood of a return to crime and incarceration for released prisoners. Sixty-nine state and
local government grantees (typically departments of correction) have received over $150
million to develop or expand programs that offer integrated supervision and services to
serious and violent offenders.57 Local SVORI sites may have useful data to offer on prisoner
release or may be able to help a reentry mapping initiative access such data.

The Weed and Seed Initiative58
The Weed and Seed Initiative is a national grant program that aims to bolster law
enforcement and community development by linking the two through community policing
efforts. Because community members involved in Weed and Seed have working relationships
with police and other institutional organizations, they make ideal partners for a reentry
mapping initiative. Weed and Seed is also a potential source of reentry-related data, because
sites track and use local crime data to inform policing efforts. In Winston-Salem, the Center
for Community Safety’s (CCS) involvement in local Weed and Seed efforts positioned it to
identify and engage relevant community stakeholders. The CCS forged a relationship with
the Winston-Salem County Police Department (WSPD) through Weed and Seed, and was
subsequently able to acquire WSPD data for use in its RMN project.

56

For more information on SVORI, see http://www.svori-evaluation.org/.
For information on the SVORI activities in each state, see the National Portrait of SVORI (Lattimore et al. 2004)
at http://www.svori-evaluation.org/documents/nationalportrait/SVORI_NationalPortrait.pdf.
58
For more information on Weed and Seed sites, see http://www.weedandseeddatacenter.org/.
57

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The Reentry Mapping Initiative
The reentry mapping team’s purpose is to guide and support the research members of the team in
the process of data acquisition, analysis, and mapping, as well as to design and implement
strategies for using the project’s findings. While every reentry mapping initiative’s experience
and process will be unique, this section outlines some of the general activities a partnership may
engage in when conducting its reentry mapping efforts. The next section will explore strategies
for using the research findings to create change.

Convening the Partnership
Some project stakeholders may not have previous exposure to computer mapping, while others
may have limited experience with the criminal justice system. It is important that partners begin
the project with some knowledge about prisoner reentry and reentry mapping, so that all parties
can actively participate in discussions and shape the direction of the project. Most RMN partners
held early meetings with stakeholders during which examples of reentry maps from other cities
(such as those appearing throughout this guidebook) were presented. Local maps providing
community context and any existing information on reentry at the local level were also
presented. In addition to helping recruit new partners, this type of introductory meeting will
bring existing partners up to speed on the topic of reentry mapping and can generate informed
project planning. At this meeting or another early meeting, project leadership and the roles of
various partners within the initiative can be determined through collaborative discussion.
In some cases, the initiators of a reentry mapping project may find that in the process of
recruiting stakeholders and building the partnership, they are bringing together people who have
never sat down and discussed the issue of reentry. This was the case in both Seattle and
Milwaukee; many stakeholders who attended the initial RMN meetings in these cities had little
history of working together, despite overlapping missions and client populations. Such a
situation produces numerous challenges. For example, it may take time for organizations that are
new to the field to be able to commit resources to reentry work. In addition, the group, with little
history of working together and limited knowledge of reentry issues, may not know exactly
where the project should direct its focus. However, it can also present significant opportunities
for a reentry mapping project to provide strong leadership on the issue and shape local dialogue
and efforts around reentry.

Setting Priorities
Many factors contribute to the well being of prisoners after release, including the support of
family and friends; the availability of housing and jobs; and access to health, education,
counseling, and other social services. While reentry mapping can contribute to improvements in
all of these arenas, partnerships are often working with limited resources and therefore may
benefit from making a decision early on about the scope and target population of the project.
Hartford was one of several RMN sites that focused on employment and reentry. In discussions
with local nonprofits and community members, employment continually arose as a major
community concern in the area of reentry. The Hartford RMN team decided early on that the
48

issue of employment would be its top project priority, and devised the guiding project questions
with this focus in mind:
• What are the challenges that people returning from prison to Hartford face in obtaining
and maintaining employment?
• What support services exist locally for people returning from prison and their families?
• How can these services be improved to better support ex-prisoners’ reintegration into the
community and entry into the workforce?
In Denver, on the other hand, the RMN team eventually decided to focus on five priority areas:
employment, housing and homelessness, substance abuse, mental health, and family. The Denver
RMN Community Advisory Committee was formed to review the reentry data and analyses from
a community perspective and to develop and implement a strategy for disseminating the findings
and engaging the community on the issue of reentry. After reviewing the initial data, and based
on members’ experiences and knowledge, the Community Advisory Committee identified the
five priority areas listed above to guide the project’s research and community outreach.
Some of the key considerations in setting priorities for a reentry mapping initiative include (1)
identifying relevant data, (2) understanding the local political and economic climate as it relates
to prisoner reentry, and (3) assessing the resources available to the partnership to address the
identified priorities.
Identifying Relevant Data
To address a specific topic, the partnership must have an informed expectation of what data
they might be able to obtain about it. For instance, if the partnership decided to focus on the
need for and availability of substance abuse treatment for returning prisoners, members
would need data on the substance abuse histories of returning prisoners and the locations and
capacities of substance abuse treatment providers. The partnership must consider who, if
anyone, collects such data and whether the partnership will be able to have access to it.
Understanding the Local Political Climate
It is also important to consider whether local support and resources exist for potential
changes in the identified area of concern. Are relevant agencies willing to change their
policies and practices based on the reentry mapping project’s findings? Is research in a given
area likely to lead to improvements? Continuing with the substance abuse treatment example,
if the maps demonstrate a need for more treatment services in a particular neighborhood,
what is the likelihood that the service provider community will be able to shift resources or
obtain new ones to meet that need?
Identifying the Partnership’s Resources
While data availability and local context are legitimate concerns, reentry mapping
partnerships need not limit their goals and priorities to only those issues for which data are
readily available and political will exists to create results. Resources available to the
partnership may be able to overcome these limitations. If an issue is truly important to the
partnership, it may be able to collect its own data on the topic or build political support for
policy and programmatic changes. Such work, however, takes resources, and the partnership
must consider the level of resources available to it and how it wants to assign them. In some

49

cases, the reentry maps themselves can be used to make the case for collecting more detailed
data on a topic or for building political support around an issue.
The development of priorities will involve a number of elements in addition to the criteria
outlined above. The community members and organizations will bring perspective on what the
most pressing community needs are. The research partners will play a critical role in identifying
the data needed to focus on a given issue, the feasibility of obtaining such data, and the time and
resources that will be needed to acquire it. The collection of stakeholders at the table will
influence the selection of priorities, as each stakeholder has its own interests and strengths. A
project focusing on a specific area, such as employment, will require the participation of at least
some organizations or individuals with expertise in that field.
The experience of the Urban Strategies Council (USC) in Oakland is also instructive: USC found
that many of their local RMN partners had significant interest in the issue of voting rights for
former prisoners. USC, on the other hand, was more concerned with service needs that were not
being met in areas such as employment and housing. Rather than stall the project with debate
over differing priorities, USC found it useful to accept disagreement on certain priorities and
concentrate on strengthening coordination on issues of concern to all parties.
Setting the reentry mapping initiative’s priorities is not a discrete, one-time task. As new data
become available and stakeholders join and leave the partnership, priorities must be continually
assessed and adjusted to ensure that they are relevant to the community and reflect the input of
all stakeholders. In addition, the research findings may steer future project work as they suggest
priority areas that had not previously been identified. When DOC data analyzed by the Piton
Foundation in Denver showed that a major portion (43 percent) of people returning to the city
from prison were homeless, the Foundation and its community partners determined that they
needed to focus special attention on the homeless formerly incarcerated population and the
services available to them.

Guiding Mapping and Analysis
Once the data have been obtained, cleaned, and geocoded, the research arm of the partnership
can produce maps and other analyses on an ongoing basis. Draft maps should be shared with
partners for review and feedback. Partner input can guide researchers in revising the maps for
public dissemination, and anticipating and responding to issues highlighted by the maps. For
example, Seattle Goodwill worked with the Seattle RMN research team to produce maps that
were clear in their message and easy for a wide range of audiences, including those not familiar
with policy research, to understand. The way in which others in the partnership interpret the
meaning and message of each map is a good indication of how those outside the partnership
might interpret them. Sharing these maps will also keep the partners up –to date on what is being
learned through the project, and can initiate constructive dialogue on reentry issues within the
partnership.
Partner feedback can guide data analysis plans as well, as partners suggest new data sources or
research priorities for the project. In Seattle, community partner input identified several potential
data sources that could add value to the project (in addition to the primary dataset), such as King

50

County Jail release data. The Denver RMN team convened a community advisory committee
composed of residents, community-based organizations, and local nonprofits. After a community
forum was held on employment issues relating to reentry, the community advisory committee
determined that the project needed to collect more extensive information than could be obtained
from the administrative data, to gain a fuller picture of the barriers to successful reentry. They
decided to collect primary data and raised funds to support the new research, as well as future
public forums.

Disseminating Findings and Initiating Change
A main goal of the partnership is to disseminate findings and craft strategies for turning those
findings into action. The use of research findings to spur community engagement, inform local
planning efforts, and initiate policy changes will be discussed in the next section (“Using
Analysis Results to Inform Action”).

Creating a Sustainable Reentry Mapping Partnership
Most reentry mapping partnerships will aim to continue in some form even after they have
achieved their basic reentry mapping goals. A partnership may take on new reentry-related
projects, or simply continue to disseminate and build on its initial efforts. To sustain itself over
time, a partnership must regularly examine the nature of its work and the potential for future
activity. This type of sustainability analysis involves assessing the current state of the project: the
data that have been obtained and data gaps that still exist, the types and mix of stakeholders
currently involved, existing funds and resources, and the actions that have been taken as a result
of the partnership’s efforts. The partnership should also consider the future possibilities for the
project by examining the dedication of existing partners, the prospects for new partnerships and
projects, and expected funding and other future resources. The current and future resources
should be measured against the key issues that must still be addressed and the other goals that
remain for the partnership. Because it takes time to obtain additional funding or build new
partnerships, the sustainability of the project should be considered well before a partnership
concludes its initial work.
The Reentry Mapping Network partners highlighted in this report are in various stages of
exploring and building long-term project sustainability. Most have submitted proposals to local
or national funders for new resources to support further work. Figure 16 provides a list of some
potential action research topics a partnership can pursue, which build off of basic reentry
mapping work. Once a reentry mapping partnership has put in the initial effort to collect data and
bring stakeholders together, engaging in future projects, such as those listed below, is unlikely to
require the same amount of resources.

51

Figure 16: Potential Action Research Projects for Reentry Mapping
Partnerships
Analyzing the availability and accessibility of services for former prisoners
Creating educational materials for elected officials on relevant public policy issues
Engaging employers in identifying barriers to employing former prisoners and ways to
overcome these barriers
Collecting and mapping data on neighborhood assets useful for former prisoners
Analyzing the costs of incarceration and prisoner reentry in different neighborhoods
Researching the impact of reentry on families
Analyzing barriers to finding housing for former prisoners
Estimating the impacts of the voter disenfranchisement of former prisoners
Analyzing legal barriers and access to public benefits for former prisoners

52

Using Analysis Results to Inform Action
The ultimate goal of a reentry mapping project is to produce research findings that will inform
local policy, practice, and community responses to reentry. This section outlines some of the
ways a reentry mapping partnership can use its findings to create change.

Promoting Community Education and Awareness
There is often a dearth of comprehensive data on the local dynamics of prisoner reentry, and the
data that do exist are not widely distributed to those who need it. The Reentry Mapping Network
was formed to address the need for useful, data-driven information on reentry and its affect on
local communities. Once reentry maps and other analyses have been completed, a partnership
will want to disseminate its findings to the public, former prisoners and their families,
community leaders, elected officials, local nonprofits, service providers, advocacy organizations,
business leaders, faith organizations, and others whose lives and work are impacted by reentry.
Publicizing the research findings can raise awareness about reentry issues, engage community
members in crafting response strategies, and provide stakeholders with more accurate
information on which to base decisions relating to reentry. Listed below are some ways a
partnership can disseminate its findings and engage the community, along with examples from
the experiences of RMN sites.
Ideas for Disseminating Research Findings:
● Hold a community forum to present research findings and other information on reentry
and to provide opportunities for community discussion and dialogue on the issues that
are raised.
Denver. The Denver RMN Community Advisory Committee identified five priority areas for the
project’s community outreach: employment, housing and homelessness, substance abuse, mental
health, and family. They planned to present four public forums, one for each of the first four
topics, with the implications for families explored in all the forums. Each forum included the
presentation of relevant data, an opportunity for policymakers and others to discuss the issue in
depth, and specific training opportunities for practitioners. The first forum, on employment
barriers facing formerly incarcerated persons, was hosted in partnership with the Denver
Division of Workforce Development and Making Connections–Denver.
● Create short, easy-to-understand policy briefs that explain the research findings and
highlight key maps.
Hartford. The United Way of Connecticut (UWC), the lead RMN partner in Hartford, created
four reentry policy briefs on the topics of education, housing and homelessness, women
returning from prison, and an overview of reentry. Each two-page brief presents basic
information on the topic in a simple, concise manner enhanced by the use of charts and graphs. A
sample brief can be found in appendix G.

53

● Create a web site with research findings and links to information on reentry.
Providence. The RMN partners in Providence created a web site providing a wide collection of
reentry resources and information, including reentry maps; links to government and community
resources; and links to reentry-related reports and campaigns at the local, state and national
levels. The site, called “Prisoner Reentry in Rhode Island,” is online at
http://local.provplan.org/reentry/.
● Combine the presentation of reentry maps and data with the screening of a video, the
sharing of personal testimonies, or another activity that presents the personal side of
reentry and engages the audience emotionally.
Milwaukee. The local PBS station and Making Connections–Milwaukee organized a screening
for community service agencies and residents of Behind These Walls, a Casey Foundation–
sponsored video on incarceration and reentry. At the screening, the Nonprofit Center of
Milwaukee also presented data illustrating the spatial patterns of reentry in the local area.
● Hold a press conference and work with local media to publicize the project’s findings
and other local issues and campaigns related to reentry.
Providence. The Providence RMN team worked with local media to disseminate their findings
and raise awareness about reentry-related campaigns. The Providence Journal, the major local
paper, ran articles about the RMN community workshops that were held; a policy brief issued by
the Family Life Center (FLC) on felon disenfranchisement in Rhode Island, which included
maps and data analysis from the RMN project; and a successful effort by the FLC and other local
organizations to repeal Rhode Island’s ban on food stamp benefits for people with felony drug
convictions. The FLC also co-hosted a press conference with Rhode Island governor Donald
Carcieri to announce the launch of the governor’s Reentry Steering Committee, and included
RMN maps and data analysis in the briefing packet that was distributed at the press conference.
● Produce a monthly newsletter highlighting new data and maps, as well as local efforts
related to reentry.
Oakland. The Urban Strategies Council developed a weekly electronic newsletter titled
California Police and Prison News. Through this newsletter, community stakeholders received
articles on crime, police, sentencing, youth and adult incarceration, and community reentry, as
well as updates on the USC’s continuing community engagement and reentry mapping and
analysis efforts.
Other potential strategies for disseminating findings include the following:
● Present findings to small groups of stakeholders or at the monthly meeting of an
organization or coalition.

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● Incorporate the reentry findings into other materials that partners routinely distribute,
such as newsletters or policy briefs.
● Present findings at neighborhood, city council, chamber of commerce, or other local
government meetings.
A successful community education campaign requires a creative, comprehensive strategy for
presenting findings that utilizes a wide range of events and products to reach multiple audiences.
As the San Diego RMN team pointed out, “Different audiences respond to different products and
presentation styles.” The community engagement strategy of the Providence RMN team provides
an excellent example for other sites to follow. The primary component of their strategy was a
community education campaign aimed at residents and other neighborhood-based stakeholders.
The education campaign was coordinated by the project’s two community-based partners—the
Family Life Center (FLC) and the Local Learning Partnership (LLP) of the Annie E. Casey
Foundation’s Making Connections initiative—along with community organizers from the
grassroots group Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE).
Together, LLP, FLC, and DARE hosted an “Impacts of Incarceration” community workshop that
engaged participants in a conversation about reentry-related issues. The workshop began with a
warm-up activity to illustrate to people how the issue of reentry relates to them. The introductory
presentation included an historical overview of incarceration with an emphasis on the
experiences of and effects on people of color, and a PowerPoint presentation with data and maps.
The interactive component of the workshop included four small group discussions and a large
group discussion of major issues and possible solutions. Each small group discussion focused on
one of the cycles of incarceration (the road to prison, inside prison, reentry, community impact),
and incorporated real life stories written by released prisoners, prisoners who were still
incarcerated, or their family members. Approximately 70 people participated in the three-hour
workshop. Most of them were actively engaged in the conversations about the issues, and just
over half provided comments on the meeting evaluation form. This workshop was a pilot that
was replicated on a smaller scale in Warwick, the state’s second largest city.
Around the same time that these workshops were being planned, staff from partner organizations
FLC, LLP/Making Connections, DARE, and the Rhode Island DOC worked with representatives
of the local PBS television station to screen the reentry videos that were produced by the Casey
Foundation through its Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign. The events were held in
four locations throughout the state and included a panel discussion with a formerly incarcerated
individual, a family member, someone from a faith-based institution, a representative of a
community-based agency, someone from the criminal justice system, and a moderator. The
Providence RMN produced maps and made them available as PowerPoint slides and posters for
each of the community forums. Three television broadcasts and a live televised call-in talk show
were also part of that process.
All these events incorporated the reentry mapping and analysis that had been conducted, along
with other information on prisoner reentry and local campaigns. All told, approximately 435
individuals received reentry information at over 20 information-sharing events in 2004.

55

In the process of developing a successful community engagement strategy, a reentry mapping
partnership should consider not only what events, products, and activities to undertake, but the
manner in which the findings will be presented to the public. When reentry research findings are
presented in any forum, they may touch off a range of responses, both positive and negative, and
can elicit fear or increase tensions among community members. One issue likely to be
highlighted by the maps in many communities is the disproportionate involvement of minorities,
specifically African Americans, in the criminal justice system. When presenting data that
highlights the concentrated impact of incarceration and reentry on certain communities,
particularly minority communities, it is important to establish that the data are well documented
and that the map’s purpose is to identify and meet needs rather than to profile or target
individuals. The Center for Community Safety in Winston-Salem advises reentry mapping
partnerships to avoid skirting the reality that reentry affects some neighborhoods and racial
groups more than others. Trying to ignore or draw attention away from this fact may actually
deny residents a voice in claiming the issue and working to develop solutions that draw upon the
community’s strengths.
Because of the sensitive nature of data demonstrating the concentrated impacts of reentry, local
residents, clergy, and community groups should be brought into these conversations early so that
they can work together to identify sources of strength in the affected communities. The
Indianapolis RMN site found that it is essential to have a partner who is talking regularly with
the community about their overall objectives in relation to reentry and the resources available for
attaining those objectives. Bringing reentry data to the community as a stand-alone piece of
information, without providing any support for community action or response, can overwhelm
residents or evoke negative reactions, and may actually hinder community action on the issue. It
may be useful to present maps of released prisoners and community assets simultaneously to
clearly communicate that while these communities may be distressed, they often possess
remarkable resiliency that can be tapped.
Reentry maps also raise public safety concerns, and may evoke fear, anger, and resentment
among some community residents, especially crime victims. The location of released sex
offenders in particular has consistently been a source of contention among residents in cities
across the country. These fears may exist despite the fact that in many cities, such as WinstonSalem, San Diego, and Seattle, the locations of released prisoners do not consistently correspond
to the areas with high crime rates. Maps can also raise privacy concerns among former prisoners
and their families who may prefer to maintain a low profile in their communities. Reentry
partnerships must delicately balance respecting and responding to the concerns of victims and
residents while communicating to the families and friends of returning prisoners that their
purpose is to help released prisoners succeed. This message is best communicated in a public
forum that enables residents to voice their concerns and permits members of the reentry
partnership to share their goals regarding reentry success.
Maps of service locations, especially shelters and other residential service agencies, can also be
greeted with strong reactions. As they did in Denver, these maps may reveal a heavy burden on
particular neighborhoods where services are concentrated. Residents of the affected
neighborhoods may feel that bringing in new services will further concentrate and isolate
previously incarcerated persons while also burdening community members. The alternative of

56

placing services in neighborhoods with lower concentrations of returnees and/or existing services
is not an ideal solution either. This issue is best addressed by using the maps as a springboard for
a broader community conversation among service providers and residents about service needs
and placement.

Guiding the Planning and Implementation of Reentry Initiatives
Reentry mapping and data analysis can be used to support community members, local leaders,
government agencies, service providers, and other stakeholders in formulating comprehensive,
long-term strategies for addressing prisoner reentry in their city. By solidifying goals and
providing vision, a “big picture” strategy will create the foundation for developing specific
initiatives and policy changes that complement one another and provide a multi-pronged
approach to meeting local needs.
One successful approach is for a reentry mapping partnership to plug into a preexisting local
planning initiative. Several RMN sites, for example, worked closely with their local Making
Connections (MC) initiative, a comprehensive effort aimed at improving family and community
well being in select neighborhoods. Existing MC planning efforts usually address a number of
issues related to reentry, such as employment, social capital, and service delivery. Because many
of the Making Connections neighborhoods are also neighborhoods that are significantly impacted
by prisoner reentry, reentry work can be incorporated into a larger effort to improve community
well being along multiple dimensions. RMN partners have presented their work at MC
committee and resident meetings, and have seen their findings incorporated into local MC
planning processes. In Hartford and Louisville, the initial impetus for mapping and analyzing
reentry data actually came out of community discussions related to Making Connections that
raised reentry as an important issue.
The Louisville RMN site connected with a different type of local planning effort, in terms of
both its scope and participants. The Justice Reinvestment Planning Project (JRPP) is a
community-wide planning effort in Louisville that focuses specifically on prisoner reentry and
brings together city, county and state government leaders, including elected officials and
criminal justice agency leadership, service providers, community-based organizations, local
academics and researchers,; and other reentry stakeholders. The JRPP’s primary objectives are to
gain a better understanding of the formerly incarcerated population in Louisville, to evaluate
existing services for this population, and to design a pilot project to assist former prisoners in
reentry. The Community Resource Network (CRN), the RMN partner in Louisville, was able to
connect early on with the JRPP. CRN’s reentry mapping work was incorporated into the JRPP
process, and they became the primary party responsible for research and analysis within the
planning effort, while also contributing to other JRPP working groups. The JRPP provided a
natural forum for using the results of CRN’s reentry mapping and analysis. CRN’s findings were
incorporated into the JRPP final report and influenced the development of two local programs to
serve returning prisoners: a workforce initiative that provides job training and placement and a
pilot program in the Newburg neighborhood that will provide case management and coordinated
service delivery.

57

Influencing Public Policy
One important goal of many reentry mapping initiatives is to provide accurate data that can
inform public discussions and the decisionmaking processes of policymakers with regard to
government statutes and practices that affect prisoner reentry. A reentry mapping partnership can
communicate its findings to policymakers by producing policy briefs and reports, making
presentations to elected officials and government agency personnel, or testifying at government
hearings or meetings. The research findings can also be used by advocacy organizations and
community members in support of their own efforts to influence public policy.
A list of policy issues that affect people returning from prison can be found in figure 17. These
laws and policies are often set at the state level.

Figure 17: Public Policy Issues that Affect Reentry
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Laws that bar people with felony convictions, people on supervision, or other people
who have been involved with the criminal justice system from voting.
Limitations on what types of jobs former offenders may hold.
The hiring practices of government agencies that regulate whether former offenders
are permitted to apply for government jobs.
Regulations that ban former offenders from public housing or set restrictions on
where they may live.
Laws that ban former offenders from receiving food stamps, welfare, or other public
benefits.
The fiscal resources that are devoted to in-prison programs and government-funded
reentry programs.
The sentencing structures that determine what crimes result in incarceration and how
long offenders are sentenced.
The policies that structure the parole system, and determine the conditions of parole
and the consequences of parole violation.
The mission statements and organizational cultures of criminal justice agencies
(police, parole agencies, correctional agencies) with respect to prisoners and prisoner
reentry. Specifically, the attitude these agencies take toward rehabilitation and
support of people returning from prison.

