Criminal justice in the United States is in desperate need of reform. The nation has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Twenty percent of all of the world's prisoners are found in this country. And despite the US spending $80 billion a year on incarcerating people, it fails at rehabilitation: Of the 600,000 people released from prisons each year, 67 percent of them are re-arrested within three years. Within nine years, it's 83 percent.

If the US is going to end mass incarceration, we must do more to keep people from returning to prison. There are hundreds of organizations across the country working on the problem, but they have yet to make meaningful progress. Reentry programs—efforts to integrate former prisoners with society outside of bars— are often found to be ineffective.

If you’ve ever tried to break a bad habit, you know why. Change is really hard, even under the best circumstances. People leaving prison attempt to change their whole lives with the cards stacked against them. They often return to the people and places that reinforce the behavior that got them into trouble in the first place. They use the coping skills they know—violence, drug use, quick money schemes—to deal with life’s difficulties. They often face limited transportation options, encounter unstable housing, possess few if any work skills, and struggle without the benefit of higher education.

Changing decades of behavior patterns that got people into trouble is extremely difficult. Unfortunately, most reentry programs don’t offer the intervention proven to do the most for the long-term success of people returning from prison. I learned this truth the hard way when I started Turning Leaf, a prison reentry nonprofit in Charleston, South Carolina.

Read the full article about reducing recidivism rates with CBT by Amy Barch at Stanford Social Innovation Review.