Sources of Funding: Smith Richardson Foundation Campbell Collaboration, Crime and Justice Group

Transcription

1 Systematic Review of The Effects of Non-Custodial Employment Programs on the Recidivism Rates of Ex-Offenders Reviewers: Christy A. Visher Principal Research Associate Justice Policy Center The Urban Institute 2100 M Street, NW Washington, DC USA Phone: Fax: cvisher@ui.urban.org Laura Winterfield Sources of Funding: Smith Richardson Foundation Campbell Collaboration, Crime and Justice Group April, 2003 Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 1

2 Background Employment experience is common among offenders, including serious offenders. Threequarters of state inmates reportedly held a job just prior to their incarceration, and, of those, just over half were employed full-time (Lynch and Sabol, 2001). Research has indicated that having a legitimate job lessens the chances of re-offending following release from prison and that recidivism is less likely among offenders with higher wage (or higher quality) jobs (Sampson and Laub, 1997; Harer, 1994; Uggen, 1999). Research evidence also suggests that being labeled by the criminal justice system (e.g., by being arrested) may adversely affect subsequent employment stability, even after controlling for prior criminal involvement (Bushway, 1998). While the period of incarceration could be viewed as an opportunity to build skills and prepare for placement at a future job, the evaluation literature provides mixed to negative support for the effectiveness of in-prison job training programs (Bushway and Reuter, 1997; Gaes et al., 1999; Wilson et al., 1999; 2000). In addition, long periods of incarceration may weaken social contacts that lead to legal employment opportunities upon release (Western et al., 2001; Hagan and Dinovitzer, 1999). Finally, many barriers exist for returning offenders who are looking for work, including the stigma attached to incarceration, the lack of recent job experiences, and a lessening of skills needed to find and hold jobs (Western et al., 2001; Sampson and Laub, 1997). The rapid growth of prison populations that occurred in the late 1980s and 1990s has translated into a large flow of offenders returning from prison at present. Having a criminal record represents a substantial barrier to many types of legal employment, and these barriers are compounded for offenders at the end of a term of prolonged incarceration. Policy-makers face a growing need to improve the employment prospects of ex-offenders. Many programs designed to increase employment (and, by so doing, reduce recidivism) among ex-offenders have been implemented and evaluated in past 25 years. Wilson et al. (1999, 2000) conducted a quantitative synthesis of 33 evaluations of educational, vocational, and work programs for offenders in custody. To date, however, the evaluation literature on employment programs for offenders who are not in custody has not been systematically reviewed. Objectives The primary research question is: What effect do non-custodial employment services interventions have on the subsequent criminal behavior of ex-offenders? The secondary research question is: What methodological and programmatic factors mediate the relationship between employment services interventions and criminal recidivism? The review will survey the existing empirical evidence that examines the effectiveness of employment programs on recidivism among persons who have been previously arrested, convicted, or incarcerated. Because there is specific interest in isolating the impacts of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) as separate from Quasi-Experimental Designs (QEDs), these two types of studies will be analyzed and presented separately. If employment outcomes are also reported, these will be coded and analyzed separately from the recidivism outcomes. The review should provide guidance to the field in response to both questions. Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 2

3 Methods ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA Types of Studies Experimental and quasi-experimental evaluative studies will be reviewed, although these two sets will be analyzed and presented separately. Eligible studies must have included one or more treatment groups and one or more comparison groups. If subjects were not randomly assigned to the treatment and comparison conditions, the subjects must either have been matched or the study report must present evidence of initial group equivalence on demographic variables and prior criminal record. The comparison group may have received either treatment as usual or no treatment. Studies will not be reviewed if the comparison group is comprised of persons who did not meet the eligibility criteria for the treatment. Comparison subjects may have been drawn from waiting lists or treatment as usual pools; if the treatment group was comprised of subjects who volunteered to receive the intervention, the comparison group must also have been comprised of volunteers. Types of Participants Both the treatment and comparison groups must have been comprised, at least in part, of exoffenders (i.e., persons who have been arrested, convicted, or incarcerated in connection with a criminal charge before becoming a study subject). If either the treatment or comparison group included subjects who were not ex-offenders, the results must have been reported so that effect sizes may be coded for the ex-offenders alone. Only studies of adult (as defined by the jurisdiction within which a given study is conducted) offenders will be eligible for this review. Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 3

