Research Report
Collaboration Reentry July 1, 2026
Beyond Health Metrics: A Framework for Measuring Criminal Justice Outcomes in Medicaid Reentry Waiver Implementation
The Medicaid 1115 reentry waivers represent a meaningful shift in how states and counties support people leaving incarceration by improving continuity of care during the critical reentry period. As of June 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approved reentry waivers for 19 states, with eight additional states and the District of Columbia awaiting approval. As demonstration projects, these waivers create an important opportunity to understand how this policy shift affects both health and criminal justice outcomes.
Although state Medicaid agencies will collect extensive information on health services and outcomes, there is no comparable framework for measuring whether these investments improve criminal justice outcomes. Without that information, jurisdictions cannot fully understand the impact of the reentry waivers. When health and behavioral health needs go unaddressed, individuals are more likely to experience instability that Introduction contributes to repeated justice system involvement.
This report describes criminal justice outcomes that local and state jurisdictions can monitor to understand the broader impacts of this policy shift. Investing in the measurement of both health and criminal justice outcomes will help jurisdictions tell a more complete story of the reentry waivers’ impact.
This document is intended for criminal justice professionals, researchers, county administrators, state policymakers, and cross-system collaborators implementing or considering Medicaid reentry waivers. While reentry waivers may apply to both jails and prisons, this paper focuses primarily on county jails and reflects Justice System Partners’ (JSP) work supporting California counties since 2019 through the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) California Network. The measures described in this paper provide jurisdictions with a practical starting point for evaluating the criminal justice impacts of Medicaid reentry waivers using data that many agencies already collect.
