Residential Location, Household Composition, and Recidivism: An Analysis by Gender

Although the challenges offenders face when returning home from prison have been well documented, much remains to be learned about the gendered patterns of reentry. This line of inquiry can be further refined by examining the unique effects of residential movement, housing location, and household composition on reentry trajectories. To address these questions, we use a sample of men and women released from prison in Missouri. Consistent with past research, men are more likely to fail overall, but women are more likely to be recommitted to prison for a technical violation. We find that community context had the largest effect in models of technical violations for the male sample. Similar community effects were not observed for the female sample. Family support was a strong protective factor for men and women. We discuss the policy implications of the study for prisoner reentry in general and the import for a gendered understanding of recidivism.