4 Types of Interventions Some of the treatment must have been delivered in a non-custodial setting (i.e., not in a prison or jail). Studies of treatment delivered in a halfway house, group home, or similar facility will be eligible. The program may have been either residential or non -residential so long as similar residential requirements were placed on both the treatment and comparison subjects. The treatment program must have included a job placement component, or a job training component although other components, such as life-skills training, remedial education, or social service assistance, may have been included. In the case of multiple service delivery, the nonemployment components will be coded as well.. This will permit subsequent exploration of the extent to which the delivery of multiple components may have an impact on the effectiveness of the employment component. Types of Outcome Measures Some measure of criminal behavior subsequent to the beginning of the intervention must have been reported for the ex-offenders in both the treatment and comparison groups. The measure of criminal behavior may have been either official (i.e., arrest, conviction, technical violation) or self-reported and may be reported either dichotomously or on a continuous scale. Postintervention employment status will also be coded from study reports that included this information. Date and Language Study reports written in English and completed during or since 1970 will be eligible for the review. Depending on availability of additional funds, studies in other languages may also be subsequently retrieved and coded. If none of the study subjects received treatment after 1964, the study will not be eligible. SEARCH STRATEGY To identify all studies (published and unpublished) that meet the proposed eligibility criteria, the following search modes will be used: 1. Searches of computerized databases (see list below); 2. Searches of the bibliographies of published reviews of related literature; 3. Scrutiny of annotated bibliographies of related literature (e.g., Clem, 1999); and 4. Contacts with leading researchers and key administrators in State statistical assessment centers (SACs) and planning agencies. The following citation/abstract databases will be searched: Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), U.S. Government Printing Office; Criminal Justice Abstracts; Digital Dissertations; Economic Literature Index; National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Abstracts; ProQuest Social Sciences Index; Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 4

5 Sociological Abstracts; Social Science Citations Index; Wilson Humanities Index; and The Campbell Collaboration Social, Psychological, Educational and Criminological Trials Register. METHODOLOGY OF PRIMARY RESEARCH Procedures for Eligibility Assessment Two coders, yet to be named, will assess the eligibility of the studies independently. These judgments will be based primarily on an examination of abstracts and secondarily on a review of full-text reports in instances where either or both coders conclude that the abstract provides insufficient information to determine the eligibility of the study. Each coder will create a table indicating, for all studies retrieved, whether the study was categorized as eligible or not. They will then compare categorizations. Should there be differences between the coders regarding study eligibility, one of the co-principal investigators (Visher or Winterfield) will make the final decision. Studies eligible for this review will include a mix of controlled experimental designs and quasi-experimental designs relying on subject matching to mitigate initial group differences. Some quasi-experimental studies may also present evidence of initial equivalence of the study groups without use of a matching procedure. The proposed eligibility criteria require that treatment group subjects and comparison group subjects not differ in their willingness to participate in the treatment prior to their assignment to study conditions. Studies that compare treatment volunteers with non-volunteers will not be coded in this review. Some of the eligible experimental studies (e.g., Rossi, Berk, and Lenihan, 1980) used fully crossed designs with a single no-treatment comparison group and multiple treatment groups. Including such studies in the quantitative analysis will require careful attention to issues related to the statistical independence of the effect sizes (see next section). Determining Independence Of Findings In any analysis, no more than one effect size from any subject sample will be included (Lipsey and Wilson, 2001). Multiple effect sizes from the same study may be included in a single analysis so long as the subject samples do not overlap. For example, a fully crossed experimental study involving three treatment groups and a single no-treatment comparison group would yield at least three (statistically dependent) effect sizes. All three effect sizes would be coded, but no more than one would be included in any given analysis. If a single study yields multiple effect sizes relevant to a single analysis (e.g., three measures of recidivism from a single job-placement study), the choice of which effect size to use will be made based on the content of the underlying dependent measure. In those instances where a content or theory-driven choice cannot be made, a random selection procedure will be used to determine which effect size will be included. Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 5

