Male County Jail Inmates: A Profile and Self-Reported Human Service Needs by Race

With the enactment of the Second Chance Act in 2008, social workers have a greater opportunity for intervention to break the cycle of recidivism. To develop interventions, however, social workers require profiles of incarcerated people and their perceived human service needs. Unfortunately, previous research has focused on prison and not jail inmates and lacks race-differential data. In this article the authors address this gap in the literature by describing the scope of the problem and presenting a profile of male inmates and their perceived service needs by race upon entry into a major urban county jail.