Most were non-White, less than 40 years old, and had been incarcerated less than 3 years. They inhibitor Ganetespib reported an average of 12.4 years of education. This may be attributed to Wisconsin’s strong promotion of High School Equivalence Degree programs for incarcerated individuals. Most were single and reported a mean of 2.2 children. Relatively low rates of substance use were reported in our sample postrelease. However, much of the relapse literature focuses on jail populations, where lengths of stay are significantly shorter and there is less treatment during incarceration compared with prison. Treatment was received by 43% of our participants during incarceration. Pelissier et al. (2001) found that differing levels of supervision, as well as whether a person completed substance use treatment during incarceration, significantly affected time to relapse on release.

In their study, 29% had evidence of substance use 6-months postrelease. On average, smoking was initiated at age 15, similar to that reported elsewhere (Voglewede & Noel, 2004) and participants had been smoking almost 15 years before the prison smoking ban. Most had attempted at lease one quit, and almost 80% reported wanting to quit or stay quit within the next 60 days after release. Almost 65% believed their health had improved since the smoking ban. The high level of reported nonsmoking in this study is especially significant considering the barriers to continued smoking abstinence postrelease. Participants reported an unstable financial and housing environment on reentry.

Most were unemployed, and more than 80% were either living in temporary housing or in someone else’s home or apartment. Most lived or worked with other smokers. More than 10% were either reincarcerated or spent at least 1 day in jail within the first month. Financial and emotional stressors (Petersilia, 2000), as well as a return to an environment where old smoking cues are once again encountered, have been shown to be strong predictors of late relapse in other populations (Cummings et al., 1985). In a recent study of relapse to smoking postrelease, Lincoln et al. (2009) found much lower rates of nonsmoking at 1 month (14%). However, Lincoln et al. studied chronically ill smokers with high rates of Hepatitis C who were released from jail, where average incarceration lasted 2 months.

Our study followed a general prison cohort where the average length of incarceration exceeded 2 years. These differences highlight the need for further study. In this study, smoking intent prerelease was a powerful predictor of postrelease smoking. In a study of smoking intent in a jail population, Voglewede and Noel Carfilzomib (2004) also found that future intent to smoke predicted current need to smoke. Depression did not predict smoking on release, consistent with findings that depression history predicted smoking 1 month but not 6 months postquit (Japuntich et al., 2007).