One of the simplest ways to influence the policy issues listed above is to involve policymakers or
those with direct access to policymakers in the reentry mapping project from the outset. In San
Diego, the lead RMN partners were the county district attorney’s office and the San Diego
Association of Governments. While these organizations do not have the unilateral ability to
change certain policies, they have authority within policymaking circles and a wide web of
existing government connections. A reentry mapping project led by government agencies may
not be the most effective strategy for some cities, however, as it requires sacrificing some
community control over outcomes. A more moderate strategy may be to involve local elected

58

officials, agency leaders, and other policymakers at various points throughout the project,
welcoming their contributions and perspectives while also balancing community input and
control.
Although it is still too early for many RMN sites to tell how their work has influenced public
policy, a few efforts have already been successful. Some examples are listed below:
•

The Family Life Center (FLC) in Providence produced a policy brief on the impact of
Rhode Island’s lifetime ban on Family Independence Program and food stamp benefits
for people convicted of felony drug distribution. The brief incorporated analyses of
reentry data to underscore important points. The Poverty Institute and Direct Action for
Rights and Equality (DARE) used this brief to inform state lawmakers of the effects of
the ban, which was ultimately repealed.
The FLC also released a policy brief on felon voter disenfranchisement in Rhode Island,
an issue that disproportionately affects urban minority communities. The brief included
analysis and maps of the sentenced and supervised offender populations by neighborhood
and race in the state. This effort mobilized the local community to advocate for the
restoration of voting rights for former felons, and the legislature voted to place a
constitutional amendment up for referendum on the ballot in November 2006. The
measure would restore voting rights to all felons when they complete their incarceration.

•

The Center for Community Safety in Winston-Salem supplied data to the city’s housing
services department on prisoner reentry and the location of abandoned buildings. The city
recognized a connection between the problem of abandoned buildings and the challenges
of reentry. In response, the housing services department partnered with local contractors
to train former prisoners to rehabilitate abandoned buildings in a neighborhood with a
high concentration of returning prisoners. Several of the construction firms later hired
former prisoners for additional contracting work.

•

The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee is using reentry data to assess Wisconsin’s 1998
truth-in-sentencing (TIS) legislation, which enacted stricter guidelines on the portion of
their total sentence that prisoners must serve. This sentencing reform act greatly reduced
the number of individuals exiting prison on supervision in Wisconsin, and may have
affected how prepared people are for release and how much support they receive after
release.

•

The Council of State Governments (CSG), a national organization of state governments,
used maps from several RMN sites to lobby Congress on the Second Chance Act. The
bill provides funding for community-based services for former prisoners, with the goal of
reducing recidivism and making communities safer. CSG used reentry maps to
demonstrate to legislators the impact of incarceration and reentry on cities in their
jurisdictions.

59

Improving Service Delivery
Reentry mapping is a useful tool for improving the delivery of services to former prisoners. It
can inform citywide planning efforts related to the creation and siting of new services, link
former prisoners with services that meet their needs, and help individual service providers better
understand their client populations.
Basic reentry mapping of the locations of service providers and the concentrations of former
prisoners can demonstrate whether services are located where they are most needed. If data are
available on the needs of the returning prisoners, more detailed analyses can be conducted that
explore the fit between certain types of services and the prisoners who need those services. For
example, the San Diego RMN team created a map that compared the location of probationers
with educational needs and the location of adult education schools (see figure 18). These types of
maps allow for more detailed exploration of service delivery matches.
Figure 18: Mapping Service Needs and Availability in San Diego

Probationers Education

Mapping and analysis of service provider locations can inform local planning efforts regarding
where new services should be located, where resources should be directed to improve existing
services, and what service locations may be underused or unnecessary. In Winston-Salem,
mapping conducted by the Center for Community Safety (CCS) played a role in the planning of a

60

one-stop reentry resource center. CCS’s analysis revealed a spatial mismatch between returning
prisoners and the resources and services targeted to them. This mapping sparked the idea for a
one-stop resource center that would meet the needs of former prisoners who were currently
underserved. The maps were used in a successful grant application funded by the Mary Babcock
Reynolds Foundation to support the planning process for creating such a center. Currently in the
planning stages, the Reentry Network Center is envisioned as a collaborative, community-based,
service coordination center, offering links to a continuum of services for released prisoners. The
center will be located in an area with a significant concentration of returning prisoners and will
be managed by former prisoners, community members, and human service professionals.
Reentry mapping can also help individual service providers better understand their client
populations. By knowing where, for example, young former offenders with children and
education needs live, an alternative school can better target its outreach efforts. Multi-site
agencies can enhance their planning about where to expand their services, where to create new
ones, and where to contract existing ones.
The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee (NPCM) has been helping local nonprofits organize and
enhance their service data. The largest nonprofit organization working with reentry clients in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Community Services, has been working with NPCM to support strategic
planning, including a thorough assessment of its client data to understand its pattern of services
in Milwaukee neighborhoods. In addition, a program called Project Return has recently joined
the Making Connections–Milwaukee workforce strategy effort. As a part of that collaboration,
NPCM and Making Connections consultants are linking that program to a comprehensive client
tracking system.
Moreover, the NPCM continues to work with Going Home (also known as SVORI or the Serious
and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative) staff to improve Going Home’s capacity to serve its
client population. In 2003, the NPCM provided Going Home with a preliminary analysis of its
expected caseload (serious juvenile offenders being released over the next 18 months). To
improve their capacity to make referrals, the Wisconsin Going Home staff then built a database
of relevant local services that the NPCM mapped for them in 2003. As Going Home’s client
population expands, more extensive work with that dataset is anticipated.
Information that has been gathered on local service providers can also be used to link former
prisoners with the services they need. The Providence Plan maintains an online resource guide
where people can search for providers by the type of services they provide, their target client
population, their location, and other factors. The site, located at http://www.pcrn.info/, provides
detailed information on each provider, including contact information, location, hours of
operation, and languages spoken. Once a reentry mapping partnership has gathered data on local
service providers, an electronic or printed resource guide is easy to create and can be distributed
to former prisoners, their families, and case managers and other service agencies that provide
referrals.

61

Conclusion
The experiences of the Reentry Mapping Network sites highlighted in this guidebook have
yielded a wealth of information on how to launch a local reentry mapping partnership. Key
processes include the development of a strong reentry mapping collaboration; the acquisition,
mapping and analysis of reentry-related data; and the use of the research findings to prompt
action and promote changes that will improve the prospects for successful reentry. These steps
are not easy, and they cannot be achieved without a bare minimum of resources. The most
important of those resource requirements relate to people: reentry mapping partnerships need a
broad base of stakeholders, competent researchers, and individuals with leadership capabilities
who have the vision to move beyond maps to community action. Preferably, those leaders will
include community residents and representatives from both state and local agencies.
This long list of requirements may appear daunting to jurisdictions contemplating the
development of a reentry mapping partnership, but in most cases the foundation for such a
partnership already exists. Most RMN partners had little in the way of experience in prisoner
reentry issues prior to joining the RMN. Yet interest in the topic of prisoner reentry is strong,
prompted by the growing understanding by politicians on both sides of the aisle that promoting
successful reentry is important for public safety and is also fiscally pragmatic given the high
costs associated with perpetually returning people to prison. This interest is likely to help build
support and maintain momentum for the development of reentry mapping partnerships
throughout the country.

62

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Appendix A: The Reentry Mapping Network Case Studies
In 2002, the Urban Institute established the Reentry Mapping Network (RMN), an action
research partnership designed to help communities across the country harness the power of
mapping to aid in local prisoner reintegration efforts. Funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation
and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Network’s primary objective is to mobilize key
stakeholders in 14 U.S. cities to devise data-driven and coordinated strategies that will
effectively address reentry-related problems.
The RMN selected its first members in 2002: Des Moines, Iowa, Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
Oakland, California, Providence, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and Winston-Salem, North
Carolina. These six sites were supported by grants from two different funders. The Annie E.
Casey Foundation provided funding to the Urban Institute to support the Institute’s leadership
and technical support of the Network as well as to allocate $25,000 of the grant funds to the Des
Moines, Oakland, and Providence, RMN partners, who were selected because their proposed
projects were relevant to and needed in their communities and their work was related to parallel
investments by the Casey Foundation in targeted neighborhoods in their communities. NIJ
provided similar funding to support the RMN infrastructure, as well as $25,000 each to the
Milwaukee, Washington, D.C., and Winston-Salem partner sites. These NIJ-funded sites were
selected to receive funding because they represented a good mix of reentry problems and planned
approaches. The selection of these three sites was also influenced by NIJ’s interests based upon
both topic area and previous NIJ investments.59
Each $25,000 subgrant awarded to these six local RMN partners was initiated in January 2004
for a period of 12 months. During those 12 months, partners were expected to successfully
collect address-level data on offenders returning to their community, produce local maps and
analyses describing reentry patterns, and work with community stakeholders to use the data for
improving reentry-related programs and policies. The six proposed projects represented a
diversity of reentry related problems. Winston-Salem focused on community planning and the
identification of community assets; Des Moines focused on both community planning efforts and
employment issues; Providence focused on community education and public policy reform;
Washington, D.C., focused on forming a collaboration across faith-based institutions; and
Oakland and Milwaukee focused on coordination across social service agencies.
In September 2004, an additional six partners joined the RMN: Denver, Colorado, Hartford,
Connecticut, Indianapolis, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, San Diego, California, and Seattle,
Washington. The Annie E. Casey Foundation provided funding to support $25,000 subgrants in
each of these six cities. Projects were initiated in January 2005 for a funded period of 12 months.
The scope of work and expectations for these six cities were identical to those developed for the
original six partners. Three of these partners, Hartford, Indianapolis, and Louisville, connected to
existing reentry coalitions, with some focus on service provision for returnees. The Seattle
partnership worked to bring together a local coalition to review and act on their research, finding
some success in connecting with Seattle Goodwill. San Diego focused on finding ways for
59

Milwaukee, for example, is an NIJ COMPASS site, and the RMN work dovetails off of COMPASS work that has
already been done. In addition, Winston-Salem is a former SACSI site and is currently a part of Project Safe
Neighborhoods.

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county agencies to support better reentry planning. Denver has developed a reentry profile for
the metro area and is pursuing additional primary data collection.
An additional two partners, Atlanta, Georgia, and Chicago, Illinois, were selected in May 2006
and will begin a 12-month scope of work in August 2006. These two cities will receive $25,000
subgrants from Annie E. Casey Foundation funding. The Reentry Mapping Network has also
selected five communities as affiliates: Detroit, Michigan, New York, New York, Allegheny
County, Pennsylvania, Nashville, Tennessee, and Los Angeles, California. RMN affiliates do not
receive funding from RMN grants.60
As members of the Reentry Mapping Network, partners collect and analyze local data related to
incarceration, reentry, and community well-being; develop policy options based on the findings;
use the findings to engage community stakeholders toward community improvement; and
document their findings and lessons learned. This appendix describes the experiences of the
reentry mapping partnerships in each of the original twelve partner cities. The potential for
replicating these experiences in other communities is discussed, along with a summary of partner
institutions’ assessments of the Network.

RMN Site Case Studies
DENVER, COLORADO
The Piton Foundation leads the Reentry Mapping Network project in Denver. The Piton
Foundation is a private operating foundation with a history of working with the Denver
community to use data to influence public policy and program practice. Piton focuses on
Denver's low-income neighborhoods, providing technical assistance and support to communitybased efforts and training residents in strategies for using information for social action. For
example, one of Piton’s main projects, the Neighborhood Facts program, includes a database of
neighborhood indicators, maps, and histories, which are used to conduct research and analyses
on issues that are important to local residents. In their work in the Denver community, the issue
of prisoner reentry, and its impact on former prisoners, their families, and their neighborhoods,
has emerged as a key topic of interest. Piton’s interest in reentry and history of action-based
research made it a natural fit for the RMN.
The Piton Foundation’s key community partners on the RMN project are the Colorado Criminal
Justice Coalition, the Denver Reintegration Coalition, and Making Connections–Denver. These
and other organizations participate on a community advisory committee whose mission is to
provide advice and perspective on the analysis and maps that were created and to determine how
the findings would be used.

60

Organizations that become Reentry Mapping Network affiliates are invited to attend select RMN meetings as
observers and to participate in the RMN e-mail list, which enables participants to share questions, ideas, and lessons
learned. Affiliates do not receive funding or technical support from UI.

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Data Access and Quality
The primary source of data for the project was the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC)
Information System, which was accessed and analyzed via the Colorado Justice Analytics
Support System. This inmate dataset was supplemented with information from the Level of
Supervision Inventory (LSI), a standardized risk and needs assessment tool designed to pinpoint
areas of need and concern for individual inmates. The LSI surveys the attributes of offenders
across the following dimensions: criminal history, education and employment, financial,
family/marital, accommodation, leisure and recreation, companions, alcohol/drug problems,
emotional/personal, and attitudes and orientation. The LSI data provides a unique opportunity to
examine some of the problems faced by the population of returning prisoners.
The main dataset for this project covered the 3,057 persons released to Denver City/Denver
County between January 1, 2003, and July 15, 2005, representing 27 percent of the 11,180
persons released statewide during this time period. The original DOC dataset included a record
for each instance of a person being released, and thus some individuals had multiple records
because they were released multiple times during the time period. In its analysis, the Piton
Foundation focused on the most recent release record for each individual to generate a dataset of
unduplicated persons released from incarceration (one or more times) from January 2003 to July
2005.
Eighty-nine percent of the inmate release addresses were able to be geocoded; the remainder did
not match due to missing fields or illegitimate addresses, or because they were located outside of
the target geographic area. Fortunately, match rates were better in urban areas where street
networks are better established.
A significant proportion of the individuals in the dataset were homeless on release, a
phenomenon that created difficulties in both the geocoding and the subsequent data analysis.
While the Piton Foundation was able to geocode those who were released to homeless shelters or
motels, there were some individuals who did not have an address. And of those people returning
to Denver whose addresses were geocodable, almost half (43 percent) were homeless at release
(1,190 were released to shelters and 121 to hotels or motels). This large homeless population
complicated the spatial analysis. Denver shelters are concentrated in a few neighborhoods, and
these neighborhoods thus had much higher concentrations of former prisoners.
These findings have helped the Denver Homelessness Initiative (DHI) recognize that the number
of people leaving jail and prison who are released homeless is placing significant stress on
shelters’ capacity and is posing complex policy and program challenges. Although they have felt
the impact for some time, they are currently working to improve their understanding of what is
driving homelessness among people released from incarceration.
Community Engagement
A Denver RMN community advisory committee was formed to review the reentry data and
analyses from a community perspective and to develop and implement a strategy for
disseminating the findings and engaging the community on the issue of reentry. The community

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advisory committee consists of residents from Making Connections neighborhoods and
representatives of community-based organizations that serve formerly incarcerated populations,
as well as the Colorado Criminal Justice Coalition, the Denver Reintegration Coalition, and
Making Connections–Denver.
After reviewing the data, and based on members’ experiences and knowledge, the community
advisory committee identified five priority areas for the RMN research and community outreach:
employment, housing and homelessness, substance abuse, mental health, and family. The plan
they developed called for four public forums, one for each of the first four topics. Each forum
would include a presentation of relevant data, an opportunity for policymakers and agency
personnel to discuss the issue in depth, and specific training opportunities for practitioners. The
implications for families would be explored in all four forums.
The first forum, on employment barriers facing formerly incarcerated persons, took place in
November 2005, and was hosted in partnership with the Denver Division of Workforce
Development and Making Connections–Denver. Following that forum, the community advisory
committee determined that the project needed to collect further information to gain a fuller
picture of the barriers to successful reentry than could be obtained from the administrative data.
They decided to collect primary data about the five priority areas—employment, housing and
homelessness, substance abuse, mental health, and the role of family—and their impact on
reentry success. Funds were raised to support the new research, as well as the three remaining
public forums, and it is expected that this phase of the Denver project will be completed by the
fall of 2006.
The new research plan, which is still being implemented, entails the following:
First Wave
1. Surveys of people affiliated with the organizations on the RMN community advisory
committee who are currently in prison on parole revocation.
Second Wave
1. Randomized sample of people who are currently on parole in the community.
2. A series of focus groups to go further in depth on reintegration issues involving:
Females
Males
Formal supports—case managers, reentry specialists, etc.
Informal supports—family, friends and community
3. An online survey of parole officers to determine whether they identify the same barriers
to successful reintegration as parolees (under consideration).
The survey of individuals currently incarcerated due to parole revocation was conducted in May
2006, and focused primarily on the challenges faced by respondents while on parole. It resulted
in approximately 150 responses, and the data is currently being analyzed. The second survey,
planned for the summer of 2006, will seek respondents who are currently on parole and will ask
similar questions.

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Mapping and Analysis
The Piton Foundation created maps and analyses exploring the basic demographics, the spatial
location, and the needs and challenges of the people returning from prison to Denver. The Level
of Supervision Inventory (LSI) served as a particularly rich source of data. Highlights of findings
from the analyses include the following:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

40 percent of the Denver returnees were black, 37 percent were white, and 21 percent
were Hispanic. By way of comparison, the returning population in the rest of the state
was predominantly white (68 percent), with 14 percent black and 17 percent Hispanic.
Most returnees were between the ages of 25 and 34 (34 percent) or 35 and 44 (40
percent).
Three-quarters reported having a drug problem at some point in their lives, and 60
percent had an alcohol problem sometime in their lives. Almost half had a drug problem
and almost half an alcohol problem in the year before their incarceration.
60 percent were employed for less than half of the 12 months prior to their incarceration;
35 percent had never been employed continuously for twelve months or more.
Only 40 percent had completed regular schooling through the 12th grade (this does not
include those who completed a GED or other equivalency or correspondence program).
Hispanics generally had less formal education than blacks or whites.
Almost three-quarters had two or more previous convictions as an adult.
1 in 10 returnees had severe emotional or psychological disturbances; for female
returnees only, the figure was 18 percent.

The spatial analysis showed that a quarter of the persons released in Colorado between January
2003 and July 2005 returned to Denver City/County, and an additional quarter returned to the
remaining four counties in the Denver metro area. 36 percent of releasees were spread
throughout the rest of the state, and 12 percent returned somewhere outside of Colorado or gave
an unknown address. Mapping pinpointed neighborhoods in Denver with high concentrations of
returning prisoners and showed that, to some degree, blacks, whites, and Hispanics were
returning to different neighborhoods.
These data analyses and maps have been shared with the community advisory committee.
Because the data revealed that nearly as many people were released to the surrounding counties
in the metro area as were released to the city of Denver, the RMN partners decided to use the
data to address reentry-related issues for the region as a whole, instead of targeting specific
neighborhoods.
Results and Lessons Learned
As outlined above, the Piton Foundation and the RMN community advisory committee are
currently preparing to conduct primary data collection to gain more information about the
challenges faced by people returning from prison to Denver. Their goals for this research
include:

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•
•

•
•
•
•

identifying common reentry barriers and possible solutions that individuals can initiate
while in prison;
improving access to existing resources (employment, clothing, food, medical and mental
health, legal, substance abuse, mentors, transportation, voting, etc.) by educating released
prisoners, their family members, prison and parole personnel, and other service providers
about these resources;
providing prisoners with information on shelter and housing opportunities prior to their
release, in an effort to reduce the high number of returning prisoners who are homeless;
establishing connections with other supportive service organizations such as affordable
housing advocates;
providing information to assist prisoners and their families with family reunification; and
developing better reentry policies.

The Piton Foundation’s initial analysis of the administrative corrections data was crucial,
because it provided a basic understanding of reentry in Denver and served as a springboard for
further work. The corrections data, especially the LSI, supplied a great deal of information on the
needs of the prisoners returning to Denver. The RMN partnership hopes that its current primary
data collection will offer additional insights on how these needs can best be addressed, as well as
what policies and programs might accomplish this.
Further results and lessons learned from the Denver RMN project will come later in 2006 after
the completion of the primary data collection. The project has already had a significant impact by
drawing attention to the extent of homelessness among former prisoners. Moving forward, the
Piton Foundation and the community advisory committee want to focus special attention on this
homeless population and how services are provided to them.

DES MOINES, IOWA
The Des Moines RMN partner, the Child and Family Policy Center (CFPC), focused its RMN
project on workforce issues for returning prisoners, as well as on family reunification among
returning prisoners and their immediate families. Established in 1989 by a former Iowa
legislator, the CFPC links research and policy to improve outcomes for children and strengthen
families. With experience in research, community forum facilitation, and technical assistance to
policymakers, the CFPC is making significant contributions to Polk County communities
throughout its RMN work.61
Before joining the RMN, the CFPC began its work developing neighborhood maps and analyses
of the formerly incarcerated population. When the CFPC became an RMN partner, they already
had an extensive array of data to work with, including census data, 2001 incarceration data that
include the number of children that each prisoner has, and zip-code level community-corrections
data.
The CFPC was also well positioned to engage the community in their reentry mapping efforts.
Prior to their involvement in the RMN project, the CFPC was selected as the local evaluation
61

Much of the analysis conducted on Des Moines also included Polk County, in which Des Moines is located.

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partner of the Polk County Going Home Initiative (SVORI) and they have been an active
member on the Steering Committee. The CFPC is also closely involved with the Community
Coalition for Former Offender Reentry (Community Coalition), a joint effort of the Central Iowa
Employment and Training Center (CIETC), and the Director’s Council, a consortium of agencies
working in the Des Moines Making Connections neighborhood.
Data Access and Quality
The CFPC was successful in obtaining agreements with the Iowa DOC and the Polk County jail
to access data on released state prisoners and released jail inmates. The CFPC’s past work with
the DOC on the Going Home initiative helped them acquire more current data for the RMN
work. The CFPC was able to obtain almost all relevant variables; however, it took a lot of time
and effort on the part of CFPC staff to clean the DOC data. Jail data on inmates released from the
Polk County jail presented further difficulty, as it was provided in a format that was not
conducive to statistical analysis. The CFPC had to manually retrieve the data files and re-enter
them into a statistical program. DOC and Polk County jail staff made themselves available to
answer questions about exact definitions and codes used in the prison database. After extensive
cleaning of address-level data and geocoding to assign reported addresses to census tracts in Polk
County, the CFPC achieved a 97 percent match rate.
Community Engagement
The CFPC integrated the RMN project into its ongoing prisoner reentry work in Des Moines on
workforce development and family stability issues in disadvantaged neighborhoods. As an active
member of both the Going Home steering committee and the Community Coalition, the CFPC
has used its RMN work to connect the strategic planning of these two initiatives to advance the
collective goal of addressing the challenges associated with prisoner reentry. The CFPC’s
community partners have been particularly interested in analyses relating to the connection
between individuals involved in the criminal justice system and the economic growth and
stability of disadvantaged communities.
To address employment-related reentry challenges, the CFPC convened a meeting on workforce
development strategies that included the Central Iowa Employment and Training Center and the
Director’s Council, along with the deputy director of the state Workforce Investment Act, the
United Way Human Services Planning Alliance, the Des Moines Community College, and
several other neighborhood-based organizations. The group is designing a workforce
development proposal to address the challenges that inner city residents, especially former
prisoners, face securing and maintaining employment.
In addition, the CFPC has been working with the Going Home Initiative to design its Keys
Essential to Your Success (KEYS) pre-release training program. One of the central components
of the KEYS training program is preparation for reconnecting with family members and the
larger community upon release. In its ongoing involvement with the Going Home initiative and
the Community Coalition, the CFPC has taken the lead on exploring and addressing the policy
barriers facing people returning from prison. The Council is coordinating the development of a
cross-agency working group to examine these policy barriers.