6 Study Coding Categories Studies meeting the eligibility criteria will be coded for a ra nge of characteristics related to methodological and programmatic quality. These characteristics will include: (a) the criteria used to identify units of analysis; (b) acknowledged violation or subversion of random assignment procedures; (c) criteria for selection of comparison subjects, (d) loss of participants from the study with particular attention to differential attrition between treatment and comparison groups; (e) description of intervention content, modality, and setting; and (f) the findings of any process evaluation addressing the fidelity of the program implementation to the intervention model. All citations identified as potentially eligible for this review will be entered into a bibliographic database, and the full text will be retrieved. A reasonable effort will be made to retrieve the full text of all studies identified as potentially eligible. We will document any failure to retrieve a study identified as potentially eligible. Two reviewers will independently code each eligible study. Another reviewer will resolve any coding differences that arise between the two primary reviewers. If important information is missing from a study report, an attempt will be made to contact the original researcher(s) to determine if they can supply that information. Data will be coded directly into a database. Statistical Procedures We will conduct a quantitative synthesis of the coded studies separately for RCTs and QEDs. Many studies will report recidivism and employment outcomes on a dichotomous scale. Consequently, effect sizes will be computed as odds ratios. For studies that report recidivism outcomes on a continuous scale, effect sizes will be encoded as a standardized mean difference and transformed into an equivalent odds ratio. Mean effect sizes will be computed across studies using inverse variance weights, and the homogeneity of the effect sizes will be assessed using a Q test (Lipsey and Wilson, 2001). The between-study variance in effect sizes will be analyzed under a mixed effects model (i.e., fixed slopes and a random-intercept) including measures of both program content and study methodology. The model will be estimated using full-information maximum likelihood, as implemented in a macro developed for this purpose by Wilson (2002). TREATMENT OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH The proposed eligibility criteria for this review would exclude any purely qualitative study (i.e., one that reported no quantitative recidivism outcome). The qualitative elements of studies that meet the eligibility criteria will be coded in considerable detail, as described above under Study Coding Categories. Timeframe Task Randomized Controlled Trials Quasi-Experimental Designs Full Analyses Start Date End Date Start Date End Date Start Date End Date Searches for studies Sep 3, 2002 Jan 1, 2003 Sep 3, 2002 Jan 1, 2003 Sep 3, 2002 Jan 1, 2003 Pilot testing of eligibility criteria Sep 16, 2002 Feb 15, 2003 Sep 16, 2002 Feb 15, 2003 Sep 16, 2002 Feb 15, 2003 Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 6

7 Relevance assessment Sep 26, 2002 Oct 10, 2002 Sep 26, 2002 Oct 10, 2002 Sep 26, 2002 Oct 10, 2002 Pilot testing of coding system Coding of research reports Feb 1, 2003 Feb 28, 2003 Feb 1, 2003 Feb 28, 2003 Feb 1, 2003 Feb 28, 2003 March 1, 2003 April 30, 2003 May 1, 2203 June 31, 2003 NA NA Statistical analysis April 1, 2003 April 30, 2003 June 1, 2003 June July 1, 2003 July 31, 2003 Preparation of report May 1, 2003 May 31, 2003 July 1, 2003 July Aug 1, 2003 Aug 31, 2003 Report completed June 1, 2003 August 1, 2003 Sept 1, 2003 Updating the Review The financial support for the present review does not include the cost of updating the review. The review may be updated if sufficient financial support can be obtained for the effort. Alternatively, the present reviewers may consider sharing the data files from this review with other reviewers interested in undertaking an update. Acknowledgments The primary source of funding for this review is a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation to The Urban Institute. The Campbell Collaboration s Crime and Justice Group also provided financial support for this review. Conflicts of Interests None. References Bushway, S.D. (1998). The impact of an arrest on the job stability of young white American men. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 35(4): Bushway, S. and P. Reuter. (1997). Labor markets and crime risk factors. In L.W. Sherman, D. Gottfredson, D. MacKenzie, J. Eck, P. Reuter, and S. Bushway (eds.) Preventing crime: What works, what doesn t, what s promising. Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Clem, C. (1999, September). Annotated bibliography on offender job training and placement. 2nd Ed. Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections, U.S. Department of Justice. Gaes, G., T. Flanagan, L. Motiiuk, and L. Stewart. (1999). Adult correctional treatment. In M. Tonry and J. Petersilia (eds.) Prisons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: Hagan, J. and R. Dinovitzer. (1999). Collateral consequences of imprisonment for children, communities, and prisoners. In M. Tonry and J. Petersilia (eds.) Prisons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: Harer, M.D. (1994). Recidivism among Federal prisoners released in Journal of Correctional Education 46(3): Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 7

8 Lynch, J.P. and W.J. Sabol (2001). Prisoner reentry in perspective (Urban Institute Crime Policy Report). Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. Rossi, P.H., R.A. Berk, and K.J. Lenihan. (1980). Money, work, and crime: Experimental evidence. New York: Academic Press. Sampson, R. and J. Laub. (1997). A life-course theory of cumulative disadvantage and the stability of delinquency. Advances in Criminological Theory 7: Uggen, Christopher. (1999). Ex-offenders and the conformist alternative: A job quality model of work and crime. Social Problems 46(1): Western, B., J.R. Kling, and D. Weiman. (2001). The labor market consequences of incarceration. Crime and Delinquency 47(3): Wilson, D.B. (2002). Macros for meta-analysis. Wilson, D.B., C.A. Gallagher, and D.L. MacKenzie. (2000). A meta-analysis of correctionsbased education, vocation, and work programs for adult offenders. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 37(4): Wilson, D.B., C.A. Gallagher, M.B. Coggeshall, and D.L. MacKenzie. (1999). A quantitative review and description of corrections-based education, vocation, and work programs. Corrections Management Quarterly 3(4): Employment Interventions for Ex-Offenders 8