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Twenty-first century prison services in Finland rely primarily on the 'What Works' paradigm, or the riskneed- responsivity (RNR) model. Prisoner activities, i.e. work, training and education, substance abuse and other prison programmes are keytools with which prison services aim to reduce recidivism and to facilitate the reintegration of released prisoners into society. This study describes the participation of prisoners (N=3,970) released in 2008 from closed and open prisons in Finland in various prisoner activities. Its aim is to explain the associations between prisoner activities and recidivism as well as the associations of the prisoners' principal offences with participation and recidivism. The effects of individual prisoner activities on recidivism were excluded from the scope of the study. In this research, the term 'recidivism' is used to refer to instances where a released prisoner has committed a new offence leading to a new sentence of unconditional imprisonment or community service. Prisoners were followed up for at least two years after release. Recidivism was analysed mainly by means of Cox regression analysis. Prisoners released from closed and open prisons differed on many significant background factors. For instance, prisoners released from closed prisons were on average younger and they had been in prison more often than those released from open prisons. Research has shown that closed prisons release larger numbers of short-term prisoners who because of shortness of time have not been enrolled in prisoner activities. Despite the obvious logistical difficulties, it is important that these activities can be made available to this group of offenders. Most long-term prisoners are released via open prisons. The prisoners released from open prisons participated in prisoner activities during their sentence, and the proportion of prisoners who did not take part in prisoner activities remained low, even when they had started serving their sentence in a closed prison. Besides the length of time spent in prison, other factors predicting participation in prison activities included gender, age and principal offence. The main result of this research was that the level of participation in prison activities among prisoners released from closed or open prisons did not have a significant statistical effect on the risk of recidivism when prisoner activities were considered as a whole. Seen from the point of view of the Criminal Sanctions Agency, however, the results for prisoners released from open institutions indicate that prisoner activities can indeed have a positive impact, even though the associations detected did not reach statistical significance. The research leaves a number of unanswered questions. For instance, the recidivism rate for prisoners who did not participate in prisoner activities was lower in closed prisons than the average recidivism rate. Furthermore it is noteworthy that mechanisms of advance selection may be at play in participation in prisoner activities,for instance via the prisoner's personal motivation. The effectiveness of prisoner activities should be assessed not only against the criterion of recidivism, but also other indicators that describe reintegration into society as well as the prison atmosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]