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Mapping and Analysis
The CFPC’s analysis for the RMN project focused on the working-age population of formerly
incarcerated people and the children of released prisoners in Polk County. The CFPC’s analysis
of DOC and jail data shows that in Des Moines’ inner-city neighborhoods, a high proportion of
the working-age population was formerly incarcerated or on probation or parole, and a
significant portion of the child population has a formerly incarcerated parent. Using census tract–
level data on indicators of social, economic, and educational well-being in Des Moines’ Making
Connections neighborhoods, the CFPC also analyzed the formerly incarcerated population as
well as the probation and parole population by race and gender.
The CFPC produced several reports on the social and economic implications of prisoner reentry
using the maps and analysis developed out of the RMN project. Two major reports prepared for
the Making Connections Neighborhood Learning Partnership, Corrections and Making
Connections: The Impact of Incarceration on Neighborhoods and Justice System Involvement of
Young Men in Polk County: Implications for Family Strengthening, illustrate the impact of
prisoner and jail reentry on Des Moines’s communities. The CFPC found that nearly 30 percent
of all young men in Making Connections neighborhoods are involved in the criminal justice
system, compared with less than 9 percent of young men in less-disadvantaged neighborhoods.
However, while the CFPC’s analysis shows that more than one-third of black men are involved
in the criminal justice system, the neighborhood in which they reside does not seem to affect
their involvement. Although a high share of black men in central Des Moines neighborhoods are
involved in the criminal justice system, the CFPC’s analysis showed that similarly high rates are
found throughout Polk County.
Results and Lessons Learned
To complete this analytic work the CFPC overcame significant difficulties retrieving and
preparing DOC and Polk County jail data for analysis. The relationship they had established with
the DOC helped the CFPC obtain clarification of data codes and formats throughout their
analysis work. The CFPC also established ongoing communication with the Polk County jail to
address the challenges associated with the jail data.
The analyses and reports produced through the CFPC’s RMN work have been instrumental in the
strategic planning process of both the Going Home Steering Committee and the Community
Coalition. The CFPC’s involvement in the Going Home Initiative and the Community Coalition
helped sustain momentum for addressing policy barriers that returning prisoners face. An Iowa
state representative has requested the CFPC’s technical assistance in introducing legislation
around responses to parole revocations and drivers license suspensions in particular. The CFPC’s
technical assistance and support has also been critical in the development of a collaborative
community effort to address workforce issues in Des Moines’s inner-city neighborhoods. The
CFPC’s mapping and analysis work for this community coalition on workforce development has
shaped the Institute for Educational and Social Development’s efforts to work with the exoffender population.

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The RMN work in Des Moines has increased community recognition of the need for strategies to
support individuals returning from prison. Through their work in the RMN, the CFPC has
emphasized the importance of an analysis of the whole criminal justice system, in addition to the
population of released prisoners, as it impacts Polk County neighborhoods.

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Reentry Mapping Network partner is the Community Results Center of the United
Way of Connecticut (UWC). Formerly the Connecticut Policy and Economic Council, the UWC
Community Results Center provides policy information and analysis to assist policymakers,
community organizations, local residents, and other stakeholders in their efforts to improve the
Hartford community. The United Way of Connecticut was also the Local Learning Partner for
the Making Connections initiative in Hartford over the course of its RMN project. It is in this
role that the issue of prisoner reentry was first brought to the UWC as an area in need of
exploration.
During discussions with local nonprofits and community members, the return of people from
incarceration to Making Connections neighborhoods and the ability of these formerly
incarcerated people to find employment were identified as issues of concern to the community.
In response to the community’s concerns, the UWC focused its reentry work on the issue of
employment, laying out three questions to guide its mapping and data analysis:
•

What are the challenges that people returning from prison to Hartford face in obtaining
and maintaining employment?

•

What support services exist locally for people returning from prison and their families?

•

How can these services be improved to better support ex-prisoners’ reintegration into the
community and entry into the workforce?

In addition to data analysis and mapping expertise, the UWC had existing relationships with
local service providers and demographic and social data from previous projects. These resources,
combined with experience as the Local Learning Partner for Making Connections, helped
prepare them for the Reentry Mapping project.
Data Access and Quality
The collection and cleaning of incarceration, parole, and probation data took over one year from
the first meetings with various data gatekeepers. The UWC acquired three databases:
• all individuals in the state’s prison system between January 1, 2003, and July 1, 2005,
and whose address at intake (pre-incarceration) was in the city of Hartford;
• all individuals on parole in Hartford as of July 1, 2005; and
• all individuals serving probation after incarceration (as a condition of their sentence) in
Hartford as of July 1, 2005.

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The UWC contacted the state department of corrections in late 2004, beginning a series of phone
calls and face-to-face meetings to build a relationship that would eventually lead to a datasharing agreement. After discussions with the DOC about how the UWC intended to use the data
and how the DOC databases were organized, the UWC submitted a formal data request
specifying data fields. In spring 2005, they received datasets relating to parolees and incarcerated
people. Probation data was obtained from a separate agency, the Court Supports Services
division of the judicial branch.
Based on previous experience, the UWC realized the importance of working to build trust and
establish a solid partnership with the department of corrections. Because they were able to build
a relationship with the DOC, the process of acquiring data went smoothly. Despite the good
working relationship, providing data to researchers is not the DOC’s top priority, and thus it
sometimes took longer than initially expected for overloaded DOC personnel to fill the data
requests.
The major challenge with the data was the accuracy of the addresses. The UWC had to invest
time in cleaning the addresses, as the address field was often truncated or contained misspellings
and arbitrary abbreviations. In addition, for those released without supervision, the address in the
DOC system was the person’s address at intake to the correctional system prior to incarceration.
In the probation dataset, on the other hand, there were often several addresses entered on many
different dates and sometimes on the same date. In both cases, the UWC tried to get the most
recent and accurate addresses possible with the available data. These difficulties with the address
field and other data limitations reflect that the DOC maintains data on inmates primarily to track
and manage them within the correctional system, not for post-release planning.
Community Engagement
The UWC’s interest in reentry developed from conversations they participated in as the Local
Learning Partner for the Making Connections initiative, where residents and stakeholders raised
reentry and related employment issues as important community concerns. The UWC presented
their reentry analysis to the Making Connections–Hartford (MCH) steering committee, and the
committee expressed interested in learning more and crafting strategies to address challenges
identified in the UWC analysis. Additional community meetings are being planned for the UWC
to present its findings to MCH and other community partners, as well as local government
officials.
The UWC also presented their analysis to the Connecticut Department of Corrections and
Community Partners in Action (CPA), a Hartford-based organization that provides
comprehensive services to people during incarceration, throughout the reentry process, and in the
community. Both agencies are interested in this information as a tool for facilitating conversation
on reentry and services in Hartford. Although CPA is not planning any community events on
reentry at this time, they are interested in sharing the UWC’s mapping and analysis with their
partner organizations.
The UWC also met with several local human service providers to share initial reentry maps, to
learn about the services available in the city for people returning from prison, and to explore

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what types of RMN analyses would be most useful to service providers. Many of the agencies at
this meeting were collaborating to apply for a federal Prisoner Re-Entry Program (PREP) grant
from the Department of Labor. PREP grants are designed to support a variety of employment and
training services for people returning from prison. The UWC contributed its expertise and
analysis of the DOC and probation data to the grant application, and the grant was awarded, with
CPA as the lead organization.
Mapping and Analysis
The UWC combined the parole, probation, and incarceration data it received to create a reentry
database. The addresses available from this dataset were recent, post-incarceration addresses for
those on parole or probation and pre-incarceration intake addresses for those released without
supervision. Although there are limitations to working with these different types of addresses,
the data that the DOC has on formerly incarcerated people is limited, and these were the most
accurate addresses that exist on this population.
The UWC mapped the location of people returning from prison, and the density of returnees by
neighborhood. They examined the location of formerly incarcerated people by age and by
supervision type (parole, probation, no supervision). The UWC maps included a display of areas
zoned for residential use in Hartford, because large portions of the city are zoned non-residential.
This map added the context for understanding where formerly incarcerated people are located.
For additional context, the UWC displayed the location of returnees in relation to data such as
Part 1 crime (obtained from the Hartford Police Department), poverty, and the location of
abandoned buildings (collected as part of another UWC project).
The locations of human service providers were also mapped, to explore the geographic fit
between service coverage and the formerly incarcerated population that might access those
services. Services mapped included education, substance abuse treatment, and housing (halfway
houses, homeless shelters, public housing). The UWC also analyzed residential mobility,
mapping the residential movement of people on parole by comparing their pre-incarceration
address with their current address in the parole system. UWC researchers found the largest
movement was into three neighborhoods in south Hartford.
The UWC conducted basic data analysis on the reentering population in Hartford, looking at
dynamics such as gender, race, age, educational attainment, offense, sentence length, and
drug/alcohol assessment score. They examined which neighborhoods people are coming to
prison from, and where parolees are returning. They explored the disproportionate incarceration
of black and Hispanic young men, and different educational backgrounds of African American,
white, and Hispanic women returning from prison. The UWC team also analyzed the housing
situations of people prior to and after incarceration, and the housing market conditions in the
neighborhoods where parolees are returning.
Based on these data analyses, the UWC produced four prison reentry policy briefs on reentry in
general, reentry and education, reentry in relation to housing and homelessness, and women
returning from prison. These briefs are being used in meetings with Making Connections–
Hartford stakeholders and in other community events.

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Results and Lessons Learned
The UWC has presented reentry maps and analyses to the Connecticut State Department of
Corrections, Community Partners in Action (CPA), and other service providers in Hartford. Both
CPA and the Department of Corrections are interested in sharing UWC’s maps and analyses with
other stakeholders in conversations on reentry and services in Hartford. UWC’s work has been
used by local organizations in a PREP grant application, by the Connecticut Coalition to End
Homelessness in discussing housing needs in Hartford, and by CPA in a presentation at a drug
policy conference. In addition, Making Connections–Hartford is moving to incorporate reentry
issues into its work, in part by sharing the UWC’s work with its partners and stakeholders.

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
The United Way of Central Indiana (UWCI) and the Local Learning Partnership of
Indianapolis’s Making Connections initiative led the Reentry Mapping Network project in
Indianapolis. They also established several key partnerships, including one with the Indianapolis
Weed and Seed program.
The UWCI participated in the Reentry Mapping Network as part of its mission to better
understand the needs of the community and to share that knowledge with its partner agencies.
Only a few UWCI agencies focus primarily on returning prisoners, but many offer services of
use to those returning from prison, their families, and their neighborhoods. By learning more
about the reentering population, the UWCI is better positioned to assist its partner agencies and
other service providers in developing relevant programs and services. In addition, the UWCI,
along with The Polis Center at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, serves as a
member of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP). The UWCI has worked
with The Polis Center to develop and refine SAVI, an online database of Social Assets and
Vulnerabilities Indicators for Central Indiana. The UWCI felt that reentry mapping and analysis
would be a valuable addition to these spatial information systems.
The Indianapolis Local Learning Partnership (ILLP) had an interest in the RMN project from
two perspectives. First, as Making Connections–Indianapolis (MC-I) has worked to strengthen
families and the neighborhoods in which they live, it has frequently faced reentry-related issues,
including the difficulties former prisoners have finding employment and housing, as well as their
inability to vote. The large population of returning offenders in the two Making Connections
neighborhoods, and the need to take their unique situation into consideration when developing
strategies, was a driving force behind the ILLP’s participation in the RMN. Neighborhood LLPs
also brought prisoner reentry to the attention of ILLP. The Martindale-Brightwood LLP in
particular recognized that a large number of people being released from prison were returning to
their neighborhood, and they expressed a desire to know more about the people returning and to
work as a community to make their reentry transition successful.
Informed by their existing projects and concerns, the initial goals for the Indianapolis RMN team
were:

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•

to inform the ongoing work of the Making Connections–Indianapolis site team and the
community and neighborhood Local Learning Partnerships on reentry issues; and

•

to analyze the disparate impact of reentry on various Indianapolis neighborhoods and to
explore the service opportunities this presents for UWCI agencies, especially the 12
community centers located throughout Indianapolis’s inner-city neighborhoods.

Data Access and Quality
Data were requested from the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) through a research
application to the DOC’s research and planning division. The Department was cooperative and
provided most of the requested fields in a single flat text file. Although the scope of the
Indianapolis project was limited to Marion County, the DOC dataset included offenders released
to addresses throughout the state.
The dataset encompassed all offenders released from state DOC facilities between July 1, 2003,
and June 30, 2004. The DOC has also agreed to provide another year of releasee data (July 2004
to June 2005); this agreement is a move toward institutionalizing a data-sharing relationship
between the UWCI and the DOC.
In addition to covering basic demographics (age, race, gender, marital status, educational status,
health conditions), the data also included information about the inmate’s incarceration (length of
sentence, security level, offenses). While DOC documentation was unclear on the meaning of the
classification codes associated with some fields, the UWCI was typically able to reconstruct the
classification codes and verify their accuracy with DOC staff.
Unfortunately, only one address is maintained in the DOC system. In most cases, this is the
address at the time of arrest or admission into the correctional system. Infrequently, new
addresses are added to the system, such as a release address, yet these addresses are rarely
validated. For these reasons, the accuracy of the addresses in the DOC dataset is unknown. On
analysis, the RMN team found that a few of the addresses were readily identifiable as
institutional or agency addresses, but the overwhelming majority were valid residential
addresses. After a significant amount of data cleaning, 92 percent of the addresses were
successfully geocoded.
Community Engagement
In the early stages of the RMN project, the UWCI connected with the lead agency in a local
Weed and Seed neighborhood, that was hosting a Reentry Forum involving residents, service
providers, and recently returned prisoners. An ad-hoc coalition grew out of the forum, which the
UWCI participated in as a means to learn more about local reentry planning efforts and to
identify ways in which they could connect their reentry mapping work to ongoing community
planning and action.
Through this coalition, the UWCI connected with the Indianapolis Police Department (IPD)
Weed and Seed coordinator and a local representative from the United States Attorneys’ Office,

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who had been working on improving access to services for returning offenders in Indianapolis.
Their goal was to develop an online system of reentry services to be used by case workers,
returning offenders, and their friends and families to identify services that can support successful
reentry. The IPD Weed and Seed Coordinator and the U.S. Attorney’s Office also held a focus
group of former prisoners to discuss the challenges they faced upon reentry, their needs for
services, and how they found information about service providers. In connection with these
efforts, the UWCI overlaid their reentry data with some of the service data to create maps
demonstrating how the service provider database could be used for service planning as well. The
UWCI sees continued participation in this collaborative effort as part of its goal of using the
RMN work to inform local agencies about the reentry population and their service needs.
The UWCI also worked with the Indianapolis LLP to share maps and data with residents of
Making Connections neighborhoods in Indianapolis. One neighborhood, Martindale-Brightwood,
has viewed this project as an opportunity to address reentry in their community. They took the
issue to representatives from all of the neighborhood organizations and developed a consensus as
a neighborhood that they want to explore ways residents and neighborhood organizations can
assist with successful reentry. This planning work is ongoing.
Although the Southeast Making Connections neighborhood was not as quick to take up the issue
of reentry, there is ongoing community conversation about challenges to employment success,
including having a criminal background. This neighborhood concern has been used as an entry
point to bring data to the community regarding the demographics and needs of returning
offenders in the neighborhood. They are using this basic information on the returning population
to develop a job placement program for returning sex offenders.
Mapping and Analysis
The UWCI mapping revealed that most of the people returning from prison were coming back
into the older neighborhoods surrounding downtown Indianapolis, with some going into the
older suburban neighborhoods of the region as well. Both Making Connections neighborhoods
have high concentrations of returning offenders. Using maps and charts, the UWCI explored the
characteristics of those returning from prison, including basic demographics, educational
attainment, and offense history. They also combined reentry mapping with contextual data, such
as the location of service providers, Part 1 crime, and public transportation routes. These maps
and analyses are being used to introduce UWCI partner agencies and Making Connections
neighborhood organizations and residents to the issue of reentry in Indianapolis. As part of the
collaboration described earlier to improve reentry services in Weed and Seed neighborhoods, the
UWCI is also focusing its mapping and analysis efforts on these neighborhoods.
One interesting finding coming out of UWCI’s analysis is that in several neighborhoods,
including Martindale-Brightwood, drug related offenses were among the most common reasons
returnees were incarcerated. In the Southeast neighborhood, on the other hand, driving related
crimes were high on the list of offenses. This information was shared with the Making
Connections neighborhoods, and Martindale-Brightwood residents were especially concerned
about the affect drug convictions can have on the ability to obtain employment.

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Results and Lessons Learned
The UWCI’s RMN work benefited from a cooperative and helpful relationship with the DOC,
yet they still spent many hours cleaning the data and compensating for the lack of a preexisting
data dictionary. The RMN project also benefited from the UWCI’s position in the community as
a leading funder of local services and from their multiple connections with their partner agencies.
This position will enable UWCI to raise the level of consciousness about reentry-related
challenges throughout Indianapolis, and start a dialogue with new organizations not previously
involved in reentry discussions.
In addition, the Indianapolis LLP will continue working in the Making Connections
neighborhoods of Martindale-Brightwood and Southeast. In Martindale-Brightwood, there is
enthusiasm and momentum from community leaders to get involved with reentry planning for
their neighborhood. In Southeast this same enthusiasm is taking longer to develop, because there
was little recognition prior to RMN that reentry is a serious challenge for their neighborhood
improvement efforts. The project has made important progress in getting past this hesitation and
developing a baseline of understanding in the Southeast neighborhood from which more
meaningful dialogue and planning can follow.
Other lessons learned by the Indianapolis RMN partners throughout the project include the
following:
•

It is important for the research team to clearly understand their data needs and analysis
plans to avoid the need to request additional DOC data;

•

The research team should try to obtain a data dictionary or a list of definitions for any
field codes as early in the project as possible, as this will make data cleaning and analysis
much easier and data accuracy more certain;

•

It can be difficult for the research team to know when and how to introduce reentryrelated data, especially if a community is unaware of the scope of the returning
population in its area or is not interested in addressing the challenges and needs of this
population. In this case, it may be best to introduce data slowly, as opportunities arise,
and to connect them to conversations about other topics, such as employment.

•

It is essential to have a partner who is talking regularly with the community about their
overall objectives and their barriers to attaining those objectives. Bringing reentry data to
the community as a stand-alone piece of information, without any support for community
action and response, can overwhelm community residents or evoke negative reactions,
and may actually hinder community action on the issue.

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
The Community Resource Network (CRN) is the lead RMN partner in Louisville. The CRN
serves as the Local Learning Partner (LLP) to Making Connections-Louisville (MCL) and
maintains Louisville and Jefferson County’s social service referral resource database. Due to its

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experience collecting and working with community data, the CRN was well positioned to obtain,
clean, organize and analyze reentry data for the RMN project.
One factor motivating the CRN’s involvement in reentry mapping was that, during the strategic
planning process for Making Connections, residents from Making Connections neighborhoods
had identified reentry-related challenges as a top concern. Specifically, the residents were
concerned that their neighborhoods were home to a significant number of returning prisoners and
parolees, for whom inadequate services and supports were available. Residents were also
concerned that their neighborhoods suffered from higher crime rates than the rest of the
Louisville metro area. What remained unclear, however, was the extent to which there was a
correlation or even a causal relationship between the number and concentration of former
prisoners and the crime rates in local neighborhoods. Another question was the extent to which
inmates were truly returning “home”—for example, to live with family or friends, in the
neighborhoods in which they had lived prior to arrest and incarceration and to which they had
preexisting ties—or were being directed or attracted to certain neighborhoods. What implications
might these different scenarios have for the community? The CRN hoped its participation in the
Reentry Mapping Network would help answer these and other questions.
Early in the project, the CRN was able to connect its reentry mapping work with a communitywide planning effort around reentry called the Justice Reinvestment Planning Project (JRPP).
Funded by the Open Society Institute, the JRPP brings together city, county, and state
government leaders, including elected officials and criminal justice agency leadership (of the
Department of Corrections, the Parole Board, the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, and other
agencies), service providers, community-based organizations, local academics and researchers,
and other stakeholders. The primary objectives of the JRPP were:
•

to gain a better understanding of the formerly incarcerated population in Louisville
through data analysis and mapping;

•

to evaluate existing services at the state, local, and neighborhood levels that assist
prisoners upon reentry; and

•

to design a pilot project that enhances investment in neighborhoods and provides
alternatives that encourage former prisoners to become contributing members of their
neighborhoods and communities.

The CRN was selected to lead the research and analysis component (the first objective) of the
JRPP, and the CRN incorporated its planned RMN work within the JRPP framework. The
CRN’s involvement in the project had a significant impact on its RMN work, particularly with
regard to gaining access to reentry data.
Data Access and Quality
The CRN’s connection with the JRPP provided a strategic opportunity to fast-track a data request
to the DOC with some assistance from JRPP participants who worked in the corrections system.
The JRPP collaborated with the CRN team and the state and local corrections staff to develop

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and refine a detailed data request. This effort was aided substantially by the JRPP project
coordinator, Keith Hardison, who had recently retired from the position of executive director of
the Kentucky State Parole Board. Mr. Hardison was invaluable in helping to refine the data
request, based on extensive practical experience using the data and working with its challenges
and idiosyncrasies.
A data-sharing agreement was established with the Kentucky Department of Corrections (DOC)
and the Kentucky Parole Board to receive data from the inmate database (ORION), the Probation
and Parole Case Management System (PPCMS), and the Parole Board Risk Assessment (PBRA)
database. Data on local jail releases was obtained from the Louisville Metro Department of
Corrections inmate database.
The target group for analysis was people released to the Louisville Metro area and assigned to
the Louisville Probation & Parole Office over three consecutive calendar years: January to
December 2002, January to December 2003, and January to December 2004. The PPCMS
dataset was used as the core dataset, and was augmented with information from other data
sources, including the ORION (inmate) and PBRA (risk assessment) files. The ORION and
PBRA records were matched to the PPCMS database to create a single file containing most of
what is known from the three sources (case history and demographics) about the 9,162 parolees
released to Louisville from 2002 to 2004.62 Combining these three datasets was challenging
because each is produced, used, and maintained for a different purpose by a different entity,
using its own set of identifiers and usage norms.
The individuals in the master dataset fell into six case categories: parole (27 percent), shock
probation (6 percent), sex offender conditional discharge (1 percent), probation (40 percent),
misdemeanant (18 percent), and pretrial (10 percent). For the most part, individuals in the first
three categories (parole, shock probation, and sex offender CD) served time in prison prior to
being released to supervision.63 The individuals in the other three categories were remaining in
the community rather than going to prison, serving their time under some form of supervision
administered by the Probation and Parole Office.
Each of the individual records in the master dataset contains up to 44 fields, which provide
information ranging from basic demographics (age, race, gender, educational attainment)
through more detailed designations such as the type of crime and conviction, the length of time
on probation and parole, and the release address. Due to typographical errors, missing data, and
some inherent differences between the three datasets, it was not possible to fill all information
fields for all individuals in the resulting master file. In some cases, a person was only listed in
one of the three databases, rendering a less-detailed picture of that individual.

62

The CRN chose not to include “serve-outs”—those individuals who have served their full prison term and are
released without supervision or restriction—in their analysis because addresses for this group are not as reliable as
those for parolees. An estimated 700 individuals per year are released from Kentucky state prisons and provide a
Jefferson County (Louisville Metro) address or zip code on release. The inclusion of serve outs would increase the
three-year count (9,162) of probation/parole/reentry by an estimated 2,100 individuals.
63
The CRN was informed by the Probation and Parole Office that it is difficult to know for certain if an individual
served time in prison solely based on his or her case category. However, it is highly likely that most persons
categorized as parole, shock probation, and sex offender CD were previously incarcerated.

