Correctional Industries Preparing Inmates for Re-entry: Recidivism and Post-release Employment Evaluation

The Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program was established in 1979 and works with private sector entities to provide meaningful and productive work for inmates. In its 25 years of operation, no evaluation has been conducted to determine its success. This project is designed to evaluation this program and in addition, determine if the program has positive effects for inmates released back into the community. A purposive cluster sampling strategy will be used for site selection. This strategy ensures a sufficiently large sample by selecting states having large numbers of PIECP workers. The selection process insures representation of all major U.S. geographic regions, representation of rural vs. urban populations, and each state had PIECP certification prior to 1996. 5 States have been selected for evaluation: Florida, Iowa, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington. The sample selection includes all inmates who worked in PIECP and were released between January 1996 and June 2001, which permits one to six years follow-up. Approximately 2400 inmates meet these criteria in the five states chosen for the study. ca/ncf