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Introduction
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) is one of four sites in the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. The overall project is evaluating diverse strategies designed to improve employment and other outcomes for several hard-to-employ populations. MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social and education policy research organization, is leading the evaluation, in collaboration with the Urban Institute and other partners.
Based in New York City, CEO was included in the Hard-to-Employ study because it is a comprehensive employment program for former prisoners — a population confronting many obstacles to finding and maintaining work — and because it has a special focus on parenting and child support issues for participants who have children. The other three sites in the Hard-to-Employ Project are targeting Medicaid recipients with serious depression, Early Head Start parents and children, and long-term welfare recipients.
The Prisoner Reentry Crisis
There has been a tremendous increase in incarceration over the past three decades. Consequently, unprecedented numbers of prisoners are being released each year: four times as many prisoners were released in 2004 as in 1980. Ex-prisoners face a range of challenges to successful reentry into the community, and rates of recidivism are high. Within three years of release, two-thirds are arrested and more than half return to prison or jail.1 Many individuals are in and out of prison or jail multiple times for the same original offense, meaning they were reincarcerated for a violation of parole. Over one-third of prison admissions each year are for parole violations.2 The large number of former prisoners who fail to reintegrate and who end up back in prison costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Expenditures on corrections by state governments were estimated to be more than $40 billion in 2005.3
Prisoner reentry also has direct effects on families and children. More than half of reentering adults have children under 18 years old, and more than ten million children in the U.S. have a parent who was in prison at some point in their children’s lives.4 Not surprisingly, long periods of incarceration can be detrimental to family ties and can alienate the recently released parent from his or her children. Aside from the prolonged effects on children’s well-being, diminished bonds with family can seriously hinder the likelihood of successful reentry.5 There are also increased financial burdens on families, many of whom were relying on public assistance prior to a parent being incarcerated. Research has shown that as many as 44 percent of the caregivers of children with an incarcerated parent report receiving public assistance.6 Furthermore, upon release nearly one-third of former prisoners expect their families to depend on public assistance.7
Work seems to be a key ingredient in determining the success or failure of former prisoners’ transition back to society. Studies have shown a correlation between higher employment and lower recidivism, particularly for older former prisoners.8 Positive employment outcomes can help pave the way to better housing conditions and improved relations within the family and community. Moreover, employment may help ex-prisoners feel more connected to mainstream society and help move them away from criminal activity.
Unfortunately, finding a steady job upon release is a major challenge for this population. Many employers are reluctant to hire someone with a prison record.9 In a survey of 3,000 employers, two-thirds reported that they would not knowingly hire a former prisoner.10 Most recently released people also have other attributes, such as low educational attainment and limited work history, that make them less appealing to potential employers, and they may have competing demands from drug treatment programs and curfews or other restrictions on mobility that can further exacerbate the problem of finding and keeping full-time employment.
Well-rounded employment services for former prisoners may be critical to ensuring better post-release outcomes. While there are many community programs that aim to provide these needed supports, few operate on a large scale and little is known about how effective they are. CEO in New York City is one of the nation’s largest and most highly regarded employment programs for formerly incarcerated people.
The Center for Employment Opportunities
Developed by the Vera Institute of Justice in the 1970s, CEO has operated as an independent nonprofit corporation since 1996. Each year, CEO serves an average of 2,000 parolees who are returning to the community from prison.
Participants start the program with a four-day Life Skills class focusing on job readiness issues, such as workplace behavior, job search skills, and decision-making. CEO makes sure that each participant has all of the official identification and documents necessary for employment. Participants are then placed in transitional jobs at one of 30 to 40 worksites around the city through CEO’s Neighborhood Work Project (NWP). The worksites are public agencies that have secured CEO’s services through the New York State Division of Parole to perform work for their agencies. Participants work four days per week at the state minimum wage, and they are paid at the end of each day. CEO uses the transitional period to identify issues that are likely to hinder the participants’ performance in an unsubsidized, permanent job; staff work with participants to address these issues.
Participants spend the fifth day of each week in the main CEO office meeting with job coaches to discuss work performance and to prepare for interviewing, as well as meeting with job developers to discuss permanent employment opportunities:
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Job coaching. The role of the CEO job coach is to assess and promote “job readiness” for each NWP participant. Job coaches teach the Life Skills classes, track participants’ attendance and performance at NWP worksites, communicate with parole officers, and, where appropriate, issue warnings and suspensions to participants. An important aspect of a job coach’s responsibilities is to identify and address any issues needed to make an individual ready for permanent employment. Job coaches do this through weekly meetings with participants and through communications with worksite supervisors. Ultimately, it is the job coach who decides when a participant is deemed “job ready” and prepared to work with a job developer to seek a permanent job. For most of the study period, job coaches were also responsible for following up with participants after they had been placed in permanent jobs to try to promote employment retention.
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Job development. Once a program participant is deemed “job ready,” job developers conduct an initial assessment of the participant and begin the process of matching the participant with a permanent job. Job developers build relationships with employers in order to identify openings and match participants with those jobs. Job developers typically prepare participants for a specific interview and, in some cases, will accompany the participant to an interview. Job development is a particularly valuable service because CEO has identified dozens of employers who are willing to hire individuals with criminal records.
Participants can also spend this fifth day participating in other activities, such as an extensive fatherhood program that works on child support issues (such as helping to reduce their current child support orders) and improving family relationships (at least half the study participants are parents and their children may be receiving welfare benefits).
CEO made several enhancements to its program during the study period, such as creating special worksites for new enrollees, developing a system of non-cash incentives to reward retention in unsubsidized employment, and deploying specialized job retention workers. These enhancements are still operating today. The study results reported here may not fully reflect any effects generated by these programmatic changes, however, because they were not in place when the study began.
1 Langan and Levin (2002). (back)
3 National Association of State Budget Officers (2006). (back)
4 Hirsch et al. (2002). (back)
5 Visher et al. (2004). (back)
6 Travis and Waul (2004). (back)
7 Reentry Policy Council (2005). (back)
8 Harer (1994); Uggen (2000). (back)
10 Holzer, Raphael, and Stoll (2004). (back)
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