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Community Engagement
The CRN was fully engaged in most aspects of the JRPP, serving on the advisory committee, the
planning team, the data subcommittee, and the services committee. Active participation and
support to this community-wide effort, specifically in the acquisition and analysis of local
reentry data, was envisioned as an excellent collaborative learning and relationship-building
opportunity. The CRN hoped it would serve as the starting point for work in the Making
Connections neighborhoods of Smoketown, Shelby Park, Phoenix Hill, and California.
Engaging with the JRPP was the first phase of the CRN’s work, and was followed by a second
phase that focused primarily on sharing the reentry data and maps with local neighborhood
stakeholders and partners, including Making Connections neighborhood residents. Making
Connections–Louisville convened a group of stakeholders from Making Connections
neighborhoods who had expressed an interest and were specifically engaged in supporting the
formerly incarcerated populations within their neighborhoods. This initial gathering was small,
but included representatives from the Interdenominational Ministerial Coalition and the Urban
League.
With funding from Making Connections–Louisville, the Urban League had begun a reentry
demonstration workforce initiative called Making It Work in the California neighborhood,
designed to secure jobs for up to 30 former prisoners. Program participants receive a range of
services, including counseling, employment skills training, job search assistance, and help with
expunging eligible criminal records. The Urban League had also convened the Transition
Partners group, a bimonthly gathering of reentry service providers. Unlike several of the other
nonprofit and stakeholder forums that had emerged from the JRPP, the providers involved in the
Transition Partners group had closer cultural and community ties to the Making Connections
neighborhoods. The CRN presented their reentry analyses to this group as well.
Mapping and Analysis
From the master dataset, 8,400 individuals had addresses that were able to be geocoded. The
CRN’s mapping confirmed that the population under criminal justice supervision is not evenly
distributed across the Louisville metro area. A significant proportion of the probation and parole
population is geographically concentrated within the inner urban area—that is, within the Urban
Service District (the old City of Louisville boundary). Further concentrations are easily
identifiable within some of the most distressed neighborhoods in the area. Like other RMN sites,
the CRN found that the high concentration of parolees in some neighborhoods was due to
clusters of parolees living in shelters or halfway houses. The CRN also prepared maps
illustrating the spatial distribution of the probation and parole population by supervision level,
age, gender, race, and proximity to services. They used demographic data from the 2000 U.S.
Census to explore the characteristics of neighborhoods with high concentrations of people under
criminal justice supervision.
The CRN analyzed the basic demographics of the reentry population, including gender, race,
age, marital status, supervision level, educational level, type of crime, type of supervision, and
length of time on supervision. They conducted many of these analyses across different variables,

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for example, exploring educational level by race and by gender. One interesting data item that
the CRN had access to that not many other RMN sites had was the number of children of the
parolees/probationers (although this information was recorded for only 35 percent of the
individuals in the dataset). The CRN found that, among those for whom this information was
available, 29 percent had no children, 25 percent had one child, and 36 percent had two or more
children.
Results and Lessons Learned
The CRN’s close collaboration with the JRPP put them in excellent position for obtaining data
and provided a natural forum for using the results of their analysis. The JRPP final report64 relies
heavily on the CRN’s analyses and maps to describe prisoner reentry challenges in Louisville.
The report also recommends a pilot program in the Newburg neighborhood that would provide
case management and coordinated service delivery to people returning from prison, to address
their health, housing, employment, and other needs. The design of this program, including the
selection of the Newburg neighborhood, was influenced by the CRN’s reentry analysis. The
program is currently being developed.
Despite the benefits of working with the JRPP, the CRN staff still faced the common pitfalls of
working with corrections data, such as geocoding problems and a lack of metadata. In addition,
while the JRPP provided the CRN with access to data and partners interested in using the data, it
also presented the CRN with the challenges of being beholden to a project with its own priorities
and timeline. The CRN found that flexibility is key when striking a balance between pragmatic,
“real world” needs for quick, simple analyses and researchers’ desires to conduct more detailed,
in-depth analysis work.
The CRN’s maps and analyses have also been used to frame community dialogues in Making
Connections neighborhoods. Having completed more detailed analyses of the data for the
Making Connections neighborhoods, the CRN hopes that this new analysis will more strongly
engage neighborhood residents and will assist in the planning of responses to reentry challenges.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee’s Neighborhood Data Center is the lead Reentry Mapping
Network partner in Milwaukee. The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee is an association of
nonprofit organizations that provides technical support, training, and services to the nonprofit
community. The Center’s purpose is to dispense the tools that nonprofits need to successfully
fulfill their missions and improve the lives of people in the community. The Neighborhood Data
Center is the Nonprofit Center’s analytic arm, serving as a clearinghouse for mapping and
analysis support as well as for community data on housing, health, safety, and local assets.
Project COMPASS65 was also a lead partner with the Data Center at the inception of the Reentry
Mapping Network partnership in Milwaukee. The COMPASS program at the City of Milwaukee
64

The JRPP final report is available online at http://www.louisvilleky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/DB87D149-724F-4CB6AADC-5B1E49820FD0/0/FinalReport.pdf.
65
For more information on COMPASS Milwaukee, see http://isdweb1.ci.mil.wi.us/compass/.

85

originated as one of three pilot programs sponsored by the National Institute of Justice to model
the use of data and mapping for community problem solving around issues of public safety and
community well-being. Project COMPASS played a significant role in assisting the Data Center
in building relationships within the corrections field to obtain and use reentry-related data.
Initially, the Milwaukee reentry mapping partnership planned to use spatial analysis to:
•
•
•
•

identify and depict the relationship of risks and assets to concentrations of ex-prisoners;
identify all agencies providing services to released prisoners;
generate data-driven problem solving within a consortium or network consisting of DOC
and other reentry service providers; and
collaboratively develop new or improved policy responses to build the capacity and
stability of neighborhoods with high concentrations of ex-prisoners.

Data Access and Quality
At the onset of the project, the climate for accessing data could not have been more favorable.
Relationships with the state Department of Corrections and the local police and sheriff’s offices
had already been established during the three-year development of the COMPASS project. The
value of organizing data to address community safety problems had been demonstrated, and the
Data Center had already demonstrated its experience in working with sensitive data.
Corrections officials shared preliminary data shortly after the Data Center began its reentry
mapping partnership. This included data about all persons under supervision, including street
address, statute violation (e.g. felony, misdemeanor), age, gender and race. The most significant
limitation of these initial data was that they did not distinguish between offenders released to
probation and offenders released to parole. It did have some limited value in estimating the
overall spatial patterns of reentry in Milwaukee, though, because nearly all Wisconsin offenders
are released to some form of supervision.
Despite this early data acquisition victory, it took the Data Center more than a year to obtain
more refined data from the Department of Corrections (DOC). The DOC’s management
information system (MIS) consisted of several legacy databases—one for community
corrections, one for prison management, one for assessment and programming for inmates, and
yet another to track the criminal charges and court dispositions. Although a single ID number
could serve as a unique identifier with which to link information across datasets, differences in
the degree to which the datasets were updated created problems in doing so, as one file could be
out of sync with records in other files.
Fortunately, the Data Center was able to identify a data analyst within the DOC’s Community
Corrections Unit who understood how to tie the systems together and generate file structures that
could yield accurate information. After a legal review of the Data Center’s request (including a
review of applicable privacy guidelines with regard to health data66), the actual programming
began for the data extract. In January 2005, the Data Center obtained biannual data snapshots of
66

For more information, see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/.

86

released prisoners in the DOC system from 1997 to 2004. These snapshots pictured everyone in
the DOC system at a particular time (in this case, twice annually on the first Tuesday of March
and September). These snapshots include data detailing offender residence prior to incarceration,
residence following incarceration, incarceration dates, most serious offense, supervision status,
supervision termination date, birth year, race/ethnicity, gender, program needs and participation
status while incarcerated, work skills and drug/alcohol risk assessments, and previous
incarceration.
The combined dataset obtained from the DOC was extremely rich, yet it had its share of
shortcomings. In numerous cases, addresses were missing or turned out to be inaccurate
representations of a person’s actual residence in the community (e.g., a local jail or INS
detention center). The volume of individuals cycling in and out of the correctional system also
presented a significant problem, as the snapshots do not capture individuals who are
incarcerated, released, and reincarcerated within short periods of time. Perhaps the greatest
challenge associated with this dataset was the time required to extract useful information from it.
The Data Center has obtained an extraordinarily complete portrait of reentry in Milwaukee
through these data snapshots. Much work remained, however, in creating usable maps and data
analysis.
While corrections data proved more difficult to obtain than expected, other data sources were
easily accessible. Data on crime incidents were already available through the COMPASS
program. Prior agreements became the basis for accessing sheriff’s department information on
arrests, and the Data Center program already possessed well-developed demographic and
neighborhood characteristics data. Data on local service programs was limited at first, although
the Data Center made progress during the project on collecting this information by working with
the local service providers.
Community Engagement
Prior to receiving data from the state DOC, the Data Center generated interest in reentry mapping
in Milwaukee by demonstrating its benefits to local service providers. For example, Milwaukee’s
Community Justice Center (CJC) needed an MIS system and a way to share outcome information
with other organizations for referrals. The Data Center developed a web-based database for
profiling CJC clients and tracking client outcomes, enabling more efficient communication with
outside referral programs. The Data Center also mapped data collected by service providers, such
as the St. Rose Youth and Family Center, to demonstrate the use of reentry mapping for
allocating resources.
More recently, the Data Center has focused its community engagement efforts on working with
Making Connections–Milwaukee. Making Connections–Milwaukee partnered with the
Milwaukee PBS station to organize a screening of a video on incarceration and reentry, Behind
These Walls, which residents and community services agencies attended. At the meeting, the
Data Center presented data illustrating reentry patterns within the Making Connections
neighborhood. The Data Center has continued to work with Making Connections–Milwaukee to
share data and obtain feedback on how to proceed with its analysis. Residents were particularly

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interested in supporting the effort to match released prisoners to local social services as well as to
expand those programs.
The community engagement effort with Making Connections–Milwaukee developed relatively
late in the timeline of the reentry mapping partnership in Milwaukee. This effort, however,
represents a promising and sustainable application of reentry mapping toward informing
community-based initiatives. With the help of Making Connections–Milwaukee, the Nonprofit
Center Data Center program will identify key indicators of reentry challenges and successes,
assess their potential strengths and weaknesses, and create templates allowing the easy tracking
of these indicators at six-month intervals. This work will be essential to informing strategic
decisions made by the Making Connections initiative.
These demonstrations of reentry mapping and analysis will continue for the foreseeable future.
Wisconsin Community Services, the largest nonprofit organization serving reentry clients in
Milwaukee, has been working with the Data Center in support of its strategic planning, including
a planned assessment of its client data to understand its pattern of services in Milwaukee
neighborhoods. In addition, the Data Center will be working with the Hope Project, a new
partner of Making Connections–Milwaukee, to design a data-driven workforce strategy for
released prisoners.
Mapping and Analysis
Using the DOC snapshots, the Data Center created summary profiles for all persons under
correctional supervision in 2003 and analyzed the spatial patterns of their locations within the
city of Milwaukee. The Data Center has cleaned and organized queries of the extensive DOC
dataset in preparation for further mapping of the multiyear prisoner release cohorts. This analysis
will focus on selecting indicators of successful reentry by released prisoners and assessing their
quality, examining shifts in population characteristics and spatial distributions over time, and
assessing flows of individuals through the corrections system longitudinally. The Data Center
will also compare the different experiences of persons sentenced under “truth in sentencing”67
provisions with those prisoners sentenced prior to those sentencing reforms. Department of
Corrections and local nonprofit organizations have agreed to review and provide guidance for
these forthcoming analyses. The Data Center’s relationship with Making Connections–
Milwaukee will enable it to undertake more focused analysis incorporating neighborhood-level
data provided by the Making Connections team.
The Data Center has also worked with the Wisconsin Going Home68 staff to improve Going
Home’s capacity to serve their client population. To improve their capacity to make referrals, the
Wisconsin Going Home staff built a database of relevant local services that the Data Center
mapped for them.

67

For more information about Truth in Sentencing in Wisconsin, visit
http://www.wicourts.gov/services/judge/truth.htm
68
Going Home is Wisconsin’s application of the federal Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI)
grant. For more information, see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/reentry/sar/wi.html.

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Results and Lessons Learned
The Data Center, through its partnership with Making Connections–Milwaukee, is positioned to
continue reentry-mapping work. In addition, because the Data Center has received time-series,
address-level data (for which they will receive updates every six months), they are uniquely
positioned to a make a substantial contribution to the continued exploration of reentry challenges
in Milwaukee.
Early results and impact of the Data Center’s reentry mapping efforts are difficult to assess
because of the extraordinary investment in time and resources needed to obtain and analyze DOC
data. The Data Center faced considerable challenges in collecting and analyzing DOC data
because the state system included several distinct subsystems that required complex
programming to link together. The Data Center may have had earlier and more tangible results
had it made a more conventional request for one calendar year’s worth of data on a single release
cohort.
From an analytic perspective, the construction of this dataset also presented a second challenge:
frequent changes in supervision status and address data among individual released prisoners over
time made assessing patterns of release difficult. Rather than create a seamless file with all
changes in status (linked across each relevant file at the point of that change), the Data Center
developed a file system that provided data snapshots in six-month intervals. The start and end
dates within snapshots allow reconstructing all but short episodes of incarceration.
A major challenge now facing the Data Center is releasing the data for review and use by
multiple service providers and community-based stakeholders. Although there is significant
interest in and support from the Making Connections-Milwaukee partners with regard to prisoner
reentry issues, the broader community of stakeholders has no pre-existing network. For example,
individual organizations may be familiar with each other’s work, but they lack an established
venue at which to convene and discuss collaboration or coordination of efforts. As a result, the
Data Center is challenged with serving as the lead convener of relevant stakeholders and is
tasked with providing a sustainable and supportive infrastructure that allows stakeholders to
collaborate on projects and initiatives that result from reviewing the results of the Data Center’s
mapping and analytic work.
The Data Center has already begun to overcome this challenge by convening initial community
meetings with relevant stakeholders to review reentry maps. Several meetings were held in 2004,
and in 2005, at which the Data Center was able to present preliminary maps. The meeting in
2004 included reentry stakeholders, agency representatives, and service providers—ranging from
the DOC to a prison ministry group. In a 2005 meeting, the Data Center shared preliminary maps
and data from a snapshot of all probation and parole persons currently under supervision. At this
meeting, a number of organizations learned about each other for the first time, and those present
expressed interest in collaborating on a regular basis and committed to convene for subsequent
meetings.
The Data Center’s original community engagement strategy was to convene relevant
organizations after the reentry data had been acquired and fully mapped and analyzed. The Data

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Center made an intentional decision to carry forward with obtaining a complex database, at the
expense of delaying this community engagement goal. This strategy resulted in the acquisition of
an extremely useful dataset though, which may yield a powerful, long-term payoff in informing
reentry planning in Milwaukee. In the short term, however, the most notable result from this
work in Milwaukee is the development of potential in the form of a rich database of reentryrelated information and a sustainable community partnership with Making Connections–
Milwaukee to support the use of that database.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
The Urban Strategies Council is the lead agency in the Oakland RMN project. As a community
building support and advocacy organization, the Council’s mission is to eliminate persistent
poverty by helping stakeholders transform low-income neighborhoods into vibrant, healthy
communities. The Council’s capacity for convening and facilitating meetings with community
stakeholders, mobilizing resources, and using data to advocate for innovative programs and
strategies has proven to be a great asset in its work as an RMN partner.
The Council’s reentry work began in early 2000 when it partnered with the National Trust for the
Development of African American Men in an effort to bring the Trust program to California and
adapt it specifically to address the issues of reentry and reintegration of the formerly
incarcerated. The Trust is an in-prison asset-based community development and leadership
training program developed in New York by Dr. Garry Mendez, director of the Trust. In early
2003, the Council and Trust partnership was successful in obtaining a grant from The California
Endowment (TCE) to launch the Community Health Project in San Quentin prison. At about the
same time that their partnership was finalizing discussions with TCE, the Urban Institute
launched the RMN project. Given the Council’s history of using data and information for
change, it was selected to become a RMN partner. The Council’s RMN work focuses on
addressing issues faced by the formerly incarcerated in reintegrating into their communities, as
well as on violence prevention in the community.
Data Access and Quality
The Council encountered substantial challenges with obtaining case-level data from the
California Department of Corrections (CDC) and the California Youth Authority (CYA).
Prominent among the challenges is that CDC research staff were severely underfunded and
understaffed. After unsuccessful attempts to obtain data through official data requests, the
Council decided to take a different route and build relationships and contacts with local
administrators from the CDC and the CYA.
Through the Council’s participation in the steering committee for Project Choice, Oakland’s
federally funded Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Program, its staff were able to meet both
administrators from the CDC and CYA. As steering committee members, the Council also met
representatives from Hatchuel, Tabernik and Associates, the firm conducting the independent
evaluation of Project Choice, who were similarly interested in obtaining data on parolees. The
firm had already made a request for data and if successful agreed to share it with the Council
within the bounds of their agreements with the CDC.

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The Council demonstrated the utility of corrections data for their purposes as well as for the
purposes of CDC and CYA. Using 1998 and 2000 zip code data of parolees that the Council
obtained from CDC, along with the locations of participants in the Community Reentry Service
Provider Network (CRSPN), the Council created maps showing where parolees resided
compared to the locations of the service providers. While both local administrators were
impressed with the analyses and maps and expressed interest in providing assistance, they also
emphasized that obtaining record-level data would be a long process.
In January 2005, the CDC and CYA were merged to create a new California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Not long after, the Council was able to obtain recordlevel data. The newly appointed interim CDCR secretary was one of the people the Council had
an established relationship with, and was already a supporter of the Council’s work.
The Council received four related datasets for all active parolees committed from Alameda,
Contra Costa, San Francisco, Marin and Los Angeles counties. This included a dataset of active
parolees, which included demographic data, gang affiliation, history of substance abuse, mental
health issues, sexual offenses, and violent behavior. The second dataset is the history of parolee
addresses, which includes addresses provided at time of release, the parole unit assignment, and
the relationship of parolee to address given (e.g. mother’s home, treatment program, etc.). The
third dataset contained parole offense and sentencing history, and the fourth dataset contained the
number of times a parolee was in/out of prison. This latter dataset is based on dates of parole and
transfers to non-CDCR institutions (e.g., rehabilitation centers and state hospitals).
Many variables in the dataset were difficult to decipher, and CDCR codebooks did not provide
descriptions or explanations of variables. The Council has created a comprehensive codebook,
which includes descriptive labels and explanations of variables. They delivered this codebook to
the CDCR for their use, and in doing so were able to build capital that enabled them to have
specific and targeted problems clarified in cases where the Council could not decipher variable
meanings on their own.
Community Engagement
The Council is involved in many community-centered activities and efforts to coordinate
collective responses to the challenges of reentry. The Council is working with the Trust, Project
Choice, and the CRSPN in an ongoing effort to engage and unite law enforcement, government
agencies, nonprofit groups, community members, and formerly incarcerated people around a
common table to discuss reentry issues and devise a comprehensive plan for service coordination
and decisionmaking to reintegrate people into the community.
The Council is actively involved in CRSPN, a group convened by Allen Temple Baptist Church,
the district office of the State Economic Development Department, and the Port of Oakland, to
provide a networking opportunity for providers of various social services to released prisoners.
Finding great potential but few resources, the Council has provided staffing support and has
helped build a communications infrastructure for the CRSPN. With the help of the Council, the
CRSPN developed three goals: (1) to create a resource bank and referral system for programs

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that serve formerly incarcerated people; (2) to identify and support policy initiatives that promote
successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated people; and (3) to develop an infrastructure for
the CRSPN that supports fundraising and management.
In addition, the Council, the Trust, and the CRSPN are working with the CDCR to develop a
Community Corrections Partnership Project. The project will include pilots in northern and
southern California communities and correctional facilities and will utilize the vehicle of a
reentry roundtable as a format for integrating use of data and strategic planning to address the
issues of community reentry.
Mapping and Analysis
The zip code parolee summary data that were obtained from the CDC early in the project were of
limited value for analyzing the reentry challenges in Oakland. The Council used those data to
demonstrate the potential utility of such analyses, should more detailed case level data with
addresses become available. Despite this limitation, the Council was able to use alternative data
sources to provide some insight into reentry-related issues in Oakland. Using zip code–level
data, the Council analyzed parole releases at city, county, and state levels, identifying trends and
differences in rates for the three geographic areas, as well as developing a recent “snapshot” of
reentry locally. The Council found that in 2004, there were 1,442 parolees under the jurisdiction
of Oakland parole offices. Oakland’s parolee rate peaked in 1998 at 542 parolees per 100,000
residents, and has since declined to 350 per 100,000 in 2004. This rate is still higher than the
national average of 300 per 100,000. In its analysis, the Council suggested that the drop in
parolees might be partly explained by the transfer of Oakland residents on parole to other
surrounding jurisdictions due to caseload limitations.
In early 2005, the Council released a report detailing information on homicides in Oakland from
2002 to 2004. A key finding presented in the report shows that parolees and probationers are
responsible for homicides at a far lower rate than previously cited by Oakland’s mayor.
After receiving record level data from the CDCR, the Council created a comprehensive
community reentry report, as well as a monthly monitoring report that is based on recurrent
CDCR data updates. The report included maps of where parolees lived, and information about
the number of parolees who were under CDCR supervision in Alameda County and how that
compared with the rest of the Bay Area, California, and the nation. Demographic characteristics
of parolees were analyzed, as were parolees’ offenses. In addition to reporting on parolees, the
Council included data on adult and juvenile probationers in Alameda County. The report has
been taken to the community, and delivered at a regional training for faith-based organizations
(attended by 20 pastors) and at a meeting of the Alameda County Violence Leadership
Prevention Group.
In addition to the comprehensive snapshot, the Council has begun releasing monthly reports on
parole and probation in Alameda County. In many instances, data are not available for categories
in the report’s tables. This is because either the baseline data or monthly updates to the data
already obtained are not available to the Council. Nonetheless the report is issued with “n/a” in
the relevant columns and rows to show the need for these data. This strategy has already been

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successful in obtaining access to Alameda County probationer data that had been previously
unavailable.
In addition, this report ties into the Council’s efforts to work with reentry service providers. In
attempting to generate a monthly county of parolees and probationers, the Council is also
generating an estimate for available treatment slots for service needs. This has enabled them to
communicate more about the gap between the need for services and the availability of treatment
slots to meet that need. The Council has also been funded by The California Endowment to use
this approach to get better data on the gap in health services for formerly incarcerated people.
Results and Lessons Learned
Currently, the Council is assisting the CRSPN in creating a resource and referral system for
programs that serve formerly incarcerated people. In accordance with this goal, the Council has
partnered with Public/Private Ventures to pursue funding for the development of the referral
system as a tool for performing service-gap analyses for Oakland’s formerly incarcerated
population.
In response to the positive feedback and press resulting from the Council’s homicide report, the
governor’s office asked the Council to extend its analysis to earlier years. These neighborhood
level reports are available on the Council’s web site.
One significant challenge the Council faced as it implemented the local RMN was its lack of
familiarity with prisoner reentry issues and the criminal justice system. This challenge exists to
some degree with most RMN partners. The Council addressed this challenge by partnering with
the Trust, a group with substantive knowledge in the area of criminal justice. The partnership
fostered a greater understanding of the relationship between prisoner reentry and community
well-being within the Council, and led them to create a new program area within the organization
focused on community safety and justice.
While the Council has dealt with large bureaucracies throughout their history, the California
correctional system proved to be the most difficult to navigate. That the Council was new to this
policy area also meant that it had no established history of experience and developed
relationships to call upon to overcome challenges. Nonetheless, the Council was finally able to
reach an agreement and obtain corrections data from the CDCR.
The Council also found it challenging at times to partner with other advocacy organizations that
had different priorities for policy reform. For example, many of the partners they worked with
placed significant emphasis on disenfranchisement among formerly incarcerated people, while
the Council was more concerned with the policy implications of poor service delivery in such
areas as employment and housing. To move the project forward, the Council decided to accept
disagreement on certain priorities and concentrate on strengthening coordination on issues of
mutual concern.

