As part of the Marriage and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Reentering Fathers and their Partners (MFS-IP), twelve grantees received funding from the Office of Family Assistance to implement activities to support and sustain marriages and families of fathers during and after incarceration. Grantees also provided reentry, parenting, education, and employment services. The evaluation includes publications such as research briefs, reviews of promising practices, and implementation data.

Many survivors of domestic violence have criminal records due to coerced criminal acts experienced at the hands of their partner. Survivors with a criminal record face significant challenges in accessing employment and achieving economic security. This tool is designed to help survivors better understand their employment rights, and offers tips and resources as they prepare for the job search process.

This paper, produced by SAFER Foundation and the Council of Advisors to Reduce Recidivism through Employment, identifies and examines barriers – direct and indirect – to post-release employment of women. Here, the authors explore the interrelated issues of family life and children, housing, relationships, stigma, and substance abuse/recovery as they relate to female reentry and employment. Additionally, the authors offer recommendations for programming and policy changes to bolster outcomes in each issue area.

This series of briefs outlines criminal justice changes in the last 20 years and discusses implications for female offenders. The briefing sheets in this series include: Women in the Criminal Justice System: An Overview; Involvement in Crime; Mothers in Prison; Inadequacies in Prison Services; and Barriers to Re-entering the Community. Each of the aforementioned topics is explored, as related to female offenders and issues resulting from incarceration: family, socioeconomic status, physical and mental health, housing, education, and employment.

Many programs within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) work with incarcerated individuals and individuals with a criminal history to promote economic self-sufficiency and social well-being for them, their families, and communities. ACF programs also implement research and evaluation programs designed to improve the understanding of how to serve those individuals most effectively. This brief highlights some of those projects and programs.

This report provides early implementation findings from a study of six Responsible Fatherhood Reentry grantees that provide soon-to-be and recently-released fathers and their families with an array of activities and services in responsible fatherhood/parenting, healthy marriage/relationships, and economic stability. The goals of the programs are to help stabilize fathers and their families, move the fathers toward self-sufficiency, and reduce recidivism.

This report from the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) examines the implementation of OCTAE's correctional education reentry model at three demonstration sites: Barton Community College in Kansas, Lancaster Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 in Pennsylvania, and Western Technical College in Wisconsin. It also identifies lessons for linking facility-based and community-based reentry education programs. The study showed that focusing on transitions in and out of correctional facilities and providing career pathways programs may significantly enable incarcerated individuals to continue their education and prepare for better jobs.

This report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) addresses the significant impact of the criminal justice system, both on individuals directly challenged in employment searches, and also on the U.S. labor market and economy as a whole. Over 70 million American adults have a criminal record that may show up in a background check. This number disproportionately impacts people of color, especially in communities already disadvantaged by unemployment. Now, with the job market making a recovery after the recession, an opportunity exists to adopt and implement effective strategies to expand employment outcomes for people with criminal backgrounds and reduce the number of people caught in the criminal justice system.

The Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts has released this report, which presents the results of a study of three geographically diverse teen courts in Maryland. The study found that youth in each jurisdiction who completed a teen court program had fewer instances of recidivism than youth who did not complete the program.

Launched in 2010, the Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration evaluation from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration evaluation from the Department of Labor are studying 13 subsidized employment programs in 10 locations across the United States. The programs encompass three broad categories: Modified Transitional Jobs Models, Wage Subsidy Models, and Hybrid Models.

The goal of these complementary large-scale projects is to evaluate the effectiveness of the latest generation of subsidized employment models that aim to improve participants’ long-term success in the labor market. This report introduces the projects and presents some preliminary findings about implementation of the demonstrations. (author abstract)