Faith Based Dorm
Locations
- Hutchins State Jail, Texas
Focus Area
- Criminal Justice
"The Dallas Leadership Foundation unlocks leadership in challenged communities so that families, no matter the neighborhood, have the opportunity to flourish." — Dallas Leadership Foundation
The Issue
After a decade of steady decline, the U.S. prison population is once again on the rise. Between 2022 and 2023, incarceration increased by 2%, driven largely by rising imprisonment rates among immigrants and young people. In Texas alone, more than 134,000 people are currently behind bars. For many, release from prison does not mark a true reintegration into society—nearly half of individuals exiting Texas prisons are rearrested within just three years.
Reentry programs have shown promise in reducing recidivism and improving post-release outcomes like employment and housing stability. But despite growing interest, particularly in faith-based and in-prison interventions, there is little rigorous evidence on what actually works. Most evaluations are hampered by self-selection bias and inconsistent implementation, making it difficult for policymakers and corrections leaders to make informed decisions about which models to expand or replicate.
The Dallas Leadership Foundation’s Faith-Based Dorm program offers an innovative, in-prison model that aims to interrupt the cycle of incarceration by transforming the prison environment itself. Operating within Hutchins State Jail since 2008, the program immerses participants in a supportive, nonviolent, non-drug-using community where they engage in structured programming focused on personal growth, employment readiness, recovery, and leadership. Grounded in faith-based values and a culture of personal accountability, the dorm is designed to shield residents from negative peer influences while equipping them with tools for lasting change.
Through a quasi-experimental evaluation, this study will provide much-needed causal evidence on the effectiveness of faith-based dorms in improving reentry outcomes. Results will offer critical insights into whether and how programs like this can be refined, scaled, and implemented across other correctional facilities nationwide.
The Intervention
The Dallas Leadership Foundation’s (DLF) Faith-Based Dorm program provides incarcerated men at Hutchins State Jail with the opportunity to engage in a faith-based community of like-minded people interested in moving away from a criminogenic lifestyle. Participants are placed in a dorm where they participate in a curriculum that includes financial literacy, anger management, substance abuse recovery, parenting practices, leadership development, and workforce preparation classes. The program places prosocial Christian values at the forefront of the curriculum and teaches skills in a setting isolated from the general population, allowing for community building and prosocial networking. The program ultimately strives to decrease recidivism and improve employment outcomes for participants.
Research Question
- Does the Faith-Based Dorm have a significant impact on the recidivism of former program participants, including technical violations and rearrests, within 1 year and within 3 years of release?
- Does the Faith-Based Dorm’s prosocial programming and living environment have a significant positive impact on employment, earnings, job quality, and housing stability for former inmates?
- Are the Faith-Based Dorm’s effects similar across various demographic groups, especially across race and age dimensions?
Intended Outcomes
LEO and DLF are partnering to conduct a quasi-experimental causal analysis of the Faith-Based Dorm program on recidivism, employment and earnings, and housing stability using the variation in dorm capacity present in retrospective data.
Research Study Design
LEO seeks to use a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of participation in DLF’s Faith Based Dorm program. Between 2010 and 2025, DLF has operated the Faith Based Dorm in Hutchins State Jail consistently at full capacity, creating natural variation in access to services over time. LEO will leverage this variation in program availability using an instrumental variables (IV) approach, which provides a plausibly exogenous way to estimate the causal impact of receiving services from DLF on individual outcomes.
The study population will consist of inmates incarcerated at the Hutchins State Jail between 2010-2025 who are or were eligible to participate in the Faith Based Dorm program. The IV approach will use the timing of dorm availability as the instrument for predicting the likelihood of participation in the Faith Based Dorm program, isolating the program effect among interested and eligible inmates in Hutchins State Jail from other confounding factors. The valuation will explore a wide range of outcomes, including recidivism, employment and earnings, housing stability, receipt of public benefits, and disciplinary infractions during incarceration, to understand how the Faith-Based Dorm program influences long-term criminal justice involvement and individual well-being.