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PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
The Providence RMN project was managed by a partnership of The Providence Plan (TPP) and
the Rhode Island Family Life Center (FLC). The Rhode Island Department of Corrections was
also an active partner in the project. TPP is a nonprofit organization established in 1992 to
promote the economic and social well being of the city, its people, and its neighborhoods. The
organization has assembled a comprehensive array of neighborhood-level data and works in
partnership with numerous organizations at the community, city, and state levels to use these
data as a tool for community-level change.
FLC is a one-stop center for released prisoners and their families returning to the South and West
neighborhoods in Providence. In addition to providing case management and social services to
released prisoners and their families, the FLC also has staff dedicated to working on research,
policy, and advocacy to change the systemic barriers that released prisoners face when reentering
the community.
The Providence RMN was built around a common interest in using administrative corrections
data to gain a better understanding of issues pertaining to the reentry of released prisoners into
Providence neighborhoods and to use the findings from the data analysis to contribute to local
reentry-related initiatives.
Data Access and Quality
The DOC was interested in having a community-based partner assist in conducting spatial
analyses of the populations under its jurisdiction. Permission to access DOC data, therefore, was
not a problem for the Providence RMN team. Although the DOC was willing to provide data and
participate in the project, it took approximately five months for the first data to become
available. This delay was due to the fact that the request coincided with a significant overhaul of
the DOC’s data system. The request was not fulfilled until the new system was in place.
In early 2004, the DOC provided datasets of the statewide awaiting trial, sentenced, and
probation and parole populations as of September 30, 2003. There were no other agencies to
contact for data, because all of the Rhode Island criminal justice system is under the DOC’s
jurisdiction. Each unique record was address-matched using ArcView software, with
approximately 89 percent of the statewide records from the sentenced file successfully matched,
and 92 percent of statewide records from the probation and parole file matched.
As rich as these datasets are, they are not ideal because they provide a snapshot of individuals in
the criminal justice system at a given point in time, rather than a profile of a cohort of released
prisoners. As discussed earlier in this guidebook, point-in-time datasets are difficult for use in
creating an accurate depiction of current spatial patterns of reentry. This is because the locations
of new releasees are mixed in with the addresses for former prisoners who have been on
supervision for some unknown period of time. The probation and parole data did not include a
release date, so it is unclear when an individual returned to the community.

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In June of 2005, however, the DOC contracted with the Providence Plan for additional analytic
work, and provided data for statewide releases and commits for all of 2004. The DOC wanted the
new analysis to show where prisoners are returning relative to what services they may need,
taking into account offense type, eligibility, and transportation. The project officially covered
four urban communities outside of Providence, but due to geographic proximity much of the new
analysis was done statewide.
Community Engagement
The FLC played a key role in both connecting the local RMN project to the people and
communities experiencing the challenges of reentry firsthand and engaging policymakers and
legislators. The primary component of the community engagement strategy for Providence was
to launch a community education campaign to inform and engage residents and other
neighborhood-based stakeholders, along with policymakers.
The FLC and the Local Learning Partnership (LLP) of the Making Connections initiative led the
coordination of the community education campaign, along with community organizers from
Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE). The Making Connections initiative was already
engaged in an extensive community-based process to address a range of issues pertaining to
strengthening families and communities, many of which were directly relevant to overcoming
the challenges of reentry. The Making Connections neighborhoods also have the highest
concentration of released prisoners in Rhode Island. The FLC and the LLP were logical choices
to lead this effort, as both organizations are based in the Providence Making Connections
neighborhoods. In addition, they were previously involved in reentry-related discussions in these
neighborhoods.
In planning the community education campaign, the reentry mapping partnership envisioned a
two-way process in which the data and analysis from the RMN could be presented to help
educate members of the community, and through which the partnership could learn about the
issues of greatest concern to the community. In beginning of the campaign, the reentry mapping
partnership invited participants from the Making Connections initiative, community organizers,
and members of the faith-based community to meet with them and help them better understand
issues that the community was most concerned about and discuss how to address these issues.
The partners started the conversation by presenting what had been learned through mapping and
analyzing the DOC data. The issue that received the most attention was race, particularly the
degree to which black men in the community were involved in the criminal justice system. While
participants in this discussion were quite familiar with these racial dynamics, the maps and
analyses illustrated and quantified the experiences of black men under criminal justice
supervision in a new way.
After this initial meeting, the reentry mapping partnership began to strategize about who to
involve in their campaign. Participants in the initial meeting developed a long list of potential
stakeholders, including people with criminal records and their families, neighborhood residents,
community development corporations, service providers, business owners, and elected officials.
The group decided to prioritize engaging people with records, their families, and other
community residents who were most affected by incarceration and reentry.

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The LLP, FLC, and DARE hosted an “Impacts of Incarceration” community workshop that
included engaged participants in a conversation about reentry-related issues. The workshop
began with a warm-up activity to illustrate to people how the issue of reentry relates to them. The
introductory presentation included an historical overview of incarceration with an emphasis on
the experiences of and effects on people of color, and a PowerPoint presentation with data and
maps. The interactive component of the workshop included four small group discussions and a
large group discussion of major issues and possible solutions. Each small group discussion
focused on one of the cycles of incarceration (the road to prison, inside prison, reentry,
community impact), and incorporated real-life stories written by released prisoners, prisoners
who were still incarcerated, or their family members. Approximately 70 people participated in
the three-hour workshop. Most of them were actively engaged in the conversations about the
issues, and just over half provided comments on the meeting evaluation form. This workshop
was a pilot that was replicated on a smaller scale in Warwick, the state’s second largest city.
Around the same time that these workshops were being planned, staff from the FLC, LLP,
DARE, and DOC worked with representatives of the local PBS television station to shape a
series of events to screen reentry videos that were produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation
through its Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign. The events were held in four locations
throughout the state, and included a moderated panel discussion with a formerly incarcerated
individual, a family member, and representatives from a faith-based institution, a communitybased agency, and the criminal justice system. Maps were produced and made available as
PowerPoint slides and posters for each of the community forums. Three television broadcasts
and a live televised call-in talk show were also part of that process.
Mapping and Analysis
A primary focus of the Providence analysis has been to illustrate the concentration of the
statewide sentenced population in Providence, and how specific neighborhoods and demographic
groups within Providence are particularly affected by incarceration and reentry. The maps and
other analysis results produced through the work of the local RMN partners were used in a
variety of formats and forums to increase awareness and start conversations, as well as to inform
policymakers and legislators.
Analysis conducted by TPP confirmed, and clearly illustrated, that the highest concentrations of
the state’s sentenced population are found in Providence. The analysis also made it clear, given
the wide differences that exist across the city, that neighborhood-level analysis of these
populations is critical to developing a clear understanding of the potential local effects of reentry
and related issues.
Their analysis of the sentenced population relative to the general population focused on the 18to 64-year-old (working age) male population. Individuals were selected from the DOC data
based on gender and age, and were compared to the numbers of 18- to 64-year-old males
extracted from Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1). Their analysis of children with incarcerated
parents included men and women of any age from the sentenced and awaiting trial populations
who indicated that they had children. Key findings include the following:

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•
•
•
•
•

•

Providence has 17 percent of the state’s overall population, but is home to 38 percent of
the state’s sentenced individuals at the time they were sentenced and one-third of all
individuals on probation or parole.
The offender population is highly concentrated in just a few neighborhoods (47 percent
of the city’s sentenced offenders came from only 5 of the city’s 25 neighborhoods).
Adult males living in one neighborhood on the South Side (within the Making
Connections target area) are 45 times more likely to be incarcerated than adult males
from some of the city’s more affluent neighborhoods.
One in three adult black males in Providence is on probation or parole; In parts of some
neighborhoods, more than half of the adult black males are on probation or parole.
Individuals from the sentenced and awaiting trial populations with Providence addresses
reported that they were the parents of a total of 1,486 children. This translates to a rate of
33 children of incarcerated parents per 1,000 Providence children under age 18. Five of
the city’s 25 neighborhoods have rates that exceed 40 children per 1,000, with the
extreme case being 82 children per 1,000 in one neighborhood.69
The estimated annual cost of incarcerating Providence residents (excluding central
administration and capital costs) is $32 million; $11.6 million in the four Making
Connections neighborhoods.

The focus of the second wave of analytic work was to analyze areas of high returnee
concentration versus what relevant services exist in those areas. Rather than simply map services
regardless of actual availability to the returnee population, TPP documented those that actually
serve this population (based on eligibility requirements), as well as “near misses” where services
would be available if eligibility restrictions were changed. The bulk of the work was identifying
and categorizing service providers and determining whether returnees are eligible. The
Providence Plan and the Family Life Center used their findings from this research to build a
web-based, searchable database of local community organizations that will serve ex-offenders.
The database is built to be user friendly for organizations to update regularly, which could
eventually provide the ability to map actual available services in Providence in near-real time.
These data were also used to create maps to inform the discussion about reentry and the
discharge planning process for individuals returning to Providence.
Results and Lessons Learned
Approximately 20 presentations of the reentry maps and analysis were made during 2004, with
an estimated combined attendance of 430 individuals. Formats included PowerPoint
presentations, hardcopy handouts, and posters. These maps were used during the early meetings
of the partnership to help plan and launch the community education campaign. The FLC
incorporated some of the key maps and findings from the local analysis into a presentation, “The
Impact of Incarceration and Reentry in Providence,” that could serve as an information tool to
help start and guide conversations about reentry in a variety of forums, including subsequent
community meetings organized by the partnership and additional community engagement work
carried out by FLC in support of that organization’s mission. The primary purpose of the
69

The analysis of children with incarcerated parents was done for Ready to Learn Providence, an early childhood
initiative of The Providence Plan, with funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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presentation was to provide insight into the populations and neighborhoods most affected by
incarceration and reentry so that a broad range of participants would have a common starting
point for conversations about reentry, regardless of their prior experience with the issues.
In addition to increasing community awareness, the maps and analysis were also used as a key
component of several efforts to affect policy and initiate action:
•

•
•

•

•

•

•

FLC published a policy brief on the impact of the state’s lifetime ban on Family
Independence Program and Food Stamp benefits for every Rhode Islander convicted of a
felony for drug distribution. FLC analyzed sentenced population data from the local
RMN project to strengthen the points made within the brief. The Poverty Institute and
DARE used the brief to inform state lawmakers of the effects of this ban. The legislature
repealed the ban.
FLC included analysis and maps of the sentenced and community supervision population
by neighborhood and race in its policy brief on felon disenfranchisement in Rhode Island.
Ready to Learn Providence, a program of TPP aimed at ensuring that children are healthy
and ready to learn before they reach kindergarten, included neighborhood-level analysis
of the number of children of incarcerated Providence residents as one of two dozen
indicators in its indicators report.
The FLC is developed a legislator’s handbook that focused on the impact of corrections
spending on the State budget. The handbook includes an analysis of sentenced population
data by offense type, with a particular focus on drug and other non-violent offenses, and
by cost of incarceration, based on the specific corrections facility in which an individual
is serving time.
The FLC is using data pertaining to the cost of incarceration per neighborhood in
Providence and per municipality in Rhode Island, as it works with other organizations to
build a coalition of community and statewide advocates to propose a set of cost-effective
justice reforms.
The FLC hosted a press conference for Governor Donald Carcieri in March 2004, at
which the governor announced the creation of his Reentry Steering Committee. A
briefing packet that included maps and analysis of DOC data was distributed to public
sector officials, legislators, and community advocates in attendance. The large format
maps that were on display generated a great deal of discussion.
Maps and analysis prepared by TPP were used in a presentation by the director of the
Rhode Island Department of Corrections to the National Governors Association in May
2005.

The local RMN work was also included in newspaper articles that reached an even wider
audience. The Providence Journal ran stories on the governor’s press conference, the repeal of
the State’s ban on Food Stamp and Family Independence Program benefits for convicted drug
felons, the Family Life Center Issue Brief on felon disenfranchisement, and on the PBS
community workshops.
TPP and the FLC remain involved in Rhode Island reentry work and are well positioned to
continue the RMN partnership. In April 2005, TPP received a $35,000 contract from the Rhode

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Island DOC to analyze where prisoners are returning relative to what services they may need,
taking into account offense type, eligibility, and transportation.
The Rhode Island RMN was successful in acquiring and analyzing data and using the analyses to
engage and inform the community and influence policy change. There were several important
challenges and lessons learned throughout the process from data collection and analysis,
applying the analysis results, and engaging the community. Overcoming and learning from these
challenges has strengthened the Rhode Island RMN project and prepared them for their new and
ongoing efforts.
Through their work with the DOC, TPP and the FLC realized that even under the best
circumstances, data acquisition could take longer than anticipated. Even though the DOC was
committed to making the data available and participating as an active partner in the project, the
data requests were subject to the existing workload and priorities of the DOC. Further, the
corrections data has inherent limitations that affect the accuracy of the analysis and the
representation of the reentry population over a given period of time.
To conduct an effective analysis, it is critically important to have partners that are expert in both
the corrections data and the relevant criminal justice issues. In this case, TPP had expertise in
data analysis and GIS applications, as well as in a variety of relevant community issues, but
lacked prior experience in issues of criminal justice and prisoner reentry. The DOC devoted time
to explaining the details of their data and how individual data fields could be used. Without that
knowledge, there would have been a greater risk of misinterpreting and misusing the data.
The diversity of the local RMN partnership can also affect the extent to which the community is
engaged in the process. The Providence RMN has recognized the importance of considering
existing relationships between the various RMN members and the community. Some community
participants in the process described their experiences as “us” (the community) versus “them”
(the DOC as “the system”). These direct experiences, as well as the perceptions held by others,
presented some challenges to moving the community engagement process forward as issues of
trust and accountability were brought to the surface. RMN partners made an effort to include
differing points of view and recognize legitimate concerns and criticisms to move forward
constructively.
Attempting to engage a representative sample of the community and discuss sensitive issues can
also be a challenge, though it may be necessary to move toward collective solutions. For
example, the RMN juggled differing opinions as to how, or even whether, to get the police
involved in the community engagement process. Some participants had negative experiences
with or feelings toward the police and were hesitant to get the police involved. Others viewed the
police as an important partner in developing successful reentry strategies. While important,
acknowledging these opposing views slowed progress toward getting a key participant, the
police, involved in the process.
Discussing sensitive issues, especially concerning race, among a diverse group of community
stakeholders is a difficult but critical component in the process of developing solutions to the
challenges of reentry. The data provided a starting point for discussions about reentry as it relates
to race, but many different perspectives on how race factors into the cycle of incarceration and

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reentry came to the surface. These perspectives range from the belief that institutional racism is
to blame for high incarceration rates among black men, to the feeling among some minority
residents that there is a greater need for members of their communities to move beyond blaming
the system and take greater personal responsibility for their own actions and the actions of family
members.

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
The San Diego County District Attorney’s (DA’s) office, in conjunction with the San Diego
Association of Governments (SANDAG), led the Reentry Mapping Network project in San
Diego. As one of the two RMN partners based in local government, San Diego offered a unique
opportunity for direct access to law enforcement data. California has one of the largest prison
populations in the United States, and because almost all California prisoners (98 percent) are
released to parole, the breadth and reliability of government data on reentry is greater than in
many other states. Although approximately 9,500 parolees call San Diego County home, no local
analysis of reentry data had been conducted prior to the RMN project.
The DA’s office was able to devote staff explicitly to the RMN project, including a crime analyst
with extensive experience in statistical and spatial analysis and a community relations specialist.
The Criminal Justice Research Division of SANDAG was also well-suited to conduct mapping
and analysis of neighborhood-level reentry data and indicators of community well-being. They
serve as the state-designated regional census data center for the San Diego region and have an
ongoing partnership with the Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS), the
consortium for maintaining local law enforcement reports in San Diego County. In addition,
SANDAG had previously completed analysis and planning work with the San Diego Reentry
Roundtable related to prisoner reentry in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego.
During the initial stages of the project, the DA’s office and SANDAG outlined three goals for
their reentry mapping efforts:
•

Identify patterns and trends related to returning prisoners’ residence locations,
demographics (including age, race, language, and family status), employment and
education experiences, and criminal history (number and types of previous crimes);

•

Identify and map programs and resources relevant to reentry, including workforce
development, transitional housing, and substance abuse treatment; and

•

Work with community and government partners to develop effective responses based on
the analysis and findings.

Data Access and Quality
The DA’s office and SANDAG have long-standing relationships with law enforcement and
corrections agencies that maintain reentry-related data. Using these contacts, they were able to
set up meetings with appropriate agency staff and obtain the data files necessary for analysis.
Specifically, data were obtained from the San Diego County Probation Department

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(“probationers”—those individuals released from county jail70) and from the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“parolees”—those individuals released from state
prison71) for ex-offenders in the system as of August 30, 2004. The DA’s office and SANDAG
signed cooperative transfer agreements with the two agencies providing data. Data available
from County Probation and State Parole included (1) address upon release, (2) conviction charge,
(3) time served, (4) release date, (5) facility at time of release, (6) sex, (7) race, (8) date of birth,
and (9) substance abuse history (available for some people).
There were numerous issues with the validity and reliability of the dataset, most of which related
to incomplete or missing data fields. Both the parole and probation datasets included many
incorrect addresses; when possible, research staff looked up and corrected the addresses. In the
parole dataset, project staff had to manually assign hierarchies to determine the most serious
charge for which an inmate was convicted.
The DA’s office and SANDAG also obtained several other types of data for the project,
including
• crime and arrest data (from SANDAG/ARJIS);
• local service providers, including type of services provided and geographical areas served
(multiple sources);
• demographic data, including population, affordable housing, employment, education,
poverty status, household type, household size, and household income (from
Census/SANDAG); and
• public transportation routes (from SANDAG).
Community Engagement
During the course of this project, the DA’s office and SANDAG worked in close partnership
with a number of local organizations through the creation of a San Diego Reentry Mapping
Network committee. Committee members included the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department,
San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA), the San Diego County
Probation Department, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation–Parole
Services Division. At the group’s first meeting in October 2004, the members agreed to form
subcommittees on data, policy/strategy development, and community engagement, with the
agreement that the last two would convene once data had been compiled, cleaned, and
summarized. The data committee, which included representatives from each of the key local
groups, met monthly from late 2004 through early 2005. Staff from the DA’s office and
SANDAG, with the assistance of the GIS coordinator from HHSA, worked to clean and analyze
the datasets, and shared analysis plans and maps with the data subcommittee as they were
developed. Input was received throughout the project from the data subcommittee and various
stakeholders regarding the types of maps and analyses that would be beneficial.
70

Due to data limitations, these data actually included individuals released from jail, as well as those who were
placed immediately on probation following adjudication. Both groups are included in the final analysis because they
may share some similar needs related to coping with issues following conviction. The average term of adult
probation in San Diego County is 3.4 years, according to department staff.
71
In California, 98 percent of releasees are placed under parole supervision, which typically lasts for a period of
three to five years, although non-violent offenders are eligible to be discharged from parole after 13 months.

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Another forum for community engagement was the San Diego Reentry Roundtable. The
Roundtable came into being in April 2002, when a local reentry service provider, Community
Connection, partnered with the Urban Institute to set up local meetings with key community
representatives to explore the nature of prisoner reentry in San Diego and brainstorm strategies
for addressing the issue. Realizing that the Roundtable offered an opportunity to engage a large
number of reentry stakeholders, the DA’s office approached the group in 2004 and offered to
play a greater role, with the goal of creating an ongoing working group. Since then, the DA’s
office’s role on the Roundtable has included hosting the meeting at their office, as well as
encouraging a reexamination of the purposes and goals of the group, a more frequent meeting
schedule (monthly, rather than quarterly), more formal structure (including the formation of an
executive committee, voting structure, and subcommittees), and broader membership. The
reinvigorated Roundtable now manages the roles of community engagement and strategy
development that were originally intended for subcommittees of the San Diego RMN committee.
Another community partnership that the San Diego RMN team developed was with Second
Chance/STRIVE, a local community-based organization that operates the Prisoner Reentry
Employment Program (PREP). Several meetings, discussions, and brainstorming sessions were
conducted with STRIVE to determine how mapping could be used to identify ex-offender
employment patterns and aid in the employment process for people returning from prison. One
result of this partnership was a spatial analysis of a sample of individuals who had completed
PREP and found employment.
Mapping and Analysis
A key challenge for San Diego was mapping and presenting data for the entire county. With over
three million residents, San Diego County covers 4,261 square miles and is slightly smaller than
the state of Connecticut. Due to the large area encompassed by the county, it was agreed that the
majority of analyses would be conducted at the census tract or zip code level.
The August 2004 sample used for this project included 9,647 parolees and 14,295 probationers,
for a total of 23,942 returning ex-offenders. While these returning prisoners were spread across
the region, their most current addresses showed that they were more likely to be living in certain
neighborhoods compared to others. That is, while 30 percent of the general adult population lives
in 15 of the county’s 110 zip codes, 55 percent of the parolees and 50 percent of the probationers
live in these 15 zip codes.
To supplement the limited information available from the Parole and Probation data files,
analyses were conducted comparing these 15 zip codes to the county as a whole on various
demographic characteristics documented by the 2000 Census. The 15 zip codes with the highest
concentrations of parolees and probationers were more ethnically diverse and more economically
challenged, compared to the region as a whole. For example, while 17 percent of county
residents age 25 and older had less than 12 years of education, this percent (29 percent) was
considerably higher in the zip codes with the most ex-offenders. Additional analyses used a
“deprivation index” of seven community indicators: poverty, average income, percent of nonEnglish speakers, unemployment rate, education level, violent crime rate, and overcrowding.

