Federal funding in 2002 started the ball rolling for enhanced re-entry initiatives in Kansas, and across the country, to help inmates being released from state prisons.

The goal: keep them from returning to prison.

A decade later, a recent study by a Kansas University researcher shows that inmates in Kansas re-entry programs actually ended up back in prison at higher rates than those who didn’t participate in such programs.

Were millions wasted trying to help offenders transition back into society, when doing nothing would have been more effective?

“For the average person, that’s sort of a typical reaction,” said KU social welfare professor Margaret Severson, who conducted the study, published in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. “I do everything I can to make sure that’s not the message.”

Severson’s study compared hundreds of inmates enrolled in a re-entry program to offenders not enrolled in a program between 2006 and 2009. Within two years, those in the re-entry program wound up back in prison 32 percent of the time, compared to 25 percent of those not in a program.

But it’s important to dig a little deeper into the data, Severson said.

Less than 8 percent of the re-entry participants were convicted of new crimes, compared to 12 percent of those not in a re-entry program. Parole revocations for violations, such as a positive drug test, accounted for the higher overall percentage of returns to prison for those in the re-entry programs.

That’s an important point, Severson said.

“It’s the crimes that are really costing families,” she said.

And Kansas’ 25 to 32 percent prison re-entry rate is lower than other states, said Jan Lunsford, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections. Lunsford cited a 2011 Pew Center study showing that more than 43 percent of inmates released from prison end up returning within three years — though Severson’s study only looked at a two-year time frame.

The results of Severson’s study — and similar studies — often can be interpreted several ways, said Douglas Marlowe, chief scientist for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

“You could interpret (the results) to mean the program worked, or didn’t work one way or the other. Or they didn’t work,” Marlowe said about the complicated process of assessing such programs.

Kansas was the first of a handful of states to receive federal funding for re-entry programs known as Serious and Violent Offender Re-entry Initiative projects, or SVORI. Since 2002, every state has received some federal funding for such programs. With budget tightening, federal funding has ended, but states, including Kansas, still fund a variety of re-entry programs.

With Kansas seeing a recent spike in the prison population, after years of little or no growth, funding re-entry is as important as ever, Severson said.

While her study didn’t show the dramatic strides hoped for by re-entry program advocates, the research will help future re-entry programs be more successful.

“We have to stick with” re-entry programs, Severson said. “We have to keep talking about it.”