NCJ Number
81280
Date Published
1980
Length
348 pages
Annotation
This volume discusses the Transitional Aid Research Project (TARP), begun in January 1976, in which approximately 4,000 ex-felons (2,000 each in Texas and Georgia) were made eligible for unemployment benefits in order to ascertain if limited financial aid would affect recidivism.
Abstract
The TARP experiment is based on the idea that released prisoners are returned to civilian life without resources to facilitate their adjustment. To compensate for this, a limited amount of income for a limited period is provided. Released prisoners were randomly allocated to experimental and control groups. They were followed for 1 year after release through the States' criminal justice information systems, and a subset was interviewed repeatedly throughout the postrelease year. There were two levels of treatment (13 and 26 weeks of eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits); two types of treatments (unemployment insurance and job placement); and two levels of tax rates applied, 100 percent (in which benefits are reduced dollar for dollar for earnings received) and 25 percent (in which benefits are reduced $.25 for each dollar earned). Persons in all experimental groups but one were interviewed before release and three times during the year. TARP payments, as administered in Georgia and Texas, did not fulfill expectations that they would lower recidivism, but they had a strong negative impact on work-incentive. However, TARP payments did not increase recidivism, even though the payments increased unemployment. Program effects may have been masked by an increase in unemployment that in turn increased arrests. The results also suggest that the payments did work to some degree as intended by subsidizing a more effective job search. A postulated counterbalancing model of TARP effects is diagrammed in the text. The authors contend that the TARP experiment policy implications lend considerable support to an income-maintenance strategy to reduce arrest recidivism among released prisoners. The counterbalancing model suggests that the payments' positive effects can be fully captured if the work-disincentive effects can be stripped away. A detailed table of contents, figures, tables, and footnotes are provided. Appendixes include study data and instruments, a report on the effect of TARP on ex-prisoners' significant women, and a report of women ex-offenders in the TARP experiment. (Author summary modified)