The inmate population in the United States has climbed after a record 33-years continuous rise in imprisonment to more than 2.2 million juveniles and adults, with an additional 5 million persons under various forms of correctional supervision. About 1.5 million children currently have a parent in prison. Our per capita rate of incarceration of 737 per 100,000 residents exceeds that of Russian, China, and far exceeds those of other industrialized nations. Further, our system disproportionately incarcerates African Americans and, in some cities, places over half of all young African-American men under criminal justice supervision. The cost of maintaining the nation’s prison system has risen to more than $40 billion a year.

A key aspect of this overburdened system is prisoner reentry. Each year, more than 650,000 persons are released from prisons back into our communities. About one-third of all prisoners released are drug offenders and one-fourth are violent offenders. Many hundreds of thousands more adult and juvenile offenders are released each year from jails. At any given time, approximately 750,000 ex-prisoners are on parole supervision. More than 100,000 prisoners are being released each year without any form of community correctional supervision, although studies show that community supervision combined with some form of rehabilitative program following a prisoner’s release helps reduce recidivism.

Prisoners upon release face countless barriers when trying to reenter society, and societal costs are high when they fail. The legal barriers to employment and housing for convicted persons make reentry difficult under the best of circumstances, and many of those released from prison return to communities where persistent poverty, lack of jobs, limited access to drug or alcohol treatment, lack of access to health care and lack of affordable housing are the norm. Our failure to prepare people leaving prison for reentry into the community thus becomes a major contributor to homelessness. Of these, almost two-thirds are expected to be rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years. The recidivism rate for the one in six offenders returning from prison who are under the age of 21 is even higher.

Programs aimed at assisting offenders in acquiring the life skills to succeed in the community and become law-abiding citizens are a key element in a comprehensive community and national strategy aimed at combating crime and keeping the community safe.

Bipartisan legislation to help prepare inmates and other ex-offenders to successfully return to their communities was introduced in the 110th Congress in both the House of Representatives and the Senate as the Second Chance Act of 2007. In the Senate, Senators Joe Biden (D-DE), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced S.1060, the Second Chance Act of 2007, on March 29, 2007. The Senate bill is nearly identical to its House counterpart. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved S. 1060 on August 2, 2007, by voice vote. The House bill, H.R. 1593, was introduced on March 20, 2007 by Representatives Danny Davis (D-IL) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) and 13 other co-sponsors including House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the Ranking Member. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing on H.R. 1593 on March 20, 2007. The Subcommittee hearing testimony is online at: http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=286. The Subcommittee cleared H.R. 1593 on March 27, 2007. The House Judiciary Committee on March 28, 2007 approved H.R. 1593 by voice vote to conclude a lengthy markup session.

The principal opposition at both the Subcommittee and full Committee markups was mounted by Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), who introduced 11 amendments to narrow the scope of programs authorized under the bill and to address the eligibility of faith-based organizations that hire only within their faith for grants to conduct programs supporting reentry of prisoners into society under the proposed legislation. All were withdrawn or defeated. The Judiciary Committee also rejected by a 16-20 vote an amendment offered by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) to adopt his bill, H.R. 845, the Criminal Restitution Improvement Act of 2007, making restitution mandatory to victims for all federal crimes. With full committee support, H.R. 1593 was scheduled for consideration on the House suspension calendar on May 15, 2007, but was withdrawn for further negotiations prior to future consideration on the House floor. On November 13, 2007, H.R. 1593 was approved by the full House of Representatives by a 347 to 62 vote.

Following House passage of the Second Chance Act, its consideration on the Senate floor was blocked by a series of "holds" for several months. The Senate holds were ultimately resolved and the Senate approved H.R. 1593 by unanimous consent on March 11, 2008. President Bush signed the Second Chance Act into law on April 9, 2008 as Public Law No. 110-199.

• The ABA strongly supports enactment of the Second Chance Act by this Congress. This bipartisan legislation authorizes assistance to states and localities to develop and implement strategic plans for providing and coordinating comprehensive efforts to enable ex-offenders to successfully reenter their communities.
• The Second Chance Act will provide grants to the states to assist them in reducing crime by improving services and programs for state prisoners reentering communities, reforms to existing barriers in federal law that adversely affect people with both state and federal convictions, and provisions to strengthen federal protections for former prisoners in the areas of employment, housing and voting.
• The Second Chance Act will provide targeted federal support for offenders’ access to services such as family reunification, job training, education, housing, substance abuse and mental health services. The bill also establishes a federal inter-agency task force on offender reentry, provides for research on reentry, and creates a national resource center to collect and disseminate information on best practices in offender reentry.

The ABA strongly supports efforts to improve correctional policies to increase the chances that prisoners, once released, will be equipped to become productive citizens and not engage in criminal activity. In August 2003, the ABA adopted a set of standards, Collateral Sanctions and Discretionary Disqualification of Convicted Persons, which seek to establish a legal framework for dealing with unreasonable discrimination against convicted persons and to limit laws that unfairly disqualify offenders from a multiplicity of benefits and opportunities solely because of their conviction record. In 2004, the ABA House of Delegates adopted policy that urges jurisdictions to adopt programs and policies to prepare prisoners for release back into the community and to assist prisoners after their release with transitional housing, job placement assistance, and substance abuse avoidance. In February 2007, the ABA House approved a series of recommendations dealing with employment and licensing of offenders and use of and access to criminal record information.