Improve Placement Services

What Can Policymakers Do?

• Expand partnerships with employers.  To prove effective, job training for ex-offenders must align with industries in which jobs are available and employers are willing to hire individuals with criminal records. States can promote partnerships with such employers by supporting job training that is tailored to the needs of those employers.  For example, the state of Illinois contracts with the Safer Foundation to improve training for ex-offenders and to partner with relevant industries for job placement.

• Promote a range of placement options.  In order to ensure that ex-offenders are able to successfully contribute to their community through work, policymakers should promote a range of job placement options. A range of options is necessary because not all individuals will demonstrate the same level of work-readiness.  Illinois’ Department of Employment Security, as an effort of their re-entry services initiative, created the Illinois’ Winning Job Opportunities Guide, which provides ex-offenders with a range of job opportunities tailored to their needs and skill levels.  The jobs featured include opportunities for individuals who need long-term on-the-job training, short-term on-the-job training, and jobs for individuals who have already had vocational training and those with associate’s degrees.

• Leverage employment agencies.  Policymakers can ensure that One-Stop Career Centers and other employment agencies are accessible to those in areas where the need is greatest and that they coordinate with each other to provide a continuity of services.  In Massachusetts, each region has multiple One-Stop locations; one-stops in Boston, where 40 percent of ex-offenders from state prisons and nearly all ex-offenders from the Suffolk House of Corrections return annually,[1] are centrally located and accessible by one if not all subway lines.  Maryland locates One-Stops in several neighborhoods in Baltimore, to which an estimated 10,000 ex-offenders from Maryland correctional facilities return annually and 100 ex-offenders from Baltimore jails return daily.[2]

• Expand outreach around hiring incentives for employers. Policymakers can use available financial incentives to encourage employers to consider qualified ex-offenders.  A number of federal, state and local financial incentives are available to employers who hire ex-offenders.  These include the Federal Bonding Program, Work Opportunity Tax Credit, Welfare-to-Work programs and first-source agreements, agreements that provide preferences for government contracts to employers who hire local residents and/or ex-offenders. The Nevada Department of Corrections has focused on increasing employment opportunities for ex-offenders. In order to achieve this goal, the Department of Corrections has created a program that provides Nevada business owners tax incentives if they hire individuals leaving the Casa Grande Transitional Housing Authority.[3]

[1] City of Boston. Available online.