Assessing the within-person impact of social/behavioral programs, increased supervision, and jail time on...

The process of leaving prison, known as reentry, presents a host of challenges to returning individuals. Research documents that substance use is a pressing issue and widespread among the correctional population. A variety of strategies and programs have been used to promote the desistance from substance use; notably, the use of social/behavioral programs, increased supervision, and jail time. Yet, existing research investigating the respective effects of te strategies in relation to one another is relatively underdeveloped. This issue becomes more salient when considering the extent to which supervision models can impact the outcomes and future prospects associated with reentry. Therefore, this study uses four waves of data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) to examine the impact of social/behavioral programming, increased supervision, and jail sanctions on polysubstance use during reentry. Further, we use a series of interaction terms to explore any conditioning effects between approaches on substance use across time. Results from longitudinal crossed-lagged dynamic panel models reveal that social/behavioral programs contribute to within-person decreases in polysubstance use across time while enhanced monitoring and jail-time contribute to within-person increases in polysubstance use. Interactions indicate these programs exert independent, and not interactive, effects on polysubstance use post-release.