EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

T R A N S I T I O N A L J O B S P R O G R A M

Transitional jobs programPutting employment-based reentry programsinto context

Robert ApelR u t g e r s U n i v e r s i t y

Employment is a major point of intervention in an offender’s criminal career, and

employment-based reentry programs have obvious appeal as a policy lever intendedto slow the “revolving door” of prison. Indeed, both President George W. Bush and

President Barack Obama advocated for federal funding of prisoner reentry initiatives that

include employment training provisions—a clear illustration that resolving the employment

challenges faced by ex-prisoners is a decidedly bipartisan issue. The astounding scaleof contemporary prisoner reentry—several hundred thousand individuals leave prisons

annually, not to mention more than one million additional individuals who leave jails—

means that a very large number of individuals will invariably return to the community and

experience difficulty finding and maintaining stable employment. This issue has importantimplications from the standpoint of public safety because recidivism studies routinely

find that ex-prisoners who maintain stable employment are significantly less likely to be

rearrested.Employment is therefore strongly linked with criminal desistance—both theoretically

and empirically. Disappointingly, evaluations of employment-based reentry programs

suggest that they tend to yield minimal impacts on the employment and recidivism prospects

of targeted individuals (see Bushway and Reuter, 2004). Yet the authors of one of the mostrecent meta-analyses of employment programs for ex-prisoners lamented the absence of

programs inspired by contemporary thinking regarding the best practices in correctional

intervention (Visher, Winterfield, and Coggeshall, 2005). The unambiguous conclusion

Direct correspondence to Robert Apel, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, 123 Washington Street,Newark, NJ 07102 (e-mail: robert.apel@rutgers.edu).

DOI:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00781.x C© 2011 American Society of Criminology 939Criminology & Public Policy � Volume 10 � Issue 4

Editor ia l Introduction Transit ional Jobs Program

is that a great need exists for the development and evaluation of modern, innovative

employment programs.

A comprehensive employment-based reentry program must have a dual focus on theemployment and employability of ex-prisoners. Although employment per se—the “give ‘em

a job” approach to reentry that characterizes subsidized work programs—is an essential

part of any viable reentry strategy, it must be supplemented by efforts to strengthen the

work orientation and work readiness of ex-prisoners. Programs that focus solely on jobprovision and search assistance, in the absence of a skills component, have a poor track

record of success in improving the employment and recidivism prospects of ex-prisoners (see

Bushway and Reuter, 2004). The emphasis on employability is especially important in light

of findings from the National Supported Work Demonstration that, among participantswho were recently incarcerated, 33 percent were fired from their program job, and another

20 percent were terminated for other negative reasons such as reinstitutionalization (MDRC,

1980).

Transitional work programs are a very promising avenue for employment-based reentryprogramming. These programs combine job provision and search assistance with skills

training and a variety of other support services (for a broad overview of transitional work

programs, see Bloom, 2010). Transitional work programs thus have the necessary dual focus

on employment and employability, providing for temporary, subsidized work augmentedby mentoring in the “soft skills” that can help ex-prisoners anticipate and meet the demands

of the workplace.

The subject of the article by Janine Zweig, Jennifer Yahner, and Cindy Redcross (2011,

this issue)—the New York City-based Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO)—isan example of an innovative approach to the design of a transitional work program (see also

Redcross, Bloom, Azurdia, Zweig, and Pindus, 2009). The CEO program is comprehensive

indeed. After referral by a parole officer, the program begins with a 4-day job readiness class.

This is followed by assignment to a subsidized, minimum wage job in the public sector(e.g., building maintenance and cleaning at city and state agencies) with a supervised work

crew. During the subsidized work period, 4 days each week are spent at the worksite, and

on the fifth day of each work week, participants meet with office-based CEO staff for job

coaching and other support services, including counseling that focuses on child supportand family relationships. When he or she is deemed “job ready,” the participant is assigned

to a job developer who matches the ex-prisoner with a permanent position. Finally, for the

first year of unsubsidized employment, the parolee is eligible to receive ongoing support

and employment incentives.What is perplexing about the CEO evaluation is that, although the program

significantly reduced the probability of recidivism during the first 2 years (for program

participants compared with controls who were given only search assistance, but they also

were eligible to seek non-CEO employment assistance), these reductions apparently didnot develop because participants were more successful at acquiring an unsubsidized job. No

