Practice Profile: Noncustodial Employment Programs for Individuals with Recent Criminal Records

Evidence Rating for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency | Multiple crime/offense types

Date: This profile was posted on August 26, 2014

This practice involves job training and career development for people with a recent criminal record in order to increase employment and reduce recidivism. These programs take place outside of the traditional custodial correctional setting, after they are released. The practice is rated Ineffective in reducing criminal behavior for participants in noncustodial employment training programs compared with those who did not participate.

Practice Goals/Services Provided

The employment services provided typically include job placement or job training components, although many programs also include life-skills training, educational services, or social service assistance. The core elements of job training can include career counseling, assistance with résumé preparation as well as filling out job applications, role-playing, and readiness training for job interviews. Their needs may vary. Some may have held a legitimate job before being incarcerated and need assistance only with finding an employer who will hire them, while others may require more employment services to help them enter the labor market.

Practice Theory

The goal of this practice is to reduce recently released individuals' recidivism by increasing their employment prospects. Longitudinal research of criminal careers and offending has shown that legitimate employment reduces reoffending following release from prison (Sampson and Laub 1993), and that having a criminal record adversely affects one’s employment opportunities (Bushway 1998). When considering the large number of incarcerated persons in the United States, the adverse effects of criminal history on employment prospects, and the potential benefits that legitimate employment has on future offending, noncustodial employment programs aim to improve the odds of successful reentry for many ex-prisoners as they reenter communities across the country.

Target Populations

The targets of these types of interventions are people in a noncustodial setting, typically either recently released from prison or having recent criminal histories that have brought them into contact with the justice system. Many of these programs were developed as part of U.S. Department of Labor initiatives that target the chronically unemployed or underemployed and aim to increase job readiness of populations who have been consistently identified as having weak ties to the labor market. Such programs include those funded under the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962, the Job Training Partnership Act, and Job Corps.

Meta-Analysis Snapshot
	Literature Coverage Dates	Number of Studies	Number of Study Participants
Meta Analysis 1	1978-1999	8	6000

Meta Analysis 1

Visher, Winterfield, and Coggeshall (2006) conducted a comprehensive search for studies to determine whether noncustodial employment programs for ex-prisoners or recently convicted people reduce recidivism, compared with a no-intervention group. To be included in the analysis, studies needed to have 1) examined the effectiveness of an employment training or job placement program in a noncustodial setting, 2) used a control group that received no treatment or treatment as usual, and 3) been completed during or after 1970 and were in English.

A comprehensive search was conducted, which included searching electronic databases, emailing with leading researchers, and reviewing bibliographies of published reviews and related literature. The search resulted in the inclusion of eight studies published between 1978 and 1999. The studies included published and unpublished evaluations of noncustodial employment programs. The individual program studies included ex-prisoners or people with a recent criminal history. All studies were randomized experiments, although the specific assignment procedures were not always clearly presented. While most of the studies had only adult participants, one study’s minimum age requirement was 16. No information was provided on the gender, or the racial/ethnic breakdown of the studies’ samples. The follow-up periods of the included studies ranged from 6 to 36 months.

The authors used inverse variance weights with a fixed-effects analysis. They also conducted a sensitivity analysis to ensure that no single effect size was biasing the results. The standard mean difference and the logged odds ratio were used as the effect size estimates. Once the effect size estimate from each experiment was calculated for recidivism, the overall mean effect size estimate, along with the corresponding confidence intervals, and a weight effect size estimate were calculated.