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These analyses found that, at the census tract level, ex-offenders were clustered in deprived
areas, and, if one assumes that neighborhood context plays a role in successful reentry, were
therefore at greater risk for recidivism.
The San Diego RMN team, with assistance from local partners, also compiled a data file which
contained 196 service providers in San Diego County. The providers were located in 41 zip
codes across the region, with 58 percent located in the 15 zip codes with the highest
concentration of ex-offenders. This dataset allowed the creation of maps exploring the match
between service needs and availability, including a map comparing the location of probationers
with educational needs and the location of adult education schools, and a map showing parolees
who had drug testing requirements (often indicative of a substance abuse problem) and
community resources that provide substance abuse treatment. Overall, services did appear to be
located in communities with the greatest need (i.e., those that were most deprived) and with the
greatest clustering of ex-offenders.
As mentioned above, the San Diego RMN partnership with Second Chance/STRIVE led to a
spatial analysis of a sample of individuals who had completed STRIVE’s Prisoner Reentry
Employment Program (PREP) and found employment. A similar analysis was also conducted of
data on an employment program run by Community Connection, another service provider.
Because zip codes were the level of analysis, they were unable to determine an average distance,
but did find interesting results in regard to travel patterns from one zip to another. The vast
majority of ex-offenders worked outside of their home zip. It should also be noted that additional
analyses that involved mapping transit routes showed that public transportation options were
available in those communities with the greatest concentrations of ex-offenders.
Results and Lessons Learned
In addition to sharing their maps and data analyses with local partners throughout the process,
the DA’s office and SANDAG (often in partnership with the Urban Institute) presented their
findings at a number of venues outside of San Diego, including the NLECTC Innovative
Technologies for Community Corrections Conference in Seattle, Washington (June 2005), the
International Crime Mapping Research Conference in Savannah, Georgia (September 2005), and
the American Society of Criminology Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada (November 2005).
During the first half of 2006, the San Diego RMN team presented maps and findings to the San
Diego Reentry Roundtable, the California Endowment, and SANDAG’s public safety committee
(which is composed of local elected officials and local, state and federal public safety
executives). A Criminal Justice Bulletin and one-page criminal justice fax outlining findings in
an easy-to-understand format is also planned for distribution later in the year to over 700
stakeholders in the region, as well as posted on SANDAG’s web site for widespread availability.
The DA’s office and SANDAG are also committed to using these initial findings as a starting
point as they continue to identify additional resources to expand and continue the reentry
mapping project. For instance, an interactive mapping application of local service providers is
currently being developed for internal county employee use. In addition, the RMN team is

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working with local foundations to bring heightened attention to this issue and identify ways this
information can be used to positively affect local public policy.
Project staff learned a number of lessons from having to address issues that arose during
implementation. Some of the most important are outlined below for others considering similar
research:
• Incomplete and inaccurate data in official files. Program staff on the ground often do not
have the time or resources to collect comprehensive and accurate data, requiring a large
investment by project staff later to clean the data and prepare it for analysis. However,
after seeing the RMN maps and analyses, agency staff appreciated the value of getting
more accurate data entered from the beginning.
• Staff turnover at partner agencies. Due to a change in management in the local U.S.
probation office, interest in collaborating on this project diminished. Any long-term
project must account for the possibility of staff turnover.
• Engaging the community. Assumptions should not be made that everyone will suddenly
agree that mapping and data analysis are valuable. Discussions, examples, and time are
needed to show the value of the work and its practical applications.
• Keeping partners involved. Without constant and continual communication and progress
(which is limited by available project staff time), it is difficult to keep the current and
potential stakeholders actively involved.
• Deciding the best means for distribution. Different audiences respond to different
products and presentation styles and, in a large area like San Diego County, it may be
necessary to focus in on the most important relationships, analyses, findings, and
products.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
The Public Health Department for Seattle and King County was the lead RMN partner in Seattle.
As a local data warehouse and a member of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership
(NNIP), Public Health was well suited to lead the acquisition, analysis, and presentation of the
reentry data. They have worked with two key local partners to disseminate findings and engage
the community on reentry issues. One partner is the Making Connections initiative site team, a
group that works with a wide range of community partners to improve families’ economic
success, strengthen social networks, and provide quality services and support to families in the
White Center/Boulevard Park neighborhood of South King County. In addition, Seattle Goodwill
Industries has played a prominent role in the local RMN partnership. Along with many other
projects, Seattle Goodwill operates the STRIVE program (Support and Training Result In
Valuable Employees), which provides participants with employment training and placement
services, along with ongoing support. Goodwill has a strong partnership with the court system
and released prisoners are often referred to STRIVE.
The Seattle RMN partnership had the following objectives:
•

to assess patterns of prisoner reentry in the White Center/Boulevard Park (WC/BP)
neighborhood, compare them to patterns in King County as a whole, and explore

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disparities related to race, immigration status, socioeconomic status, gender, and family
configuration;
•

to collaborate with community partners in defining the problem, designing data collection
plans, determining what analyses to carry out, and presenting and using the findings; and

•

to identify and improve services for former prisoners in the community.

Data Access and Quality
Working with the Urban Institute, Public Health–Seattle and King County was able to negotiate
a data sharing agreement with the Washington Department of Corrections’ (DOC) Planning and
Research unit. The agreement stipulated that the DOC would provide annualized case-level data
on releases from DOC facilities. The DOC provided all release records for the years 2003 and
2004, as well as an update of addresses for the 2003 release cohort. Although DOC staff turnover
caused some delays in receiving the data and some inconsistencies in the data received, the DOC
staff were generally cooperative and helpful in interpreting the data.
The release data were provided in the form of flat text files, with addresses and offender
characteristics data in separate files. Each record in the data file represented a single release
event. The release data files included demographic information (such as gender, race, and age),
incarceration details (such as most serious offense, admission date, etc.) and release information
(including release date, facility released from, and type of release).
The data contained multiple records for some of the individuals released in each year. The
reasons for this duplication varied widely. In some cases, the offender was first released to a
work release program (first record) before being released to the community (second record). In
other cases, the first record represented the end of the sentence for one offense and the second
record was the release for a second offense. This record duplication created some problems for
analysis, as some individuals had as many as four separate release records in the same annual
data file. Furthermore, demographic information (date of birth, race, gender, etc.) on a single
individual was not always consistent across multiple records.
Deciding which information about the incarceration and release was most relevant to the
analysis—choosing the most serious offense, determining the overall length of incarceration and
final terms of release—was a difficult task, especially when the reasons for record duplication
varied. Release information for the last release date in a given year was selected as being most
likely to represent the final release to the community. The data were examined to ensure that this
method did not result in significant loss of other information. After consultation with the DOC
data contact, the research team decided that total time served should be calculated by summing
the time served from all of the records for an individual in the data file.
The geographic identifier in the datasets was the self-reported address of each inmate on release.
These addresses were updated for those under supervision or paying monetary compensation as a
condition of release. Only the most recent known address is kept in the DOC database, and
information about address at time of conviction was not available. In addition, there was no

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information on when an address was entered or updated, and thus no way to know how current
the address was. Geocoding the addresses required a lot of manual address cleaning because of
the poor quality of the data. Cleaned addresses that fell within King County were geocoded; for
both release cohorts, there were fewer than 200 addresses that could not be geocoded (51 in 2003
and 175 in 2004). Individuals who indicated that they were homeless or gave no street address
but also gave King County as their location were assigned to the King County population for
demographic analysis, even though they could not be mapped.
Contextual data were obtained from four different sources: socioeconomic and demographic data
from the 2000 U.S. Census, 2003 Seattle crime data from the Seattle Police Department web site,
data from the Washington State Department of Health on deaths from 1998 to 2002, and data on
services for former prisoners culled from community resource manuals. Developing the exoffender services database was the most challenging of these tasks. Several different sources
were consulted to build a countywide database of services for former prisoners. However, the
result was a hodgepodge of sometimes-conflicting information that was more comprehensive for
some areas of the county than for others. In addition, as community partners pointed out, there
are many social services organizations that include a significant number of former prisoners
among their clients but do not specifically target former prisoners or state this in their materials.
Community Engagement
To initiate community involvement, a small core working group of representatives from Seattle
Goodwill, Making Connections–Seattle and Public Health-Seattle and King County developed a
list of people and organizations interested in reentry, and used a snowball method to build on this
list and identify a universe of interested stakeholders. Public Health convened a meeting with
approximately 20 local stakeholders, at which they presented reentry data and maps and
discussed the available data and participants’ ideas for the project. For many of the participants,
this was their first time coming together as a group interested in reentry; they were seeing most
of the information presented for the first time and, with little history of working together, they
struggled to determine what their next steps should be.
Seattle Goodwill helped contribute perspective and direction to the group at subsequent
meetings, and agreed to facilitate both small and large gatherings of local agencies,
policymakers, and community organizations involved in reentry issues. The evolving focus of
the community regarding RMN is on developing and rationalizing service delivery. They are
interested in expanding reentry services to include preparation for release while prisoners are still
incarcerated, using a case manager approach to connect prisoners to available services on their
return to the community.
Mapping and Analysis
Two broad research questions guided the initial analysis: Who are the people returning from
prison? Where do they live? The majority of the analysis focused on those people living in King
County as of September 2004. Because the Washington DOC provided release records for the
entire state, it was also possible to compare the reentry population living in King County with
those living in the rest of the state.

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Out of the 7,523 prisoners released from Washington state correctional facilities in 2003, 2,177
(29 percent) were living in King County (their most recent address as of September 2004 was in
King County). Demographic analysis of this population was conducted, exploring gender, race,
age, educational level, time served, offense type, and post-release supervision. Findings included
the following:
• African Americans were disproportionately represented among ex-prisoners—41 percent
of releasees in King County were African American, in comparison to 6 percent of King
County’s general population. Eighteen percent of ex-prisoners in King County were
Hispanic, while just 6 percent of the general King county population is Hispanic.
• 45 percent of the releasees had been serving time for a drug-related offense.
• 76 percent of the releasees living in King County were released under DOC supervision,
known in Washington as “community custody.”
Interestingly, the RMN team found that 7 percent of the people released in Washington in 2003
were released to INS/BICE custody. The population in INS/BICE detention was overwhelmingly
Hispanic. Because the primary INS/BICE detention facility is located in downtown Seattle, those
in custody represent a fairly large proportion of the release cohort living in King County (13
percent).
Pin maps and census tract thematic maps were created showing the returnee addresses that could
be geocoded in King County. Not surprisingly, the maps showed that former prisoners were
living predominantly in the western, more urban part of county. The heaviest concentration was
located in central Seattle, especially in the downtown commercial district and the central
residential neighborhoods that extend down through south Seattle in a region known as Rainier
Valley. Outside of Seattle, the southern suburban cities of King County also had a fairly heavy
concentration of ex-offenders.
A similar analysis was performed on the 2004 release cohort data received in March 2005. Two
additional research questions were added for this analysis: Does this cohort differ from the 2003
cohort? What is the relationship between where ex-offenders are living and neighborhood-level
indicators? Demographically, the 2004 releasees were similar to the 2003 cohort across most
variables. The spatial distribution of releasees was also similar in both years. Analyses of
neighborhood-level indicators in the areas with the highest concentration of former prisoners are
still being conducted.
Results and Lessons Learned
Public Health has presented their reentry data analyses and maps to a number of community
stakeholders. The data were useful for motivating partners and convening groups of people
interested in reentry issues that did not have a history of working together. The findings have not
yet affected policy or practice in any concrete way, but whether that will be the case is an open
question, as Seattle Goodwill and Making Connection Seattle work with other community
partners to develop common goals and strategies relating to reentry.

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There is clearly interest from public agencies and community-based organizations in seeing
updated data and maps. Community partner input also identified several potential data sources
that might add value to the project. There was a great deal of interest in obtaining and mapping
King County Jail release data, which represents a much larger population than those released
from state facilities. Also, it might be possible to obtain data from the Washington Community
Corrections system on all persons in the community currently under DOC supervision.
Unfortunately, in the absence of additional funding, Public Health is unlikely to produce new
analyses. However, they are committed to continuing to share the maps and analyses they have
completed to date and to participate in local reentry-related meetings.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
NeighborhoodInfo DC is the lead reentry mapping network partner in Washington, D.C.
Established as a partnership between the Urban Institute and the Washington, D.C., Local
Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), NeighborhoodInfo DC provides community-based
organizations and residents in the District of Columbia with local data and analysis they can use
to improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods. The Urban Institute brings its broad
experience in data collection, processing, and analysis, as well as its expertise in public policy
research, neighborhood indicators, and economic development to this NeighborhoodInfo DC
partnership. LISC brings to the partnership its expertise in community outreach with
organizations that have interest in using data to address neighborhood and citywide issues. LISC
makes use of its partner organizations throughout the city, and also reaches out to new groups
with which it has not previously had a relationship.
NeighborhoodInfo DC is the successor to DC Agenda’s Neighborhood Information Service. DC
Agenda was originally selected as the grant recipient and lead partner for the Reentry Mapping
Network partnership in Washington, D.C. In March of 2004, however, DC Agenda’s board
announced the closing of the organization. Most of the staff members, including those working
on the Reentry Mapping Network partnership, were laid off effective the first week of April
2004. This presented significant challenges for the District’s continued participation in the
Reentry Mapping Network. The program capacities of DC Agenda’s neighborhood information
services were quickly transferred and reorganized at the Urban Institute, however, and became
operational by May 2004. A key staff person from DC Agenda was also hired by the Urban
Institute in late May, and took up the charge to continue Washington, D.C.’s, involvement in the
Network.
Since the capacities needed to make progress in building a reentry mapping partnership were
quickly reestablished after DC Agenda’s closing, the decision was made (in consultation with the
project’s NIJ grant monitor) to proceed with building a reentry mapping partnership in
Washington, D.C., with NeighborhoodInfo DC in the lead. NeighborhoodInfo DC set out to
conduct spatial analysis of the location of released prisoners in the District to
•
•

identify and depict the relationship of assets (and risks) to concentrations of ex-prisoners;
generate problem solving from within the community and from responsible service
providers and agencies; and

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•

inform decisionmaking on better ways to build the capacity and stability of
neighborhoods with high concentrations of ex-prisoners.

Data Access and Quality
Prior to the closing of DC Agenda, data on released prisoners in the Washington, D.C., had not
yet been obtained. NeighborhoodInfo DC immediately renewed efforts to obtain these data. The
city is unique in comparison with other Reentry Mapping Network partners with regard to the
source for data about released prisoners. An independent federal agency, the Court Services and
Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA), manages probation, parole, and other supervision for
released prisoners coming home to the District.
NeighborhoodInfo DC worked with staff at CSOSA’s Research and Evaluation Office to better
understand what data they would be willing to provide, and to shape a formal data request. The
formal data request to CSOSA’s Research and Review Board (RRB) was submitted in October
2004. The RRB reviewed and approved the request in January 2005, and data were transferred in
March 2005. CSOSA staff members were receptive to working with NeighborhoodInfo DC staff
to assist in transferring and interpreting the data.
Immediately after receiving approval to obtain the data, staff from NeighborhoodInfo DC met
with CSOSA research analysts to review all of the variables available in their data systems and
discuss appropriate methods for delivering the data. Based on the recommendations of the
CSOSA’s RRB, NeighborhoodInfo DC was given record-level data on all parolees and other
supervised releasees returning to Washington, D.C., in 2004. The data were provided with census
tract identifiers, and CSOSA agreed to supply quarterly updates of these data. The data include
race/ethnicity, age, gender, education level, marital status, and employment status for released
prisoners. While these data are useful for estimating general spatial patterns of reentry in
Washington, D.C., they are rough estimates because they are not based on address-level data and
are limited to persons under criminal justice supervision rather than a cohort of released
prisoners.
NeighborhoodInfo DC has excellent access to contextual data about District neighborhoods. Its
data warehouse includes information from local government agencies (the D.C. Department of
Human Services, the D.C. Office of Planning, the Metropolitan Police Department, the D.C.
Superior Court, and the State Center for Health Statistics), as well as nationally available data
sources (the Census, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development).
Community Engagement
When NeighborhoodInfo DC took on the work of the reentry mapping partnership in May 2004,
the opportunity to create results in the time frame allowed by the Reentry Mapping Network
grant was already short. DC Agenda had held some initial community conversations on
employment issues prior to its closing, but these conversations were preliminary and did not
present a promising set of relationships for generating action in accordance with the project’s
timeline. Instead, NeighborhoodInfo DC set out to identify an existing group of community

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stakeholders who were already collaborating to provide better opportunities for the successful
return of prisoners to Washington, D.C., neighborhoods. This focus quickly connected
NeighborhoodInfo DC to the Faith-Based Reentry Initiative. Facilitated by CSOSA, the FaithBased Reentry Initiative is a partnership of approximately 40 churches in Washington, D.C., that
provide mentoring and service referrals for released prisoners. A meeting was scheduled with
NeighborhoodInfo DC staff and the leaders of the Faith-Based Initiative to discuss the Reentry
Mapping Network and identify priorities for data collection that would inform the work of their
Initiative. Staff from both CSOSA and Washington, D.C.’s, Pre-Trial Services Agency also
participated in this discussion.
At this meeting, as well as in subsequent meetings with individual leaders of the Faith-Based
Reentry Initiative, it became apparent that information about services available to released
prisoners in the District was sorely lacking. In particular, the Initiative’s leaders indicated that
they had some usable information about where services were located, but nothing about the
eligibility criteria or capacity of the programs at specific locations. NeighborhoodInfo has
focused its analytic plans on addressing these information gaps. The Faith-Based Reentry
Initiative participants have become a natural audience for reviewing maps and other analytic
products from NeighborhoodInfo DC’s analysis of CSOSA data. This project focus on services
was a change from the initial research direction established by DC Agenda, however. As such, a
completely new data request needed to be submitted to CSOSA.
Mapping and Analysis
In addition to using data provided by CSOSA to map patterns of reentry in Washington, D.C.,
NeighborhoodInfo DC is focusing on obtaining better data on organizations providing services
for released prisoners. While a number of existing resource directories describe services
available to released prisoners in the capital, most of these directories have proven to be outdated
and lack the detail necessary to understand program eligibility requirements and capacities at
service locations. In addition, a review of these directories and other nonprofit service databases
reveals that information about small, faith-based programs for released prisoners is particularly
difficult to identify.
To begin to fill critical information gaps, as well as to develop a data source for better
understanding deficits in services for released prisoners in Washington, D.C., NeighborhoodInfo
DC is partnering with CSOSA to develop a database of services for released prisoners. Rather
than reinventing the wheel, CSOSA and NeighborhoodInfo DC sought the expertise of staff at
the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee’s Data Center, who had developed a similar database for
their own reentry mapping project. This database could be easily adapted for use in the District at
a fraction of the costs required to build a database from scratch.
The database will initially be populated with information on the services provided by the 52
churches in the Faith-Based Reentry Initiative. Staff members from CSOSA have been assigned
to work with each individual church to get their program information entered and updated on a
regular basis. This pilot database will serve as a model that can be expanded to include a broader
set of service providers. Once populated, it will also provide the underlying data about where
programs are located, as well as their eligibility requirements and capacities—information that is

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critical in analyzing and responding to service gaps for released prisoners. The database will also
be accessible on the Internet for mentors in the Faith-Based Reentry Initiative so that they can
look up information about services for those they are guiding.
In June, analysis plans for the CSOSA data were presented at a meeting of the coordinators of
the Faith-Based Reentry Initiative for review and feedback. These discussions included a review
of maps of the spatial concentration of parolees and supervised releasees in Washington, D.C.
Since that meeting, additional maps overlaying parolee/supervisee location with transitional
housing facilities and information about changes in home values have been produced to begin to
analyze gaps in housing availability for released prisoners. This analysis will be used in
discussions with stakeholders about housing services for released prisoners in the District. Now
that a working relationship has been established between NeighborhoodInfo DC and CSOSA,
prospects are favorable for obtaining address-level data.
Results and Lessons Learned
In a relatively short time, NeighborhoodInfo DC has engineered the development of the
information infrastructure needed to analyze the location of released prisoners and the location
and characteristics of services that can be most useful to them. Although much work remains to
be completed, the development of the services database will be supported by CSOSA in the
future, which is key to the sustainability of this information resource.

WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA
The Winston-Salem Reentry Mapping Network project is managed by the Center for Community
Safety (CCS), a public service and research center of Winston-Salem State University. Working
with community partners, CCS initiates analysis and research on community safety issues and
then helps shape action and response. In addition to the RMN project, CCS also manages the
Weed and Seed initiative for Winston-Salem, is heavily involved in Project Safe
Neighborhoods,72 and helps coordinate the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative for
Winston-Salem. By integrating these various initiatives within a central hub, the CCS is able to
leverage resources, encourage collaborative responses, and ensure the sustainability of each
project.
The CCS has emerged as a strong advocate for reentry issues regionally and statewide. In
collaboration with the Urban Institute, CCS hosted a local reentry roundtable in January 2002 in
which Jeremy Travis, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, shared data from his report “But They
All Come Back.” Later that year, CCS contracted with Urban Institute staff to conduct two focus
groups with successfully reintegrated and recently released prisoners to identify the needs and
services of released prisoners and to help launch a local strategic planning effort on reentry.
This initial work focused on the Northeast Winston-Salem neighborhood, characterized by high
concentrations of returning prisoners as well as high rates of crime, open-air drug markets,
unemployment, and poverty. Northeast Winston-Salem is also one of five designated Weed and
Seed neighborhoods in the city. The RMN project enabled CCS to continue focusing on this
72

For more information about Project Safe Neighborhoods, visit http://www.projectsafeneighborhoods.gov/.

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neighborhood to help support a community-based effort to assist ex-prisoners in reintegrating
into a neighborhood already beset by numerous challenges, and to create a model for other
similar neighborhoods.
For their RMN project, the Center set out to determine for this neighborhood answers to the
following questions:
•

Who are the returning ex-prisoners and where are they returning?

•

Is there a relationship between areas of return and neighborhood crime rates?

•

To what extent are returning ex-prisoners involved in the criminal offenses being
committed in Northeast Winston-Salem?

•

What are the existing risk factors and assets/resources in the community to which the exprisoners are returning?

•

What other assets/resources, such as skills possessed by individuals, are available to
address needs within the community?

Data Access and Quality
Data were obtained from the North Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC), the Forsyth
County Sheriff’s Department (Forsyth County Detention Center [FCDC]) and the North Carolina
Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (DJJDP). The DOC dataset
contained individual characteristics of released prisoners, such as basic demographic data and
data on conviction offense, incarceration date, release date, and status upon release (expiration of
sentence or parole release). These data included all prisoners returning to Winston-Salem in 2003
and 2004. The FCDC data also contained individual characteristics for inmates who exited the
Detention Center during 2003. The DJJDP dataset included data on juveniles returned to the
community from youth development centers (training schools) in 2003. CCS staff initially
achieved a 70 percent match rate when geocoding the DOC, FCDC, and NCDJJDP data. With
cleaning, that rate rose to between 87 percent and 95 percent, depending on the data source.
The CCS also accessed data from other governmental sources. The CCS received crime data,
including data about victims, suspects, and offenders, from the Winston-Salem Police
Department. The Winston-Salem Transit Authority provided files containing transportation
routes across the city. The CCS also acquired data from the Winston-Salem city/county planning
department GIS site, including building structures, tax parcels, corporate limits, FEMA
floodplain boundaries, fire stations, hydrography, police sectors, schools, voting precincts,
zoning, color aerials, fire demand zones, hydrants, planimetrics and topography, recreation
centers and parks, voting polling places, wards, and zoning jurisdictions.
At neighborhood level, the CCS facilitated a data collection project, conducted by community
residents and released prisoners trained in data collection, to record the precise location

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community risks and assets within the Northeast Winston-Salem neighborhood. This project
helped to develop participation and ownership of the reentry mapping work in the community.
Community Engagement
The CCS developed a community engagement plan to help the neighborhood best address the
challenges of high concentrations of released prisoners. A key component of this plan was
partnering with a grassroots organization, Faith Seeds, a program of Eureka Ministries, to
develop a reentry coalition that involved adequate representation of community residents in the
decisionmaking process. Eureka Ministries operates a transitional home for male prisoners
returning to Winston-Salem, and thus was already intimately familiar with the reentry challenges
experienced in the city, many of which are linked to the absence of family and community
connections, service/support gaps, and current policy and laws that impede prisoners’
reintegration. In the spring of 2003, Eureka Ministries launched its Faith Seeds Reentry
Coalition, a community-driven process to address the issues of reentry. The Coalition is cochaired by a community volunteer and a released prisoner. Its goal is to use a community-based
approach to engage released prisoners, community members, and other stakeholders in restoring
and revitalizing the community through the application of asset mapping, education, community
action, and development of human capital—all toward the goal of reducing recidivism.
A critical challenge facing the CCS was the need to build legitimacy with community
organizations and residents in implementing its grassroots/community-based engagement
strategy. This challenge was evident in the difficulties the CCS encountered with a survey they
planned to field in partnership with the Faith Seeds Reentry Coalition. The survey was intended
to collect data from released prisoners about their job skills and other assets they could
contribute to their community. Its purpose was to identify training and business development
opportunities unlikely to be discovered through traditional employment surveys and workforce
development programs. After initially agreeing to help administer the survey, coalition members
reconsidered, indicating that their neighborhood had been “over-surveyed,” and that researchers
were taking community members’ time and effort without leaving any value behind. As a result,
the CCS decided not to field the survey at that time (the CCS is considering launching it in the
future, but only with community support from local community development corporations).
Instead of pursuing the survey, the CCS focused on ensuring that the Faith Seeds Reentry
Coalition would be representative of community members and released prisoners so that research
plans would produce findings of value to the community. For example, to ensure community
participation in and ownership of the coalition’s work, CCS decided to delay including service
providers in the initial stages of coalition building to allow the Coalition to develop without the
influence of outside service providers, who might have goals conflicting with those of local
residents. Unfortunately, this strategy has made it more difficult to collaborate with local service
providers now that the Coalition is proceeding with plans for a Reentry Network Center, which
will rely upon service providers for support and referrals. CCS is making progress in easing these
tensions through ongoing dialogue with key service providers.
In September 2005, Faith Seeds worked with CCS, other community organizations, residents,
and ex-offenders to develop a community research team. The team worked together with CCS

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faculty to develop an asset survey, which was piloted in the community and was received with
enthusiasm. The team revamped the survey based on the input from the community and set out to
administer the survey, with a goal of 1,000 completions. The CCS funded a coordinator to
oversee the project and the team of surveyors, which included ex-offenders, community partners
and residents from the Latino/Hispanic and Northeast Winston Community. At the time of
writing this guidebook, the surveys are being administered, and results are currently being
entered into the database as they are received.
The Winston-Salem Local Initiatives Support Corporation has also funded the survey project as a
part of their pilot program, Communities of Choice. Once the data has been analyzed, LISC will
partner with CCS and Faith Seeds to hold forum to discuss the data with the community and
begin to develop community-generated plans to create communities of choice. The survey was
also translated into Spanish to enable the Latino and Hispanic community’s participation.
Another unanticipated roadblock in community engagement for the project was the conflicting
objectives of different members of the faith community, which made it difficult for CCS and
Faith Seeds to gain the full cooperation of all parties. The partnership addressed this problem by
identifying and working with only those organizations that were willing to collaborate and work
toward a common goal.
Mapping and Analysis
The CCS achieved success in investigating each of their research questions, and their analysis
proved critical to coalition-building efforts. Initially, the CCS was concerned that presenting
maps of released prisoners within high-concentration communities would lead residents and
other stakeholders to assume that where there are ex-prisoners, there will be crime. Instead,
CCS’s analysis of the relationship between crime and reentry showed that this was not
necessarily the case. While the CCS found a correlation between crime and reentry citywide, this
correlation did not hold within a subset of neighborhoods with a high number of released
prisoners. The CCS also found that while the released prisoner recidivism rate in Winston-Salem
was comparable to the national rate of recidivism, released prisoners were not disproportionately
contributing to the crime rates in their neighborhoods. Within the Northeast Weed and Seed
neighborhood, for example, ex-prisoners represent 2.33 percent of the neighborhood’s
population, and the 106 charges they faced were 2.58 percent of the total offenses in that
neighborhood in 2003. This type of analysis and its findings helped to build a positive
community dialogue on prisoner reentry, public safety, and stigmatization.
In addition to maps of crime and reentry, the CCS produced maps depicting the locations of
returning offenders from DOC, FCDC, and DJJDP; the locations of local institutions, such as
churches, schools, service providers in Northeast Winston-Salem; and the locations of major
employers and transportation in the entire city. Additional census data (e.g., housing, income,
and employment) and data from the WSPD (e.g., open-air drug markets, hot spots, and high
calls-for-service locations) provided a balanced analysis of community needs, risks, and assets.
The CCS maps showed a scarcity of resources and assets or economic opportunities in those
parts of the neighborhood where concentrations of released prisoners are highest. More

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pointedly, they learned that locations with high concentrations of released prisoners are more
likely to be those with open-air drug markets and abandoned buildings.

