Responding to Prisoner Reentry, Recidivism, and Incarceration of Inmates of Color: A Call to the Communities

This article introduces a systemic model for rehabilitation that uses the expungement procedure, a preexisting statute, as a tool to reduce incarceration and recidivism and help probationers succeed in their reentry into mainstream society as taxpaying citizens and concomitantly alleviate the burden on taxpayers for maintaining prisoners. It culminates with a call to the African American and Hispanic communities to partner with the penal system and lawmakers to find solutions to the devastating effects of increasingly high imprisonment, recidivism, and prison reentry rates of inmates of color on children, families, and communities.