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Ready4Work

This year, 750,000 prison inmates and juvenile detainees will be released from secure detention facilities and returned to their communities and families—a fact that has disturbing consequences for the children, families and neighborhoods to which ex-prisoners return. Many returnees go back home without solid attachments to their families or communities or, most certainly, to jobs.

To compound the problem, returning ex-prisoners are concentrated in some of the nation's most disadvantaged neighborhoods, where there are few supports and services to help them reintegrate effectively, and where their presence may threaten to disrupt already fragile households and social structures. Statistics show that almost three in five returning inmates will be charged with new crimes within three years of their release from prison; and two in five will be reincarcerated. These numbers suggest that the majority of ex-prisoners will return to criminal activity, contributing to the presence of violence and crime in already struggling neighborhoods—and placing a strain on local, state and federal budgets that are already stretched thin.

In an effort to address these issues, P/PV created Ready4Work: An Ex-Prisoner, Community and Faith Initiative. Funded by US Departments of Labor and Justice the Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations, this three-year national demonstration project was implemented in 17 sites, where programs were developed to help local community- and faith-based organizations support the reentry and reintegration of ex-prisoners (both adults and juveniles) into their communities. P/PV helped the lead organizations at each Ready4Work site to build effective partnerships among local faith, criminal justice, business and social service communities. These partnerships provided services—including case management, job training and placement, mentoring and education—to nearly 5,000 participants.

Outcomes from the initiative have been impressive, including recidivism rates 34 to 50 percent below national averages. Our findings further indicate that mentoring, in conjunction with intensive case management and employment services, may offer a promising approach for helping previously incarcerated individuals reintegrate into their communities.

The operational component of the Ready4Work demonstration concluded in late 2006. Since this time, P/PV has worked to transform the lessons learned from Ready4Work's employment and life coaching (mentoring) components into implementation manuals, as well as to provide technical assistance to cities, city task forces and selected organizations (see, for example, the Maryland Opportunity Public Safety Compact, the Newark Reentry Initiative and the Community Reentry Initiative for Baltimore Empowerment Zone Residents).

For more information on this initiative, please contact Lorelei Walters at lwalters@ppv.org .

PUBLICATIONS

Mentoring Former Prisoners: A Guide for Reentry Programs

by Renata Cobbs Fletcher and Jerry Sherk with Linda Jucovy
November 2009, 90 pages

Few social programs have attempted to provide high-risk adults—and, particularly, former prisoners—with mentors. And thus there are few resources that offer practical advice and recommendations for mentoring this population, given its distinct needs, assets and challenges. While much remains to be tested and learned, this manual draws on the experience of the 11 sites involved in P/PV's Ready4Work prisoner reentry demonstration, as well as established best practices in the mentoring field, to provide guidelines for practitioners who are interested in developing a mentoring program to support former prisoners and enhance the effectiveness of other reentry services, such as employment and case management services.

The guide was originally published by the US Department of Labor in November 2007 under the title Mentoring Ex-Prisoners: A Guide for Prisoner Reentry Programs. However, because of growing interest in establishing mentoring programs as part of larger reentry efforts around the country, P/PV decided to reissue the guide, along with updated information related to P/PV's evaluation of Ready4Work (particularly findings published in Mentoring Formerly Incarcerated Adults, 2009.)

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Mentoring Formerly Incarcerated Adults: Insights from the Ready4Work Reentry Initiative

by Shawn Bauldry, Danijela Korom Djakovic, Wendy S. McClanahan, Jennifer McMaken and Laurie Kotloff
January 2009, 38 pages

This report explores mentoring as a tool for supporting the successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals within the context of a larger reentry strategy—in this case, the Ready4Work model. Ready4Work was a three-year national demonstration designed to address the needs of the growing ex-prisoner population and to test the capacity of community- and faith-based organizations to meet those needs. This report describes Ready4Work's mentoring component; it examines the extent to which mentoring was attractive to participants, the types of adults who volunteered to serve as mentors and how receipt of mentoring was related to participants' outcomes, including program retention, job placement and recidivism. While this research was not designed to assess the precise impact of mentoring on formerly incarcerated adults, it provides a first look at how mentoring, or supportive relationships more broadly, can fit into comprehensive reentry efforts.

Hard Copy Price: $5.00

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Ready4Work In Brief: Update on Outcomes; Reentry May Be Critical for States, Cities

by Chelsea Farley and Wendy S. McClanahan
May 2007, 5 pages

This issue of P/PV In Brief provides updated data from the Ready4Work prisoner reentry initiative, with a focus on the prison crisis occurring in many cities and states. While much more research is needed to understand the true, long-term impact of prisoner reentry initiatives, outcomes from Ready4Work were extremely promising in terms of education, employment and program retention, with recidivism rates among Ready4Work participants 34 to 50 percent below the national average.

Funded by the US Department of Labor and the Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations, Ready4Work was a three-year national demonstration project designed to address the needs of the growing ex-prisoner population and to test the capacity of community- and faith-based organizations to meet those needs. Ready4Work programs provided employment services, case management and mentoring in 11 adult sites around the country (data from seven juvenile sites are being analyzed separately).

