The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The jobs are arranged by a Chicago charity, the Safer Foundation, which works with current and former prisoners. Offering transitional jobs like these — immediate, closely supervised work and help finding permanent employment — is a growing tactic in the effort to usher felons back to society and curb recidivism. Now the effectiveness of this approach is about to be tested scientifically for the first time.

Starting in January, the employment and recidivism rates of 2,000 newly released male prisoners, all with similar histories of little work and poor schooling, will be studied in Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Chicago.

Half of the men will receive more limited aid: instruction in work behavior, résumé preparation and other employment skills and help looking for a job. The other half will get those services and also a few months of temporary work in places like the recycling plant here — a chance for them to get into the unfamiliar rhythms of a regular job.

The experiment, which will track the two groups over three years, is being sponsored by the Joyce Foundation in Chicago and directed by the Manpower Development Research Corporation in New York, which specializes in scientific studies of poverty programs.

Separately, the research group is conducting a controlled study of the transitional jobs program at the Center for Employment Opportunities in New York, which provides maintenance crews for public facilities and has been a national model.

“If you ask inmates what they want most, they want a job,” said Mindy Tarlow, executive director of the center in New York. “But they don’t know what that means.”

She added, “What we’re competing with is making some money at night on a street corner instead of having to show up somewhere at 8 a.m. every day.”

Despite the apparent promise of transitional jobs, questions remain about their long-term effectiveness that the study hopes to address.

Are those who last through these programs such a select group — so motivated to change — that they would succeed anyway, or can well-timed help turn others around, too?

Can work-site counseling, sobriety meetings and a strong dose of mainstream work overcome the criminal pull of old haunts and friends?

And more fundamentally: will people with low skills, even if they adapt to steady work, ever make wages high enough to support a family and stifle the temptation to return to crime?

Roberto Reyes, a 36-year-old high school dropout in Chicago who has served seven years on burglary, gun and drug charges, works the conveyer belt at a recycling plant that is run for the city by Allied Waste Services.

Mr. Reyes has labored at the plant for four months, the longest he has held a job. “The money here is not that much, but it’s better than nothing,” he said. “Sometimes you wake up and don’t want to come to work, but I’m not going to leave this until I find another job. I knew I couldn’t just keep going on with that lifestyle and see life pass me by.”

Mr. Reyes’s determination is evident, but the numbers and records of people in his situation are daunting.

In Chicago, more than 20,000 prisoners come home from state facilities each year. Fifty-four percent are re-incarcerated within three years for new crimes or parole violations — a tale of wasted lives and victimized communities that is repeated nationwide among more than 600,000 prisoners that are released annually.

While common sense, and prisoners themselves, say that employment is vital to an honest new life, the obstacles are huge. A majority of those leaving prison did not finish high school and have little legitimate work experience. Many have serious drug or psychological problems that must be treated before they can hold a regular job. And while transitional programs may acclimatize them to the time-clock world of the workplace, many are likely to remain stuck in low-end jobs anyway.

Those who work with prisoners say that enticing onetime thugs to give work a try is not always as hard as it sounds. “They tell us that what comes with the street life is looking over your shoulder all the time,” said Diane Williams, president of the Safer Foundation. One key, she said, seems to be getting released prisoners into work quickly, when the desire to normalize their lives is strongest.

Jimmy Parker, 24, was in and out of prison and hustling until six months ago when he decided, as he put it, “enough is enough.”

“This job is rough, but I’m trying to change my life around,” he said during a break at another recycling site run by Allied. “I’ve accomplished one thing — I got my own studio apartment — and someday I want to get custody of my daughter.”

The Safer Foundation has eight employees who search for companies willing to hire former prisoners. Allied Waste’s experience with such workers has been positive, said Robert Kalebich, general manager for the company in Chicago. Safer keeps a full-time “job coach” at each work site to advise workers and deal with disputes.

“If anything we see an advantage in this arrangement,” Mr. Kalebich said. “If we hire off the street we have to wonder are they trained, are they here legally, are they properly drug tested.”

Raphael Carter served drug time when he was 18, stayed out for nearly a decade, then found himself in prison again. “I woke up and said, I can’t do this anymore, it’s a dead end road,” he recalled, adding that he now has two children, 13 and 6, who depend on him.

“You have to weigh the options, would you rather go back to jail or get a little increment of money and see your kids,” said Mr. Carter, 30, who lives with his girlfriend and her four children. “Being older, I made the right choice.”

He worked for six months at the recycling job, then found a chance in a nearby city driving a forklift for the attractive wage of $11.60 an hour. But his car broke down once too often during the hour and a half drive to work, he said, and he was let go.

Now he works for a company that erects large party tents, a seasonal job at $8.50 an hour, and he is consulting the Safer listings for a permanent job.

“By myself I wouldn’t have had any of these opportunities,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/us/01reentry.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company