Preventing Recidivism and Improving Socio-Economic Reintegration: Evidence from a Prisoner Reentry Program in Cote d'Ivoire

Ex-prisoners often struggle to reintegrate into society and commit a large share of crime. Yet, knowledge on which programs work and why is limited, and even more so in developing countries where prisoners face complex barriers to reintegration with little institutional support. This study sets out to understand prisoners’ barriers to reentry and evaluate interventions to improve ex-prisoners outcomes in Côte d’Ivoire. To quantify barriers to
reentry, we leverage insights from criminology and our qualitative insights from Cote d’Ivoire’s largest prison and plan to collect a new dataset following prisoners during reentry. We want to document rigorously that economic barriers matter along psychological barriers, which operate through multiple dimensions along identity (who do I want to be?) and non-cognitive skills (how do I get there?). Based on our quantitative pilot, we plan to identify and evaluate, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, the programs most likely to lift barriers to reentry. Our hope is to directly inform policy in Cote d’ivoire and more largely in contexts where incarceration and reintegration dynamics differ sharply from those typically studied.