Pathway Home Evaluation Brief: 2021 Grants at a Glance
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Pathway Home Evaluation Brief: 2021 Grants at a Glance

Published: Aug 01, 2023
Publisher: Mathematica
Human Services Employment Justice Criminal Justice Labor: Strengthening and Disseminating Research Reentry Federal Research and Evaluation
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Associated Project

Evaluation of the Pathway Home Grant Program

Time frame: 2020-2025

Prepared for:

U.S. Department of Labor

Authors

Bernadette Hicks

Robert Lynn-Green

Armando Yañez

Key Findings
  • All grantees partnered with correctional facilities to provide pre-release, post-release, and transition services. Participating prisons were predominantly minimum and medium security facilities (70 percent and 63 percent, respectively), with a little over one-third having maximum security designations (36 percent). Participating jails, on the other hand, had similar security rates across the board (85 percent minimum security, 90 percent medium security, and 90 percent maximum security).
  • Overall, grantees followed most of the requirements set out in the funding opportunity announcement. Nearly all grantees offered pre-release education (96 percent) and employment services (100 percent), and all reported offering supportive services (100 percent). However, grantees reported more variety in their post-release education, employment, and supportive service offerings than pre-release.
  • When asked which partners they considered most critical for program success, grantees identified employers (93 percent of grantees), education and training providers (86 percent), workforce development boards or American Job Centers (71 percent), housing service providers or agencies (68 percent), and correctional agencies (not including partner facilities) (64 percent) as critical partners.
  • Most but not all grantees provided continuous case management (89 percent), which was a critical aspect of the Pathway Home grant. These grantees reported that participants worked with the same case manager before and after release.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) funded Mathematica and partner Social Policy Research Associates to design and conduct an evaluation of the Pathway Home grants. This brief focuses on the 22 Pathway Home grants awarded in 2021 and describes the grantees’ experiences during their first year of implementation.

This brief is part one in a series of three briefs describing the Pathway Home grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in 2021, with a focus on grantees’ six-month planning period and first year of enrollment. The brief discusses the grants and describes the types of organizations funded, their locations, staffing structures, partnerships, and the services provided. Other briefs in the series will describe the grantees’ experiences implementing their programs inside and outside correctional facilities during the same period. Throughout the brief we refer to services provided inside correctional facilities as pre-release services, and those provided outside of correctional facilities as post-release services.

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