What Strategies Work for the Hard-to-Employ?

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) recently released a report on strategies that work for the hard-to-employ.

The report includes findings from a 10-year study evaluating groups of people that face barriers to employment. The groups include; long-term welfare recipients, people with disabilities, those with mental or physical health problems, and former prisoners. Three of the eight models considered in this report and conducted by the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), Transitional Work Corporation (TWC), and Personal Roads to Individual Development and Employment Evaluation (PRIDE) have proven to increase employment gains. A control group was used in each model to compare the success of the different programs.

The Center for Employment Opportunities observed former prisoners located in New York City in support services, job placement assistance, and transitional jobs.  The main goals of the evaluation were to improve long-term employment outcomes and reduce recidivism rates. After the completion of this three-year experiment, findings show CEO was able to increase employment early in the follow-up period when the participants were working in CEO transitional jobs; however, employment gains lessened as participants left those jobs. Although long-term employment was not attained, CEO’s transitional job programs were able to impact recidivism rates. Over the three-year period, only 67 percent of CEO participants experienced some type of recidivism compared to 71 percent of the control group.

The next model, based in Philadelphia by the TWC, provided temporary jobs for the hard-to-employ while providing assistance with job searching, job readiness instruction, and preparation for the General Educational Development Exam and other similar classes. The program required participants to attend a mandatory two-week orientation before being placed in a transitional job, usually within the government or a nonprofit agency at minimum wage. These individuals were required to work 25 hours a week while participating in 10 hours of professional development activities. After participants were able to secure a permanent job, TWC provided bonus payments for up to nine months.  Sixty-two percent of those randomly placed in the program enrolled and completed the two-week orientation, but only half actually worked in TWC transitional jobs. The participants that entered into a transitional job only worked for about 30 days over roughly eight weeks on average. While this model did not achieve long-term employment, TWC model was able to provide temporary relief through income and short-term employment to the disadvantaged.

The last evaluation conducted through Personal Roads to Individual Development and Employment Evaluation (PRIDE) in New York City proved to be the most successful in increasing employment. The model tested the effects of an employment strategy aimed at public assistance recipients with medical or mental health conditions that prevented them from participating in regular welfare-to-work activities and who are also ineligible for federal disability benefits. Initially, more than 2,600 single parents were assigned to participate in either the PRIDE group or the control group. PRIDE was able to increase employment throughout the four-year follow-up period by 5 percent in comparison to the control group. The data also suggests the PRIDE group was able to increase earnings for the participants involved by 22 percent in comparison to the control group. The major accomplishments of PRIDE was that it served more than 30,000 people, increased participation in both work experience and job search activities, and increased employment.

For state policymakers, the findings of this report suggest that programs aimed at improving the model of transitional jobs and other subsidized employment initiatives could serve not only to increase the success of programs aimed at increasing long-term employment but could also provide other needed assistance to the often hard to employ. Policymakers can help ensure more long-term employment by combining work-focused strategies with treatment or services since evidence supports these benefits more than using either strategy alone and can increase the opportunities for hard-to-employ individuals, especially those with disabilities and other medical conditions.

For results-based public policy strategies for reintegrating ex-offenders into the workforce visit PolicyforResults and read our report, Workforce Strategies for Reintegrating Ex Offenders. 

Public Safety and Public Spending: Asking the Wrong Question?

A Brookings Institution issue brief, More Prisoner Versus More Crime is The Wrong Question, by Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig addresses whether or not the debate around criminal justice has been framed by a false choice. The brief states that framing the incarceration debate as a tradeoff between public safety and public finance is far too narrow – and that in fact the best evidence suggests the prison population would be substantially reduced with negligible effects on crime rates.

The brief states that the research community has made significant gains in identifying the causal effects of crime-related policies, and establishing proven alternatives to prison for controlling crime. The recommendations listed in the report include:

• The resources currently dedicated to supporting long prison sentences should be reallocated to produce swifter, surer, but more moderate punishment. This approach includes hiring more police officers -we know now that chiefs using modern management techniques can make effective use of them.
• Increased alcohol excise taxes reduce not only alcohol abuse but also the associated crime at very little cost to anyone except the heaviest drinkers. Federal and state levies should be raised.
• Crime patterns and crime control are as much the result of private actions as public. The productivity of private-security efforts and private cooperation with law enforcement should be encouraged through government regulation and other incentives.
• While convicts typically lack work experience and skills, it has proven very difficult to increase the quality and quantity of their licit employment through job creation and traditional training, either before or after they become involved with criminal activity. More effective rehabilitation (and prevention) programs seek to develop non-academic ("social-cognitive") skills like self-control, planning, and empathy.
• Adding an element of coercion to social policy can also help reduce crime, including threatening probationers with swift, certain and mild punishments for illegal drug use, and compulsory schooling laws that force people to stay in school longer.