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Call to Action: How Programs in Three Cities Responded to the Prisoner Reentry Crisis

by Paul VanDeCarr
March 2007, 48 pages

Call to Action chronicles how individuals, community organizations, faith institutions, businesses and officials mobilized to build partnerships to address escalating numbers of ex-prisoners returning to their communities. The three cities highlighted in this report, Jacksonville, FL; Memphis, TN; and Washington, D.C., were pioneers in responding to the nation's prisoner reentry crisis. They developed impressive programs and eventually joined P/PV's Ready4Work initiative.

In the report's foreword, former P/PV President Fred Davie and Vice President for Youth Connections and Reentry Renata Cobbs Fletcher argue: The experiences of Ready4Work sites highlights the need for more collective and integrated approaches to prisoner reentry "across cities, regions and states; public and private resources and funding streams need to be redirected, pooled and put to use in more strategic, cost-effective and outcomes-driven efforts. Research findings that show promise for specific program strategies must be at the center of these partnerships, guiding dialogue as well as the design of initiatives and program evaluations."

Hard Copy Price: $5.00

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P/PV Preview: Mentoring Ex-Prisoners in the Ready4Work Reentry Initiative

by Wendy S. McClanahan
March 2007, 4 pages

Promoting successful reentry for ex-prisoners is a critical issue facing individuals, families, communities and governments across the country. This brief presents findings from a forthcoming report on the mentoring component of the Ready4Work prisoner reentry initiative.

Ready4Work participants who met with a mentor remained in the program longer, were twice as likely to obtain a job and were more likely to stay employed than participants who did not meet with a mentor. The report's authors conclude that while mentoring alone is not enough, supportive relationships—which can be fostered through mentoring programs—should be considered a core component of any reentry strategy.

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Ready4Work In Brief

by Chelsea Farley and Sandra Hackman
September 2006, 5 pages

This issue of P/PV In Brief reviews interim outcomes from the Ready4Work prisoner reentry initiative. Funded by the US Department of Labor and the Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations, Ready4Work is a three-year national demonstration project designed to address the needs of the growing ex-prisoner population and to test the capacity of community- and faith-based organizations to meet those needs. Ready4Work programs are providing employment services, case management and mentoring in 11 adult sites around the country (data from seven juvenile sites are being analyzed separately). Interim outcomes from the initiative are extremely encouraging, with almost 60 percent of participants becoming employed and the majority of them staying employed for three or more consecutive months. Even more striking, recidivism rates for Ready4Work participants are considerably lower than those reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics for a similar population.

Hard Copy Price: $1.00

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Just Out: Early Lessons from the Ready4Work Prisoner Reentry Initiative

by Linda Jucovy
February 2006, 27 pages

Just Out examines the early implementation of Ready4Work, a three-year national prisoner reentry demonstration project funded by the US Departments of Labor and Justice and the Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations. The report focuses on emerging best practices in four key program areas. While P/PV provided the basic program design to the 17 lead organizations participating in the project, each site was given creative latitude to build programs unique to their own organizations, resources, partnerships and missions. Through this work, many innovative and promising approaches to effective prisoner reentry emerged, as did challenges for which solutions were sought. Just Out focuses on Ready4Work's 11 adult sites (the other six sites serve juvenile offenders). It offers practical advice about recruitment, case management, mentoring and employment, and documents early lessons in this growing area of study, policy and advocacy.

Hard Copy Price: $5.00

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When the Gates Open: Ready4Work, A National Response to the Prisoner Reentry Crisis

by Joshua Good and Pamela Sherrid
October 2005, 32 pages

When the Gates Open describes the emergence of Ready4Work, a 17-site, national prisoner reentry initiative developed by P/PV. The report outlines the project's basic goals and design and examines how it is directly confronting the nation's reentry crisis by drawing on local faith- and community-based organizations to provide job training, mentoring, case management and job placement services.

The report documents a rare partnership among the business, government, community and faith sectors, as they come together to confront alarmingly high incarceration and recidivism rates. It describes key start-up and implementation challenges and, using early outcomes data, touches on a number of promising practices for future reentry efforts.

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Links



FASTEN The FASTEN website (Faith and Service Technical Education Network) provides news and resources for faith-based organizations as part of its effort to strengthen and support faith-based social services, especially in distressed urban communities. Hard Road Home Hard Road Home, an Emmy-nominated documentary, explores the challenges and successes of participants and staff at the Ready4Work program site in Harlem (Exodus Transitional Community). Mentoring Ex-Prisoners: A Guide for Prisoner Reentry Programs Drawing on the experience of sites in the Ready4Work initiative, P/PV prepared this manual for the Department of Labor to provide guidelines for practitioners interested in developing a mentoring component as part of their larger reentry program. Ready4Reentry: Prisoner Reentry Toolkit for Faith-Based and Community Organizations P/PV helped develop this toolkit for the Department of Labor based on our experience with the Ready4Work program model; it aims to provide guidance to faith-based and community organizations interested in starting or bolstering their reentry efforts.