The Center for Employment Opportunities, (C.E.O.) is a New York organization that specializes in helping ex-offenders find and keep jobs. The most interesting and successful program C.E.O. offers is called Transitional Jobs, and it is not your usual fare.
Just take a look at the MDRC evaluation of the program. The findings are astounding! Among those who began participating within three months of their release from prison the program reduced recidivism by between 16 and 22 percent when compared to a random control group. (The variance in percentages is based on whether you examine arrests, convictions or incarceration.)
The New York Times reported on the program recently on one of it’s blogs:
The program sends ex-prisoners to five days of training in “soft” work skills — how to behave in a workplace. Then it places them in jobs, mostly in city agencies doing maintenance or janitorial work. Participants get a paycheck at the end of each day. They work four days a week, and on day five meet in C.E.O.’s offices with a job coach to go over their grades for the week and work on their skills. The idea is to give the men some job history, basic work skills and grades that allow prospective employers to assess their work readiness.
Basic work skills are essential, but I think the focus on how to interact in the workplace is one of the surprising strengths of the program. That sort of education is vital, especially in the cases of those who may have never before been part of the conventional workforce.
The impact was greatest among the people with the highest risk of re-offending: the youngest, those with the least education or the most past convictions, and those most recently released from prison. (Recidivism is highest the first year out of prison, and then drops; in a few years, a former prisoner’s risk of committing a new crime is no different from that of others of the same age.)
On the national level two-thirds of all released prisoners are arrested again within three years. Programs that can reduce that percentage are desperately needed.
As always, one can look at the numbers for validation. It costs over $27,000 per year to incarcerate each inmate in New York State. The evaluation of the C.E.O.’s program that I linked at the beginning of this post notes that the program’s benefits ranged from $1.26 to $3.85 per dollar spent. In other words it saved approximately $4,900 per participant over the course of a year.
It must be noted that a sizable portion of those savings came from averted costs of incarceration. That said, even if you look only at the recently released – the target demographic for the Transitional Jobs program – the savings come out to an impressive $8,300 per person.
Since 25,000 people are released back into the general public in New York every year it is easy to see just how massive an impact programs like this can make.
It is, indeed, more expensive to do nothing.
[…] and savings of up to $3.85 per dollar spent were commended by George Williams in the blog entry “Transitional Jobs: Reducing Recidivism 16 to 22 percent” on the Human Exposures […]
Are there programs like this one in other cities, like Chicago? If so can you give me the info please.