In an economic climate that requires an increased focus on making both effective and cost efficient policy decisions – informing policy with research is an important tool. It is ever more important to ask the right questions – in order to ensure that public policy is leading to the desired outcomes for children, families and community. Public safety is an important part of ensuring communities are places where children and families can thrive – and the policy decisions that can achieve that aim are much broader than are often addressed. By reviewing the research and making decisions that are both effective and cost efficient policymakers can address problems in ways that might allow for investment in other needed areas.

For state policy guidance that is grounded in research and based on today’s economic realities visit the Policymakers’ Corner on PolicyforResults.org.

HUD Director Encourages Public Housing Authorities to Grant Access to Ex-Offenders

Stable housing is crucial to the successful reintegration of ex-offenders into society, and both significantly impact family economic success.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan sent a letter to the directors of public housing authorities (PHAs) clarifying and reaffirming HUD’s position on the eligibility of individuals with criminal records for public housing. The letter, which was cosigned by Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing Sandra B. Henriquez, highlights the importance of housing stability for successful reentry into the community and prevention of recidivism. It clarified the two explicit bans on public housing occupancy—for individuals found to have manufacture or produced methamphetamine on the premises of federally assisted housing and for sex offenders subject to lifetime registration in a state’s sex offender registration program—while encouraging PHA directors to use their broad discretion “to allow ex-offenders to rejoin their families” in public housing.

Visit PolicyForResults to learn more about strategies to promote affordable housing. Also, visit our homepage to sign up for email updates on workforce strategies for integrating ex-offenders—coming soon!

Collateral Effects of Incarceration on the Economic Mobility of Ex-Offenders and their Families

With 2.3 million Americans behind bars and more than 2.7 million minor children with a parent incarcerated, it is imperative that policymakers understand the economic and social costs of incarceration for ex-offenders, their children and families, and communities.

A new report by The Pew Charitable Trust’s Economic Policy Group and the Pew Center on the States looks at the collateral costs of incarceration, most strikingly its effects on ex-offenders’ economic mobility. The report finds that incarceration reduces ex-offenders’ earnings by 40 percent and their time working by nine weeks annually. Such long-term earnings losses contribute to former inmates’ struggle to move from the bottom of the earnings distribution. Because more than half of all male inmates were the primary source of financial support for their children, according to the report, the economic consequences of incarceration significantly affect the economic security of ex-offenders’ children.

The report also highlights issues of racial equity regarding the collateral consequences of imprisonment, looking at the concentration of incarceration among African American men and its striking effects for their long-term economic success.

Visit our homepage to sign up for email updates--recommendations for results-based workforce strategies to support reintegrating ex-offenders are coming soon!

Virginia's Geriatric Prison

At the end of 2009, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction over 1,613,656 prisoners. This level of incarceration, which is the highest in our nation's history, has resulted in financial burdens and tough questions. How do correctional systems cater to elderly inmates and how will correctional systems evolve to meet the needs of an aging prison population? The article, “Caregiving Behind Bars: Correctional Officer Reports of Disability in Geriatric Prisoners,” concludes that correctional systems are not adequately prepared to properly treat geriatric prisoners.

A recent story in The Washington Post summarizes the experiences of inmates at Deerfield Correctional Center, Virginia’s only geriatric prison. The cost of housing an inmate at the 1,000 bed facility runs about $28,000 per year, in comparison to $19,000 at a medium security prison in Virginia. The geriatric facility provides services that are in high demand as evidenced by its long waitlist.

Such demand, particularly in Virginia, is partially related to the fact that the state maintains the lowest parole rate in the nation. In the near future, states will have to consider how they can better meet the needs of elderly prisoners and facilitate transitions to the community among those individuals that are released to reduce pressure on correctional systems. Louisiana recently rejected a measure that would have changed parole laws for elderly prisoners, while the Texas State Parole Board considers medical recommendations.

For a previous blog on reentry initiatives.