Adewole Olatunbosun OPATOLA2024-05-172024-05-172022-12Kate TurabianPhDhttps://repository.lcu.edu.ng/handle/123456789/125Issues of recidivism, and prisoners’ reintegration into the society have become sources of concern to critical stakeholders in criminology, psychology, and reformatory counselling. Corrections administrators have long recognized the possibility of education and proper reentry programmes as a method of creating a favorable change in incarcerated individuals. This feeling however, has been more of an intuitive notion rather than being empirically proven, particularly in Nigeria. This study, therefore, investigated correctional education and reentry programmes as predictors of prisoners’ desistance in the South-South, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. Data collection was done using a questionnaire and key informant interview (KII). Data collected were analysed using the descriptive and inferential analyses at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that: there is a significant joint prediction of correctional education (literacy and vocational education) on prisoners’ desistance in South-South, Nigeria (F2, 286 = 42.603, Adj.R2=.224, p<0.05); there was a significant relative prediction of literacy (ß=0.301, t=4.796, p<0.05) and vocational education (ß=0.240, t=3.822, p<0.05) on prisoners’ desistance in South-South, Nigeria; there are practices of both formal and vocational correctional education as well as faith based and non-faith based reentry programmes in the Nigeria Corrections Service; there are evidences that correctional education and reentry programmes participation lower the likelihood of recidivism and increases the chances of cessation of crime amongst the ex-offenders. There should be establishment of responsive aftercare, rehabilitation and follow-up units for the ex-offenders, as these will go a long way towards solving the problem of recidivism, and increasing prisoners’ desistance, among others. Keywords: correctional education, re-entry programmes, desistance, prisoners, recidivism Word count: 254