Employment Programs to Support Reentry: Findings from the Reentry Project Grant Evaluation
Reentry Projects Grant Evaluation: Serving Justice Involved Adults and Young Adults
Prepared for:
U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Chief Evaluation Office
- Grantees struggled to enroll and retain participants, especially young adults, and to provide intensive services as intended. Many programs intended to offer work-based learning experiences, but few participants received those services: while 72 percent of participants received education or training services, and 43 percent received occupational skills training, only 2.3 percent received on-the-job training.
- Compared to Wagner-Peyser participants with similar demographics and criminal justice backgrounds, Reentry Project participants had a were 5.1 percentage points more likely to have a new criminal conviction in the 10 quarters after program entry
- Reentry Projects participants were also 4.1 percentage points less likely to be employed than comparison group members in the 9th and 10th quarters after enrollment and earned $693 less on average during that period.
- The estimated impacts of Reentry Projects participation were highest among individuals with the least serious pre-program criminal justice involvement. Reentry Projects participants in this group may have had systematically higher unobservable pre-program incarceration rates than otherwise similar Wagner-Peyser participants, leading to biased estimates.
In 2017, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with ETA and funded contractor Mathematica along with Social Policy Research Associates to conduct the Reentry Projects Grant Program Evaluation. The impact evaluation aims to evaluate the impact of Reentry Project programs on the criminal justice involvement, earnings, and employments of participants.
Building on DOL’s prior reentry efforts, the Reentry Project grant program encouraged organizations to implement comprehensive reentry programs to support justice-involved adults and young adults to successfully engage in their communities and avoid committing future criminal acts. Grantees offered an array of services, including career preparedness, employment-focused services, and case management. DOL encouraged grantees to draw on evidence-informed or promising practices around employment-focused services. These practices included building programs within major industries open to hiring justice-involved individuals, such as manufacturing, culinary, and hospitality programs. The Reentry Project program, funded by the DOL, Employment and Training Administration, awarded 36- to 39-month grants to 116 grantees between 2017 and 2019. These grants totaled almost $243 million.
The evaluation contributes to the labor evidence-base to inform reentry, data, methods, and tools, employment and training, and equity programs and policies and addresses Departmental strategic goals and priorities.
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