Perceived Rehabilitation Across Types of Justice-Involved Individuals: An Experiment

In the era of increasing support for rehabilitation, an often-overlooked question is how the public recognizes when someone is rehabilitated. The current study uses experimentally designed case files (n = 2,178) in an online opt-in survey to tap into which types of justice-involved individuals are more likely to be considered as being rehabilitated by the public. Furthermore, we examine the robustness of this effect using multiple situational contexts (e.g., hiring this individual, having them as a neighbor, spending time with children). Findings suggest three key features for recognizing who and when someone is rehabilitated, which have practical implications for reentry.