Several recent government initiatives, including the NIJ-funded Second Chance Act Adult Demonstration program, have provided assistance to ex-offenders when they reenter their communities in order to improve their outcomes and reduce recidivism. To learn about their reentry experiences and the efficacy of services provided, evaluations of these initiatives have endeavored to interview the formerly incarcerated one or more years after their release. However, surveying the formerly incarcerated is fraught with numerous challenges.  This presentation draws on our team’s experience in conducting survey research in multiple evaluations of these sorts of initiatives.

The challenges are many and varied.  Simply locating and engaging ex-offenders in longitudinal data collection is a primary challenge since respondents: (a) are often incarcerated or recently released at study baseline and cannot provide reliable information as to how they can be contacted later; (b) tend to be highly mobile; (c) can have active warrants against them or might otherwise be sought by law enforcement, parole agents, or creditors, causing them to be reluctant to be contacted or have their whereabouts be known; and (d) can equate face-to-face interviews involving the provision of incentives with sting operations set up to re-arrest them. These difficulties are compounded by more general obstacles to present-day survey interviewing, including changing attitudes about privacy and confidentiality, caller-ID notification systems, and use of pay-as-you-go phone systems.  Also, when random assignment is utilized, participants that did not receive services may not be willing to complete follow up interviews.  Finally, ex-offenders tend to have a higher probability of re-arrest, necessitating interviews in institutions, which require negotiated access through state Departments of Corrections and clearance from state prison review boards.  Due to these inherent challenges, locating and interviewing ex-offenders, successful evaluations of these initiatives require designing specialized approaches to data collection for this population.

This presentation will discuss these challenges and some of the more successful strategies our team has utilized for locating and engaging ex-offenders that have produced response rates of up to 80%. These strategies have included field locating, the use of special incentives for early response, and gaining updated contact information from Departments of Corrections for those on parole.  We also discuss strategies to gain approval for conducting interview with those re-incarcerated and ensuring that the interview can be conducted without monitoring by prison officials, which can be a challenge in a prison setting, In addition, the presentation will also include findings on improving interviewer safety and steps used to engage ex-offenders in the interview process.