Together, ‘one step forward’ in life. An evaluative study of SurAnt, focusing on the reintegration of former detainees

Abstract

The Netherlands is one of the countries with the highest recidivism rates. Nearly 50 percent of the detainees who have been released end within two years up in detention again. The objective of this research is to help improve the reintegration of former detainees in the Netherlands by studying how Stichting SurAnt provides support for former detainees. The main research question is: “To what extent does the support offered by SurAnt help former detainees to successfully reintegrate?”. I focused in this research solely on reintegration problems related to employment, housing and debt. To answer the research question I have used data collected from seventy dossiers and five semi-structured interviews. The results shows that most clients of SurAnt have problems related to a combination of two or three of the areas. 18,6 percent of the clients of SurAnt had problems solely related to employment, 17,1 percent had problems solely related to housing and only 10,0 percent had problems solely related to debt. Additionally, the results show that SurAnt achieves results for a third of all clients that had an intake in 2017. This includes the 75,7 percent of clients that still have appointments in 2018. All clients that were interviewed indicated that they were satisfied with the help SurAnt gave them. Furthermore, all clients indicated that they would contact SurAnt again when they need help with an issue in their lives.