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Results and Lessons Learned
The CCS’s mapping and analytic work has enhanced discussions at neighborhood planning
sessions and generated creative ideas and possible solutions to prisoner reentry in the area.
During a community problem-solving session in July 2004, CCS maps and data detailing
abandoned building locations and concentrations of unemployed released prisoners prompted a
significant change in public policy. Upon reviewing the data, city officials redirected a
construction-training program to focus on training released prisoners from Northeast WinstonSalem. In addition, Eureka House has used CCS maps to target outreach and recruitment for a
released-prisoner support group.
The CCS’s mapping and analytic work also sparked the idea for the one-stop Reentry Network
Center. Maps depicting the spatial mismatch between released prisoners and resources in
Winston-Salem led directly to plans for creating a center to meet the needs of released prisoners.
The Reentry Network Center stands to have a significant and lasting impact on reentry policy
and practice in Winston-Salem. As the main focus of the Faith Seeds Reentry Coalition, the
Center is seen as a collaborative, community-based, service coordination center, offering links to
a continuum of services for released prisoners. The Center will be located in the Northeast
Winston-Salem neighborhood and be managed by released prisoners, community members, and
human service professionals. The Center’s board, composed of representatives of faith-based
organizations, community members, ex-offenders, grassroots organizations, and various other
reentry stakeholders, will draw heavily from the Faith Seeds Reentry Coalition.
Faith Seeds Coalition members have expressed that data and maps from the CCS were
instrumental in all aspects of their reentry work. Data provided by the CCS played an important
role in mobilizing initial participation in the Coalition as it expanded to include other service
providers, city officials, and community members. At regularly scheduled reentry meetings, the
CCS provided the Coalition with data reports and maps as they became available. At the first
annual Reentry Summit, the CCS data and map presentation was instrumental in not only
demonstrating to community members the need for creating the Reentry Network Center, but
also highlighted the need for community involvement and leadership. The CCS also provided
guidance as to the value that the Center could bring to community residents.
The CCS will continue to provide data and analysis for the Faith Seeds Coalition as additional
research questions are raised. For example, Coalition members are interested in knowing the
number, percentage, and characteristics of neighborhood members who are currently
incarcerated and on probation; the percentage of males removed from the neighborhood through
incarceration; and other indicators of the overall impact that the criminal justice system has on
the stability and human capital of the neighborhood. These analyses will continue to fuel the
CCS’s reentry work.
In addition to these contributions to local reentry efforts, the CCS has made major investments in
developing a community-oriented research lab with GIS mapping capabilities. The lab, which is
a collaborative effort among the CCS, the City of Winston-Salem, and Forsyth County, will
explore a variety of topics related to community well-being. Given this investment in mapping
and the extensive data collected for its RMN project, the CCS is well positioned to remain

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involved with the Faith Seeds Reentry Coalition in producing maps and data analysis to support
its work. The CCS also continues to collaborate with community members, training them to
collect neighborhood survey data that can inform resource mapping and future decisionmaking.
The greatest remaining challenge for CCS will be managing the mounting requests for maps and
data analysis resulting from its outreach work.

The Reentry Mapping Network Model
In support of these partnerships collecting, analyzing, and using data, the Urban Institute
engaged in a variety of technical assistance and peer learning activities. These activities included
holding an annual RMN conference, providing on-site support, promoting the exchange of
information across all RMN sites, working with sites to disseminate findings and lessons learned,
and monitoring each site’s progress through bimonthly updates. The following section details
these activities, as well as an assessment by RMN partners of the Urban Institute’s role in the
RMN.

Technical Assistance to RMN Partners
As RMN partners developed their projects, Urban Institute staff provided technical assistance
and resources to support the partners’ efforts. The Urban Institute’s goals in supporting RMN
partners included providing assistance with collecting and analyzing reentry-related data,
engaging key community stakeholders throughout the process, presenting findings in an
accessible way to stakeholders, and devising strategies to address identified problems.
Each RMN partnership, for example, all faced some degree of challenge with acquiring reentry
data for their communities. The partners needed assistance with identifying what data elements
to request and how to address confidentiality concerns. The Urban Institute provided each site
with documentation about data that the DOCs might be able to make available to them,
confidentiality issues that might arise in accessing and using these data, and strategies for
managing these confidentiality issues. In Louisville, the CRN also found that using the Urban
Institute’s templates for requesting data provided a measure of credibility to the state DOC.
These resources were developed at the Urban Institute, based on Justice Policy Center staff
members’ experience with and knowledge about collecting data from corrections departments
across the country.
The Urban Institute also drew from the expertise within its Justice Policy Center to create a guide
for creating reentry maps, which serves as a resource for partners in determining the appropriate
mapping techniques to employ for their intended audiences. In addition Urban Institute staff
attended community meetings in RMN partner cities, presented information about reentry
mapping to stakeholders, and provided feedback and perspective about the sites’ agendas. Urban
Institute staff members were also available to assist in RMN partners’ efforts to sustain their
work through additional fundraising. This assistance included reviewing proposals, writing
letters of support, and participating in conference calls and meetings with potential funders. Each
RMN partner was also provided with a fundraising profile for their community, detailing local
and national funders that have made grants related to reentry issues.

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Web Site and Email Group
Urban Institute staff maintain a recurrently updated web site for RMN partners containing
administrative resources, relevant research, sample maps and reports, and technical assistance
tools. Partners use these resources in their planning, analysis, and community engagement work.
The web site contains four main sections: Partnership Information, RMN Resources, Partner
Contributions, and UI Research and Publications. The web site is password-protected so that
partners can freely share presentations and papers that may be helpful to RMN colleagues,
regardless of whether the presentation or paper has been thoroughly edited for broader public
release.
Partnership Information includes Reentry Mapping Network project summaries for the
Network as a whole, as well as periodic updates on activities from each Network partner. This
section also includes basic administrative tools, such as the schedule for Network meetings and
conference calls, and Network contact sheets.
The RMN Resources section contains resources intended to guide partners’ RMN work. The
Getting Started subsection includes sample data requests and data nondisclosure agreements,
sample data dictionaries, and a guide to developing a research agenda. The Mapping and
Analysis subsection contains a basic guide to creating reentry maps, advanced mapping guides,
and other reports on mapping neighborhood level data. The Community subsection features
resources to guide the planning of community roundtables. Partner Contributions includes
reentry maps and reports from RMN partners, as well as PowerPoint presentations used by
partners in their community meetings.
The web site’s UI Research and Publications section contains research reports and
presentations by Urban Institute staff and other reentry research. Urban Institute contributions
include reports from the Urban Institute’s Returning Home Project, and presentations made by
Urban Institute researchers on mapping and community at meetings and conferences. Other
resources in this section cover reentry-related reports on housing and employment, as well as
reports on the legal barriers to reentry in communities.
The Urban Institute also distributes select resources to RMN partners via e-mail. E-mails are
usually sent monthly, and resources from the e-mail are archived on the Network web site. In
addition to distributing resources such as those described above, the e-mail list has been used to
inform partners about funding opportunities and upcoming conferences. This communication
method has made it easy to share timely information about deadlines for solicitations for
proposals or conference participation.

Conference Calls
In addition to virtual communication with Network partners via e-mail and the web, the Urban
Institute holds bimonthly conference calls with partners to facilitate peer learning, involve the
sites in the Network’s development, and sustain the project’s momentum. Calls are structured
around pre-identified topics that might help to inform and guide RMN partners in their work.

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In the early months of the Reentry Mapping Network in 2003, conference calls were geared
toward getting RMN partners communicating with one another, as well as serving as a forum for
discussing such issues as planning the initial phases of each partner’s projects, writing datasharing agreements, creating maps, and obtaining datasets and data dictionaries. As partners
continued to work on these issues, the conference calls emerged as a forum for partners to
discuss with each other and Urban Institute staff the common obstacles they encountered and
strategies for overcoming them. This theme has continued into 2006, as the RMN has expanded
to 14 cities. The calls currently serve as a forum for partners to talk about common issues, as
well as share lessons learned for the benefit of the RMN’s newest group of partners.
The conference calls have also been used as an opportunity to keep RMN partners up-to-date on
current reentry research and policy issues. Nancy Fishman of the New Jersey Institute for Social
Justice spoke to RMN partners about her experiences and lessons learned in planning and
convening local reentry roundtables. Betsey Nevins of the Reentry Policy Council (RPC) spoke
about the RPC’s report on prisoner reentry and discussed key strategies for impacting reentry
policy and practice, engaging the community, and attracting positive media coverage.73 Gene
Guerrero of the Open Society Institute’s Policy Center gave a presentation detailing the Second
Chance Act under Congressional consideration, discussing how the bill could affect a partner’s
work locally.74

Cross-Site Meetings
In October 2003, the Urban Institute convened the first of three Reentry Mapping Network
conferences. This first cross-site conference was held over two days in Washington, D.C., with
two representatives from each of the first six RMN partners. The focus of the conference was for
partners to present and obtain feedback on their project strategies, with ample time allotted for
discussion of those strategies by all partners and Urban Institute staff. In addition, a small
number of national experts on reentry mapping attended and made presentations on communitylevel mapping, analysis, and reentry issues.
A second Reentry Mapping Network conference was held in New Orleans from November 30 to
December 1, 2004. Representatives from 12 RMN partners were present. The original six RMN
partners presented results from their projects, and all partners exchanged ideas regarding data
collection and analysis, community engagement strategies, and the future of the Reentry
Mapping Network. The Urban Institute surveyed partners about the second conference in New
Orleans. Fifteen of 17 who attended rated the conference’s networking opportunities as useful or
extremely useful. All 17 attendees found the site presentations and discussions either useful or
extremely useful. Thirteen of 17 attendees indicated that topical presentations on recent reentryrelated research were useful or extremely useful.
A third Reentry Mapping Network Conference was held over two days in Washington, D.C., in
January 2006. Representatives from 12 RMN partners were again present. The six phase-two
73

The Reentry Policy Council’s report is available for download at
http://www.reentrypolicy.org/documents/rpc_report.pdf.
74
The Open Society Institute’s work on reentry issues can be viewed at
http://www.opensocietypolicycenter.org/issues/issue.php?docId=13.

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partners presented results from their projects. In addition, presentations were given on current
research topics such as residential mobility in returning prisoners and using human services
databases to inform reentry planning. Surveys after this conference revealed that 17 of 18 found
the presentations either useful or extremely useful. Sixteen of 18 also found the quality of the
networking opportunities to be good or excellent.
These conferences were valuable opportunities for partners to meet, share experiences, and
discuss project strategies. RMN partners also collaborated to present project results at other
reentry-related conferences. For example, Urban Institute staff collaborated with RMN partners
from Winston-Salem and Milwaukee to present at the National Institute of Justice’s International
Crime Mapping Research Conference, held in Boston in April 2004. In addition, in June 2005,
Urban Institute staff collaborated with RMN partners from Winston-Salem and San Diego at the
Innovative Technologies for Community Corrections Conference in Seattle, sponsored by the
National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center. These presentations provided
additional opportunities for RMN partners to share project experiences with each other, as well
as with wider audiences.

Assessment of the Reentry Mapping Network
To obtain critical feedback about the Reentry Mapping Network structure and the Urban
Institute’s role as project facilitator, the Urban Institute conducted a survey of the RMN partners
about the assistance and resources RMN provided.75 Twenty-four individuals who were key staff
members of Phase I and Phase II partners responded to the survey; in most cases, there were two
respondents per city. Detailed survey results are included in appendix B.
In this survey, partners indicated that they have been accessing and using resources provided on
the RMN web site on a regular basis. Specifically, 75 percent (18) of respondents are using the
web site to access research and reports about prisoner reentry; 75 percent (18) are also using
presentations, maps, and reports from other RMN partners; and a third (8) are using the web site
to obtain more information about how to map reentry. Partners also indicated that they found email broadcasts, conference calls, and the annual conferences to be useful. In addition, the survey
revealed that when partners contacted each other directly to discuss common issues, the
interaction was fairly productive (although the frequency of this interaction was relatively low,
with only 13 percent reporting contact at a monthly or more frequent basis).
RMN partners reported mixed ratings for the technical assistance the Urban Institute provided on
various aspects of their projects. This was not surprising, however, because each partner needed
different types of assistance in conducting their reentry mapping efforts. In general, the sites
accessed the Urban Institute’s technical assistance on various topics in accordance with their
unique needs. So, for example, a site’s low rating of the Institute’s assistance on presenting data
and creating maps and its high rating of the Institute’s help gaining access to corrections data
make sense in the context of the site’s particular needs for technical assistance.

75

The assessment model draws from Barndt (2002).

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Partners were also asked in this survey to indicate how they used their subgrants. Each RMN site
receives a $25,000 subgrant to help offset the costs of participating in the Network. On average,
partners spent three-fourths of their project resources on staff time (including paid consultants).
Three partners spent 10 to 25 percent of the subgrant on software needed for the project. The
remaining spending categories included grants to local reentry partners and direct costs for
equipment and supplies, each using an average of 5 percent of partners’ monetary resources.
Six partners submitted open-ended comments. The comments were supportive of the RMN’s
work, indicating that the peer learning provided by RMN helped sites gain a richer understanding
of reentry issues, and that being a member of RMN gave them credibility and helped generate
ongoing support for the project (all six comments are included in appendix B).
RMN partners indicated that the Network has increased their organizational capacity and
motivation to address reentry issues. Five of the twelve sites indicated that it is unlikely they
would have engaged in reentry mapping had they not been selected to participate in RMN as
partners. Even among those who would have pursued this work outside of RMN, partners noted
that participating in RMN helped move them forward more deliberately. One partner commented
on the assessment survey that their selection as an RMN partner was the catalyst for getting them
started with local reentry research.
The Urban Institute provided partners with varying support, depending on their needs. In
Winston-Salem, for example, the Urban Institute provided assistance with interpreting and
mapping DOC data, which was instrumental in creating the packet of materials that was used at
community problem-solving sessions. In Milwaukee, the Data Center was able to draw upon the
experience of the Urban Institute and other sites in designing the programming approach to
extract data from the state DOC system. The Urban Institute provided Milwaukee with advice on
the types and structure of data to request from the DOC. In Denver, Urban Institute survey
instruments were used to develop instruments to be administered locally. In Seattle, examples of
how data has been used in other RMN partners cities was used to provide community partners
with ideas for how they could use reentry maps in Seattle.
Collaboration among partners in the Network also played a vital role in supporting local reentry
projects. The database developed in Washington, D.C., to create an information resource about
services for released prisoners draws from the design for a similar database created by the
Nonprofit Data Center in Milwaukee. NeighborhoodInfo DC was able to leverage this available
resource from the Center to create a valuable resource at a fraction of what it would have
otherwise cost to develop. In addition, work on a services database in Indianapolis was informed
by connections project staff there made with the RMN affiliate in Newark, New Jersey.
The opportunities for partners to interact with each other and with the Urban Institute through the
Network enable these types of collaborations to occur. In addition, the Network approach also
creates opportunities for funded, cross-community action research projects. Cross-community
action research projects similar to the RMN, and like the one conducted by the Urban Institute in
2003 on improving neighborhood health outcomes,76 present communities with more
opportunities to build their capacity to collect and analyze data for a new field of research on
76

Pettit, Kingsley, and Coulton (2003).

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specific issues. In the context of reentry, the Network approach can potentially connect sites to
opportunities to conduct research on common reentry-related issues, such as employment
barriers or voter disenfranchisement.
Overall, it appears that the key value that the Network added to the reentry mapping partnerships
is that it improved the work in individual communities by introducing partners to best practices
in reentry mapping, connecting them to partners conducting similar research, and increasing the
prospects for sustaining the action research partnership.

Summary
The experiences of the RMN partners, establish a baseline of knowledge about reentry mapping
that is useful for informing efforts by other jurisdictions to establish reentry mapping
partnerships. Included in this baseline of knowledge is the lesson that this type of work is likely
to require additional resources or the reallocation of existing ones. Any number of challenges,
such as challenges with obtaining data, can potentially require some resource investment to
overcome. Even in an ideal scenario, where data is easily obtained and stakeholders are already
well organized, there is much work to be done to translate research findings into action. In
addition, the experiences in RMN communities reveal that obtaining and analyzing data,
convening stakeholders, and using data are all processes that are subject to unpredictable
timelines. New reentry mapping partnerships should have some sense of urgency about their
work, but must be able to move forward without unreasonable pressure or expectations about the
timing of results.
The prospects for continuing the reentry mapping work in the original twelve RMN communities
are favorable. The achievements of these sites during the course of this project include some
identifiable impact of reentry practices, and the development of the potential for much more
policy-relevant work in the future. It is encouraging that each RMN community has obtained
data and produced at least basic summary maps. It is also promising that stakeholders in each
community are reviewing the maps, and have expressed that they are valuable and useful for
their work. This project has generated many important lessons that can be applied in support of
developing reentry mapping partnerships in other cities. As the experience in Winston-Salem
demonstrates, potential reentry mapping partnerships need not have already developed
neighborhood data warehouses to get started with reentry mapping. And, as all RMN sites
experienced, a commitment to building relationships with key stakeholders can yield benefits
through all phases of the project, helping reentry mapping partnerships achieve their goals.

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Appendix B: Results of RMN Partner Survey

1. How often do you use the RMN web site?
2 to 4 times a month (or more)
Once/month
Every 2-3 months
2-3 times a year
Once/year or less

Response Total
2
7
8
4
3

2. What type of information from the RMN web site do you use? (check all that apply)
Response Total
Research and reports about prisoner reentry
19
Information about mapping
8
Presentations, maps, and reports from other RMN
18
partners
Other
1

3. How useful is the information you receive from RMN email broadcasts?
Response Average
(4=Very Useful, 1=Not At All Useful)
Overall content
3.08
Grant funding opportunities
2.84
Research reports
3.21
Conferences and workshops
3.08
4. Thinking about the bimonthly conference calls from 2003 through 2005, how
useful are/were the bimonthly conference calls for:
Response Average
(4=Very Useful, 1=Not At All Useful)
Sharing information and ideas across the network
3.20
Informing strategies for accessing data
2.79
Informing strategies for analyzing and mapping
3.15
Informing strategies for engaging your community
2.95
5. How often do you contact other RMN partners directly by e-mail or phone (not
including the bimonthly conference calls) to discuss RMN projects?
Response Total
2 to 4 times a month (or more)
1
Once/month
2
Every 2-3 months
5
2-3 times a year
5
Once/year or less
11

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6. How useful has direct contact with other RMN partners been in developing your
RMN project?
Response Total
Very Useful
5
Useful
15
Not Useful
0
Not At All Useful
0
N/A - I did not contact RMN partners
4
7. How would you rate the assistance provided by the Urban Institute regarding the
following aspects of your RMN project?
Response Average
(4=Very Useful, 1=Not At All Useful)
Gaining access to reentry data
3.00
Analyzing and interpreting reentry data
2.95
Presenting data including creating maps
2.69
Developing a community engagement plan
2.53
Implementing strategies to address the issues
2.65
8. If your organization had not received a $25,000 grant for this project, how likely is
it that your organization would have still pursued gaining access to reentry data?
(asked only of project coordinators at each site)
Response Total
Very Likely
3
Likely
3
Unlikely
5
Very Unlikely
0
Any additional comments you might have about any of the aspects of the RMN discussed in this
survey, or other aspects not discussed? (responses submitted are included below)
“I really enjoyed working with RMN. Urban Institute staff were very helpful and responsive to our requests
for reentry-related literature. Interactions with other RMN partners, particularly at the conference in New
Orleans, have given us a much richer understanding of reentry issues than we would have gotten working
alone.”
“I look forward to more detailed sharing with sites as our analysis comes together.”
“We appreciate being connected to the other partners in the project. Being part of RMN increased our
knowledge and sophistication about mapping and also gave us the impetus to be much more intentional
about working on contextual reentry issues. We were pleased to be part of the initial sites selected, yet
also benefited from each additional site brought in.”
“Although we did not interact much with other RMN partner sites other than through the bimonthly
conference calls and the annual meetings, there was great value to being part of the RMN. Participation
in the national RMN initiative not only helped us to learn from what other sites were doing, but it gave our
local work additional ‘weight,’ or credibility, and it helped to keep the issue on our list of active work
projects. Also, while the issue is very important to many local partners and we might have pursued the
corrections data without receiving funds, it was the only way that we were able to devote staff time to
working on the issue at the time. Finally, while we did not receive direct assistance from the Urban
Institute on gaining access to local corrections data, our selection as a partner in the RMN was the
catalyst to get this work going.

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“I have been very pleased with the support given our efforts by the UI staff.… Also, as a supplement to
the previous question, I am certain we would have proceeded with obtaining data and analysis and
mapping without RMN support. I am much less certain that we would have so actively engaged other
community partners.”
“I really want to get more involved in this process of using the materials provided by these resources.”

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Appendix C: Potential Department of Corrections Data and
Accompanying Data Confidentiality Issues
POTENTIAL DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS DATA
Please note that DOCs will vary according to the type of data that they keep in electronic form. Many prisons will keep
only certain data in electronic format and other data in hard copy only. This is a list of data that a prison or jail may
maintain in electronic and/or hard-copy form. It is not likely that the DOC will have the resources or the willingness to
provide you with all these data. If it is a matter of resources, it may be possible to have a staff member or an intern
from a local university or college collect the hard-copy data and add the data to the dataset. Alternatively, some DOCs
will pull the data for you if you pay a fee to cover their programmer’s time for doing so.
Variable

Confidentiality
Issues?

