The Justice Policy Institute has issued a report titled: Voices for Reform in DC: Recommendations for improving reentry following long prison terms. Since passage by the DC Council of the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act (IRAA), under which 65 people have been released to date, the report points out that providing reentry support for the IRAA population is uniquely challenging :
“Most of the individuals who have been released had served decades in prison, beginning when they were still children or young adults. Transitioning from prison to the community is difficult under the best of circumstances. However, the reentry experience is profoundly more complicated for people who went to prison as children, often with limited education and significant exposure to trauma, and spent all their adult lives behind bars.”
The report suggests six basic recommendations to assist reentry for this population.