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Apel

significant program effects on employment outcomes were found after the subsidized work

period, for which we have several plausible explanations. One distinct possibility, considered

by Zweig et al. (2011) in the current study, is that the program participants were decidedlyheterogeneous and therefore not equally likely to benefit from what the program had to

offer. Specifically, their analysis reveals that the highest risk ex-prisoners—generally, those

who were younger and had more extensive arrest histories—were the sole beneficiaries of

the CEO program effects with respect to recidivism reduction.To situate the findings within the broader context of correctional interventions, Latessa

(2011, this issue) and Gaes and Bales (2011, this issue) in their policy essays build on

insights rooted in the “risks, needs, responsivity” (RNR) model, focusing especially on the

risk principle (Andrews and Bonta, 2010; Andrews, Bonta, and Hoge, 1990). As implied bythe terminology, the risk principle concerns the identification of the characteristics that put

certain individuals at higher risk of criminal recidivism relative to others, and the targeting

of such individuals for the most intensive supervision and intervention. As observed by

these essayists, the finding that the CEO program effects were limited to the highest riskoffenders is actually anticipated by the RNR model. Moreover, both essayists caution that,

although the differences were not statistically significant, the CEO program potentially had

a perverse impact on recidivism among the lowest risk ex-prisoners, a result also anticipated

by the RNR model.The fact that hundreds of thousands of people leave the nation’s prisons each year

lends urgency to a renewal of innovative programming designed to ease their transition

back into the community. Employment-based reentry programs such as CEO are central

to such efforts, and steps taken to understand for whom—and why—these programs areeffective will yield dividends for future reentry policy. I, for one, remain optimistic that

such efforts will bear fruit by improving the lives of ex-prisoners, reducing their burden on

the criminal justice system, and protecting society at large.

ReferencesAndrews, Don A. and James A. Bonta. 2010. The Psychology of Criminal Conduct,

5th edition. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.

Andrews, Don A., James A. Bonta, and Robert D. Hoge. 1990. Classification for effectiverehabilitation: Rediscovering psychology. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 17: 19–52.

Bloom, Dan. 2010. Transitional Jobs: Background, Program Models, and EvaluationEvidence. Unpublished manuscript. New York: MDRC. Retrieved September 21,2011 from mdrc.org/publications/553/full.pdf .

Bushway, Shawn and Peter Reuter. 2004. Labor markets and crime. In (James Q. Wilson andJoan Petersilia, eds.), Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control . Oakland, CA: Institutefor Contemporary Studies.

Gaes, Gerry G. and William D. Bales. 2011. Deconstructing the risk principle: Addressingsome remaining questions. Criminology & Public Policy. This issue.

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Latessa, Edward. 2011. Why the risk and needs principles are relevant to correctionalprograms (even to employment programs). Criminology & Public Policy. This issue.

Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation [MDRC]. 1980. Summary and Findingsof the National Supported Work Demonstration. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

Redcross, Cindy, Dan Bloom, Gilda Azurdia, Janine Zweig, and Nancy Pindus. 2009.Transitional Jobs for Ex-Prisoners: Implementation, Two-Year Impacts, and Costs of theCenter for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program. New York:MDRC. Retrieved September 21, 2011 from mdrc.org/publications/529/full.pdf .

Visher, Christy A., Laura Winterfield, and Mark B. Coggeshall. 2005. Ex-offender employ-ment programs and recidivism: A meta-analysis. Journal of Experimental Criminology,1: 295–315.

Zweig, Janine, Jennifer Yahner, and Cindy Redcross. 2011. For whom does a transitionaljobs program work? Examining the recidivism effects of the Center for EmploymentOpportunities program on former prisoners at high, medium, and low risk ofreoffending. Criminology & Public Policy. This issue.

Robert Apel received his Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice from the University of

Maryland in 2004, and is currently Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justiceat Rutgers University. His research specialties include employment and criminal behavior,

incarceration and employment, and violent victimization and injury.

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