Potential Solutions for Confidentiality Issues & Notes

Demographic Information
1

Name (First, Last)

Y

2

Residential Address at Time
of Arrest or Admission (Street
Address, Zip Code, City,
State, and Country)

Y

3

Y

4

Residential Address at Time
of Release (Street Address,
Zip Code, City, State, and
Country)
Race/Ethnicity

Y

5
6

Gender
Date of Birth

N
Y

7

Place of Birth (City, County,
State, and Country)
Citizenship
History of Substance Abuse

N

8
9

10
11

12
13
14
15
16
17

Last Grade Completed
Whether Possessed a
Diploma (GED or High
School) at Admittance to
DOC
Number of Children
Residence of Children
Marital Status
Religion
How Much Child Support
Owed and Other Debt
Whether Employed at Arrest
and/or Admission

N
N

Some DOCs will include prisoners' names in the dataset that they provide you. Prisoners'
names should be deleted immediately from the dataset to prevent any confidentiality issues
from arising. Also, because several prisoners could share the same name, names are not
reliable as unique identifiers.
Some DOCs consider prisoners' addresses to be sensitive data and may be unwilling to
include them in a dataset. For example, if there is only one prisoner mapped on a street and if
you also map other information (such as the offender's crime or age), then the prisoner could
be identified. Since address-level data is critical for mapping, one compromise is to aggregate
to the block level or a higher unit of analysis, such as the census block group.
See above.

When there are only a few prisoners in a particular race/ethnicity category (e.g., Asian), then
this information could be used in combination with other data to identify the prisoner. DOCs
may not raise this issue, but you should work to avoid this potential confidentiality issue. The
most common solution is to simply combine all categories that include a small number of
observations into an "other" category.
There are usually a sufficient number of female prisoners to avoid any confidentially issues.
Prisoners with ages that are unusually young (below 18) or that are unusually old have the
potential of being identified as well. DOCs may not raise this issue, but you should work to
avoid this potential confidentiality issue. The most common solution is to create age ranges
for mapping and analysis. If there are sufficient number of prisoners between ages 16 and 17,
then combine these prisoners into that group. If not, then add these prisoners to a category of
ages between 16 and 20, for example.

Please note that the criteria for making this determination vary by institution. It may be helpful
to ascertain how the DOC identifies those with substance use histories. Also note that, most
often, this is based on self-reported information.

N
N

N
Y
N
N
N

Please note that these data are rarely available.
See number 2. Please note that these data are rarely available.

N

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18

N

19

Weekly Earnings at Arrest
and/or Admission (From
Taxable Sources and from
Untaxable Sources)
Mental Illness

20

Physical Health

Y

Y

Confidentiality issues may arise in attempting to obtain mental health information, but the
removal of identifiers should help to avoid this issue. Please note that the criteria for making
this determination vary by institution. It may be helpful to ascertain how the DOC identifies
those with mental illnesses (i.e., is the determination based on self-reported information or
diagnostic testing?). Occasionally DOCs will ask related questions in a standardized way,
such as: Have you ever been institutionalized for a mental illness? Have you ever taken
medication for mental health reasons? Are you currently taking medication for mental health
reasons? Have you ever been diagnosed for a mental illness? The DOC may also simply
have a marker in their database for the prisoner being at risk for suicide. The DOC may also
be able to provide you with such information as whether the prisoner received mental health
care, the number of days a prisoner spent on suicide watch or in a mental health unit (if
available), and/or whether the prisoner was transferred to a prison specifically designed for
the care of mentally ill prisoners.
Confidentiality issues may arise in attempting to obtain physical health information, but the
removal of identifiers may help to avoid this issue. The type of physical illness may be
documented, especially if the prisoner must receive medication and treatment. You may be
able to obtain information about whether or not a prisoner has a particular type of illness that
is of particular concern, such as infectious diseases. The DOC may be able to provide you
with the number of days a prisoner spent in the infirmary and any transfers to a hospital.

Criminal History
NOTE: DOCs do not often collect information about prisoners' criminal history in other states.
21 Prior Arrests
N
22 Prior Convictions (Number
N
Ideally, the institution could provide you with information about the types of crimes for which
and Type)
the prisoner was convicted previously; but, given that prisoners' criminal records are often
lengthy, the institution may not be able to provide this information unless they already keep it
in their electronic database. They may be able to do so if you provide them with a list of
particular offenses of interest, such as sex offenses, escape, and manslaughter.
23 Prior Violation of a
N
Restraining Order
24 Prior Incarcerations
N

Current Incarceration & Release Information
25

Institutional Identifier

N

26

FBI Identifier

N

27

Social Security Number

Y

28

Risk Classification

N

29

Date of Sentence to Prison

N

30
31
32
33
34

Date of Admittance to Prison
Date of Admittance to Jail
Date of Release from Jail
Date of Release from Prison
Sentence Length (in Days)

N
N
N
N
N

Most DOCs give each prisoner an institutional number, but this number is frequently not
unique to each prisoner. Rather, it is unique to the prisoners' admission into the institution
and, as a result, one prisoner may have several institutional identifiers if s/he is reincarcerated. The institutional identifier may, then, be helpful in identifying those prisoners
who have been reincarcerated during the time period analyzed.
Your analysis may require that the DOC provide you with a number that is unique to each
prisoner so that you can identify those prisoners who have been reincarcerated. The FBI
identifier should not raise IRB issues and should provide a unique identifier for each prisoner.
If there is no FBI identifier available in the institution's electronic database, the social security
number (SSN), which prisons often collect, can serve as a unique identifier. However, in
some cases, the SSN is not consistently recorded and/or the data are fraught with
typographical errors. Although many DOCs are willing to release a dataset that includes
prisoners' SSNs, this a potential threat to confidentiality. One strategy for circumventing this
problem is for the DOC to create unique identifiers for each prisoner based on the SSN. This
option is problematic because it requires additional programming time on the part of the
prison. If the prison does not have the resources necessary to do this work itself, then another
option is for the DOC to release the dataset with the SSNs to one external researcher (who
has signed a confidentiality agreement) who could create the unique identifiers for each
prisoner based on the SSN. It may help if the researcher does this work on the DOC's
premises, if that is amenable to both parties.
Some prisons classify prisoners by the risk they pose to safety and security based on their
criminal history, current sentence, and other characteristics. The most common prison
classification instrument used today is the LSIR.
This can be important information because prisoners may have been held in a county jail
before being transferred to prison.

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35
36
37

Prison Time Served (in Days)
Jail Time Served (in Days)
Charges

N
N
N

38

N

N
N
N

44

National Crime Information
Center (NCIC) Most Serious
Offense
Admission Type (Direct
Sentence from Court,
Probation Violation, or Parole
Violation)
Whether Committed a Felony
Sentencing Jurisdiction
Educational Degrees
Obtained While in the DOC
(GED or High School)
Program Participation
(Program Type, Length of
Participation, and
Completion)
Good Time Earned

45

Security Level at Admission

N

46
47

Security Level at Release
Total Days in Different
Custody Levels
Residential Substance Abuse
Treatment (RSAT) Alert
Total Number of Major and
Minor Disciplinary
Convictions
Reason for Major Disciplinary
Conviction
Outstanding Legal Issues
upon Release

N
N

Date All Outstanding Legal
Issues Are Resolved
Violation of Restraining Order
Part of Current Sentence
Victim Notification
Requirement

N

39

40
41
42

43

48
49

50
51

52
53
54

Please note that most prisoners receive multiple charges for each sentence to prison. The
prison may include all charges in the dataset or the most serious charge. Ideally, the prison
will include all of a prisoner's charges because that allows you to conduct some further
analyses. For example, you may want to examine the number of prisoners convicted of a
drug charge, which would not be included in the dataset if the prisoner was also convicted of
a charge considered to be more serious, such as a violent charge. Also, you may want to
determine the number of prisoners eligible for certain institutional programs and may need the
full range of charges to make this determination. It may be helpful to have the prison officials
describe how they decided which charges were more serious.
See above.

N

N

N

Programs could include work within or outside the institution, academic, vocational, and
rehabilitation/reentry programs. DOCs may not disaggregate prisoners' program participation
into these categories; in this case, it is difficult to disentangle prisoners' participation in
particular programs.
"Good time" is the number of days credited towards completion of a sentence based upon
prisoners’ behavior and on their participation in work, programs, and education.
Security levels can include super-maximum, administrative segregation, protective custody,
maximum, medium, minimum, and community-based (halfway house, day reporting,
electronic monitoring, etc.). Some DOCs may not have all these types of custody available to
prisoners.
See above.
See above.

N
N

N
N

Major disciplinary reports may be issued for such offenses as a violent act (on staff or another
prisoner) and possession of contraband (e.g., drugs, weapons).
Some prisoners' legal issues may not have been resolved by the completion of their current
sentence. They may therefore be released to a county jail pending additional charges or to
INS pending a deportation hearing. Please note that some prisons' and jails' policies prohibit
the placement of prisoners into certain programs or custody levels if they have outstanding
legal issues.

N
N

Some states require that prisons notify a victim before a prisoner is released if the prisoner
committed a certain type of offense.

Reentry Information
NOTE: DOCs may maintain this information, but often it is maintained by other agencies and this information may not be linked to the DOC’s
database.
55 Community Supervision
N
Whether prisoner was released on parole and/or probation.
56 Parole/Probation Identifier
N
57 Data on Compliance with
N
Terms of Supervision
58 Data on New Offenses
N
59 Data on Violations
N
60 Ordered Supervision Term
N

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61
62

Days
Actual Time Supervision
Days
Recidivism

N
N

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Appendix D: Sample Data Request
List of data items requested:*
Unique identifier of person (e.g., number, name)
Address—at conviction
Address—upon release
Conviction charge (or top conviction charge)
Maximum sentence length
Actual time served (in days and years)
Reason for release (parole, court ordered, expiration of sentence, etc.)
Release date
Release location
Demographic data, including:
Sex
Race
Age
Date of birth
Occupation at admission
Marital status at admission
Marital status at release
Number of children at admission (number and categorical)
Number of children at release (number and categorical)
Education level at admission (number and categorical)
Education level at release (number and categorical)
Program data, including:
Drug/alcohol abuse and treatment
Health-related data (conditions, treatment, etc.)
Program participation data (including pre-release programming)
Employment/work-release data
*We would like these items at the individual level for the population released from [State
Name] state prisons between [Time Period].

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Appendix E: Sample Memorandum of Understanding
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
Organization X and State Y Department of Corrections
I.

Background

Organization X is an independent, not-for-profit research organization that provides data to meet
the information needs of organizations concerned with public policy issues, community needs,
and the quality of life. Organization X locates, develops, and collects information and consults
with organizations on the use of data for planning, decisionmaking, and social policy analysis.
Organization X does not advocate specific public policies or policy choices.
Organization X has begun the process of convening a local Reentry Employment Mapping
Group (REMG), which will primarily focus on job access, projected job growth, and
employment development policies as they relate to the current reentry population and the
projected reentry population.
In recent years, the State Y Department of Correction (YDOC) has launched a number of efforts
designed to support the successful return of prisoners to State Y communities… Governor Z
launched a Statewide Community Safety and Reentry Working Group to provide guidance for
the design of a new statewide reentry system focusing on 10 high-impact regions. YDOC’s
interests in reentry within City M suggest that the program efforts could benefit from a local
analysis of where returning prisoners reside in relation to the risks and assets that exist in their
communities.
II.

Purpose of this Memorandum

To describe the mutual goals and responsibilities with regard to the sharing, analysis, and
dissemination of YDOC data on returning prisoners and currently incarcerated persons in support
of improving outcomes for this population.
III.

County M Area Reentry Mapping Group (REMG)

The REMG will meet regularly over the course of the project to help guide the development of
the research tools and analytic models. It will also be one of the vehicles for public policy use of
the information generated by the project.
To form the REMB, Organization X has convened a diverse set of community stakeholders. At
present, representatives from: [list of partners] have agreed to participate in it and we anticipate
that other stakeholders will join in the near future.

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IV.

Mutual goals

Both Organization X and State Y DOC have an interest in better understanding the spatial
patterns, relationships, and dynamics of prisoner reentry in County M. This requires the sharing,
analysis, mapping, and dissemination of YDOC and local community data to identify
concentrations of persons released from prison in relation to existing or prospective employment
and social service resources. In furtherance of these goals, both parties agree to make every
reasonable effort to fulfill the responsibilities outlined below.
V.

Parties’ Roles and Responsibilities

Organization X shall:
a. Serve as the central entity to submit data requests on behalf of the Reentry Employment
Mapping Group, identify data needs and submit requests to YDOC; designate one point
of contact who will request data from YDOC, receive data from YDOC (hereinafter “the
data”) and share maps and analysis results with YDOC;
b. Review requests for maps and analysis results from REMG members to ensure that the
requests are consistent with REMG’s goals of identifying reentry patterns and resource
gaps. Requests that are not consistent with these goals will not be pursued.
c. Fulfill requests from REMG members for analysis results; take all necessary and
reasonable action by instruction or agreement with its employees, agents, and
subcontractors to maintain security confidentiality, non-disclosure, and limitation of use
of the data. Employees, agents, or subcontractors of Organization X may use data files to
fulfill the purposes and obligations as set forth in this Agreement. Organization X shall
not provide, copy, or disclose, directly or indirectly, to any third party any of the data
provided by YDOC;
d. Share all maps and analysis results with YDOC at least ten (10) days prior to
dissemination by the REMG for the purpose of receiving YDOC clarification on such
matters as definitions, nuances or anomalies with the data, as well as input on policy
implications; clearly mark as “Draft—Not for Dissemination or Distribution” any maps
or analysis results to be shared with the REMG that have not yet been reviewed by
YDOC;
e. Incorporate clarifications and input received from YDOC into “final products.”
f. Be the owner of analyses based on the data—including research reports, tables, indexes,
maps, charts, and other exhibits that have been shared with YDOC ten (10) days prior to
dissemination. Such analyses are the property of Organization X and may be publicly
shared or posted on a web site without restriction.
g. Attribute YDOC as data source in all charts, maps, tables and other exhibits that contain
any data from the data files or are derived from the data files.
h. Not assign rights or obligations under this Agreement to any third party without the prior
written consent of the parties.
YDOC shall:
a. Designate one point of contact for receiving and fulfilling data requests from
Organization X;
b. Provide timely access to the requested data;

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c. Provide clarification on data definitions and any nuances or anomalies with the data;
d. Advise Organization X on the interpretation, analysis, and policy implications of the
YDOC data;
e. Maintain sole authority for use of original case-level data; and
f. Review and provide feedback on any maps or analysis results produced by Organization
X within ten (10) days of receipt of those products.
VI.

Redissemination

Data and information furnished by YDOC to Organization X may not be used for any legal
documents, such as search warrants, affidavits, or any document that may become public, or
redisseminated or used for any purpose other than that for which it was requested, without the
written permission of YDOC.
VII.

Voluntary Disassociation

This MOU is a nonbinding agreement that both parties have entered into in good faith. Either
party may disassociate from the effort without penalty or liability by so notifying the other in
writing. Written notice shall be sent sixty (60) days prior to the disassociation.
VIII. Term and Amendment
This Memorandum shall be in effect for the period of one year beginning [Date]. Both parties
reserve the right to renegotiate this Memorandum upon the mutual consent of the other party. At
the conclusion of the one-year period, this Memorandum may be extended by common written
consent of both parties. This Memorandum represents the entire understanding of both parties
with respect to this partnership. Any modification of this Memorandum must be in writing and
signed by the parties.
Signed by:
_____________________________________ Date: _______________
Representative,
State Y Department of Corrections

_____________________________________ Date: _______________
Representative,
Organization X

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Appendix F: Sample Reentry Asset Mapping Protocol (WinstonSalem)
OVERVIEW
The goal of the reentry asset mapping strategy is to assess the location of services available to
ex-prisoners in selected neighborhoods in Winston-Salem, and to document the safe and unsafe
areas that surround them. This work mirrors similar projects conducted by the D.C. Public
Agenda on youth assets, and by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) and the
Alliance of Concerned Men on assets for returning prisoners in Washington, D.C.. The CJCJ
effort, which also focused on neighborhoods with high concentrations of returning prisoners,
aimed to identify the strengths/assets of these neighborhoods, which are often discussed solely in
terms of the economic and social disadvantages they face. Working in teams of two, staff
persons from the CJCJ and the Alliance recorded and then mapped five categories of community
assets: religious institutions; schools; government offices and community service agencies;
businesses—goods/services; and businesses—restaurants/carry-outs/food sale establishments. In
conjunction with the asset mapping, the CJCJ also conducted a series of skills surveys with
residents in the target neighborhoods. These interviews helped to assess the human capital of
these communities, but also lent weight to the argument that programs for ex-prisoners should
and could be staffed by residents of the communities in which they are located.
We would suggest identifying similar categories of community assets as those used in the CJCJ
work, with a particular focus on community service agencies. In addition, we would suggest
going one step further to identify whether the areas surrounding services and goods available to
ex-prisoners are positive or negative (e.g., would an ex-prisoner have to pass by an open-air drug
market to reach a health clinic?) The decision on whether to invest in an additional skills survey
effort would depend on what the Center thinks it could do with this type of information. The
advantage of conducting such a survey is that this type of information would already be available
if needed to mobilize community members to aid in the reintegration process. For instance, if
there is a potential for launching a literacy program for ex-prisoners in a target community, it
might be useful to have a documentation of community members with teaching/tutoring skills.
We can discuss the benefits and costs of a community skills survey in further detail depending on
your interest in the idea. What follows is the procedure we recommend for the asset mapping
component.
PROCEDURE
1. Select Neighborhoods
Using the maps showing distributions of returning prisoners, identify which high-concentration
areas would be the most interesting areas on which to focus your attention. The number of
neighborhoods selected would, of course, depend on cost and staff restrictions. We recommend
piloting the mapping procedures on a one- or two-square-block area to better estimate how much
time this effort would require and to assess how large of an area could be covered within
reasonable budgetary allowances.

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2. Recruit ‘Mappers’
We suggest using one of your street workers in the recruitment process, since they know the
returning prisoners in the area and have a good rapport with them. The ideal ex-prisoner for this
kind of work would be from the community, familiar with the neighborhoods of interest, and
have good interpersonal skills.
3. Train Mappers
The formality and extent of training will depend on the number of people recruited to serve as
mappers. If only a few people will be involved in the effort, shadowing a Center member as they
conduct the first few surveys on the street might be sufficient. If a larger group is involved, more
formal training, including some role playing at the Center, might be more appropriate. Certain
issues should be addressed in the training of any mappers used in this effort: the importance of
legible handwriting, appropriate demeanor when interviewing people, attention to detail,
documentation of labor hours, and dealing with sensitive issues. For instance, if a male exprisoner encounters a homeless shelter for women, he could simply make a note of its location
and have a woman return to conduct the interview rather than potentially upsetting the residents
by entering the facility.
4. Design Survey Instrument
We feel that it would be useful to consider the data collection methods used by CJCJ and D.C.
Agenda in addition to our own ideas, so as not to reinvent the wheel when designing the survey
instrument.
5. Conduct Survey
Once the data collection instrument has been designed, mappers can begin to canvas the selected
neighborhood to catalog the assets. The pilot test should give you a better estimate of how much
time would be required to entirely survey the areas of interest. One potential problem with this
type of work is ensuring the validity of the survey results. A couple of different methods can be
used to counteract this problem. If only a few mappers will be employed, it may work best if the
surveys are conducted in teams of two—one person from the Center and one ex-prisoner. If a
large number of mappers will be used, a Center member could validate a random subset of places
that were listed as assets.
6. Reimburse Participants
Since we do not yet know how much time this type of work would involve, it is also unclear how
mappers should be paid. For instance, would it be more appropriate to pay by the hour or by the
geographic area covered? Once again, a pilot should help you to think through these issues and
determine the most suitable payment approach.

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7. Create Products
Once all of the data have been collected, members of the Center staff will geocode each address
by type of service/asset. Maps can then be created to show where different kinds of services are
located. Different landmarks can be added to the maps, such as bus routes and bus stops.
Finalized maps can serve a number of functions. They can be given to ex-prisoners as a resource.
They may also be used by the Center staff to further assess the availability of services, determine
gaps, and identify potential areas for action by the Center. In addition, they could add another
layer to the concentration maps we have already created.

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Appendix G: Sample Reentry Policy Brief (Hartford)

Prison Reentry Policy Brief
Connecticut Policy and Economic Council, Inc.

ACCESS TO EDUCATION
Ex-offenders face numerous barriers but without a high school degree or GED their
chances for employment become even harder. While there are educational
opportunities in jail, the opportunities vary on the facility and there is very little available
data that links offenders to services.
This brief is part of a series of briefs on Prisoner Reentry that are produced by the
Connecticut Policy and Economic Council as part of being a partner in the Urban
Institute’s Reentry Mapping Network, an innovative partnership that uses data analysis
and GIS mapping to help mobilize local leaders and residents to identify and address
the challenges of prisoner reentry.
Incarceration data in this brief was collected from the Connecticut Department of
Corrections during the spring and summer of 2005. The data on the offender population
is a snapshot of the prison population that claimed Hartford as their address from
January 2003—July 2005. Parole data furnished by the Connecticut Department of
Corrections is a snapshot of the parole population in Hartford on July 1, 2005.

Incarcerated Population
Almost half of all inmates from Hartford
have at least a high school degree or
GED. When disaggregated by age,
gender, and race some patterns on
education access begin to emerge.

Incarcerated Offenders Educational
Attainment: July 2005

As inmates get older, their chances for
degree completion decrease. Between
ages 18-19 over 58% of inmates do not
have their high school degree or GED.
By age 20-29, that number decreases to
44%. However, among offenders over 50
years old 84% do not have a high school
degree or GED.

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Educational attainment differs by gender in some significant ways. While 53% of men
and 55% of women do not have a high school degree or GED, the education levels still
vary significantly. Of the 53% of men without a high school degree or GED, 15% of
them do not have any high school education, while 7% of females without a high school
degree do not have any high school education. Additionally, 19% of women have a
college degree compared to 3% of men.
When educational attainment among women is teased out by race what emerges is that
both black and white women have high levels of college completion. A gap emerges in
both rates of college degrees and those with high school education but no degree
between white and Hispanic women. Nearly 2 out of every 3 Hispanic women in prison
do not have a High School Diploma or GED compared to only 1 out of every 5 white
women. This shows a need for more education services among women of color to
assist them in getting a GED or high school diploma.

Educational Attainment for Female Offenders by Race: July 2005
College Degree
High School Graduate/GED
High School, no graduation or
GED
No High School

Black
Women
21%
32%

White
Women
42%
37%

Hispanic
Women
12%
18%

43%
4%

21%

58%
13%

Asian
Women
100%

PAROLEES/ AFTER INCARCERATION
While offenders without a high school degree come from South Meadows, Barry
Square, and Clay Arsenal, parolees without a GED/high school degree settle into
Behind the Rocks (10%), Barry Square (15%), South End (11%). Compared to census
figures, the proportion of parolees residing in Hartford neighborhoods who do not have
a high school degree/GED is higher than the proportion of residents of those
neighborhoods without a high school degree/GED.
Educational Attainment of Paroles and Residents
Neighborhood
Asylum Hill
Barry Square
Behind The Rocks
Blue Hills
Clay Arsenal
Downtown
Frog Hollow
North Meadows

Residents Parole
33%
48%
42%
26%
55%
31%
51%
39%

41%
68%
63%
31%
42%
67%
64%
0%

Neighborhood
Northeast
Parkville
Sheldon-Charter Oak
South End
South Green
South Meadows
Southwest
Upper Albany

Residents Parole
42%
47%
51%
34%
47%
38%
40%
41%

57%
88%
67%
67%
71%
100%
50%
61%

138