What is the difference between re-entry for jail inmates versus prison inmates?
A. Jails are part of the community. They’re locally run and independently operated. There are more than 3,000 jails in the United States, compared to only 50 state departments of corrections. In addition, jails and prisons house very different populations. At the jail level, the majority of the population is pretrial detainees, about 60 percent, with the rest serving sentences typically of a year or less. They’re only in jail a short time: Over 80 percent are released within a month, and the average length of stay is about 20 days. There are limited programming and treatment opportunities in jail, unlike in prison where staff has more than a year to work with them. So it becomes even more important to link with outside agencies, because inmates are leaving so quickly from jail before all their needs are met. In a way, you could say that brief incarceration is a barrier to successful re-entry for people released from jail. But jails have advantages, too. They’re generally located smack
