This final report describes an evaluation of the effectiveness of Minnesota Comprehensive Offender Reentry Plan, which was implemented in 2008 and aimed at reducing recidivism by increasing offender access to community services and programming.
This document reports on a study evaluating the effectiveness of the Minnesota Comprehensive Offender Reentry Plan (MCORP), a pilot project which had the goal of reducing recidivism by increasing offender access to community services and programming through greater case management collaboration between caseworkers in prison and supervision agents in the community. A total of 689 offenders were included in the study, with 415 offenders in MCORP and 274 offenders in the control group. The average recidivism follow-up period was three years, with a minimum of 18 months and a maximum of 53 months. Results from Cox regression models showed that MCORP significantly reduced four of the five recidivism measures that were examined, however the size of the reduction in hazard ratios was only about 20-25 percent. The findings also suggested that MCORP reduced costs, although sensitivity analyses showed that cost avoidance estimates were not robust across all the examined assumptions.