Post-Release Recidivism and Employment among Different Types of Released Offenders: A 5-Year Follow-Up Study in the United States

Abstract

IntroductionRarely have researchers examined the patterns of post-release employment and recidivism among ex-offenders before, during, and after the economic recession. A major obstacle was that previous researchers were unable to obtain offenders' post-release employment information. Instead, they relied on the unemployment information of the general population to examine the impact of employment/unemployment on recidivism among ex-offenders. Ex-offenders were usually characterized as economically poor, educationally illiterate, socially inadequate to societal norms, and disproportionally unemployed after release from prison. For example, researchers (Fehr, 2009; Matsuyama & Prell, 2010) found that ex-offenders frequently encountered numerous challenges after release from prison because of deficiencies in education and job skills. Accordingly, uneducated/unskilled offenders were likely to be unemployed after release from prison; and, in turn, they were likely to become recidivist offenders simply because they were unable to be financially sufficient for independent living in the community.According to the most recent prison release data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Guerino, et al., 2012), the United States' imprisonment rate in 2010 was 500 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 (or 1 in 200 residents) and there were 708,677 prisoners released from state and federal correctional institutions during 2010. Results from previous studies identified a variety of factors, such as, educational illiteracy, lack of job skills, lack of interpersonal skills, criminal history, the neighborhood contexts, or employment, that might contribute to a relatively high recidivism rate among ex-offenders (Gendreau et al., 1996; Hemphill et al., 1998; Klimecki et al., 1994; Kubrin & Stewart, 2006; Rossman & Roman, 2003; Uggen, 2000; Vacca, 2004; Visher et al., 2005). Undoubtedly, previous recidivism studies highlighted several profound challenges for incarcerated individuals to successfully reenter the community upon release from prison. Particularly, prisoners who were released during the recessionary period encountered much greater challenges due to job scarcity in labor markets and weak economic conditions. Researchers (Bushway, 2011; Cox, 2010; Fletcher, 1999; Hannon & DeFina, 2010; Mears & Mestre, 2012; Nally, et al., 2012) indicated that unemployment and recidivism were interrelated during the recession; however, there was a need to conduct a longitudinal study of the patterns of post-release employment and recidivism among ex-offenders during the recessionary period. Accordingly, the present researchers conducted a 5-year follow-up study of post- release employment and recidivism among 6,561 released offenders and examined the interrelationship of recidivism and employment among different types of offenders (i.e., violent, non-violent, sex, and drug offenders) before, during, and after the recent economic recession of 2008.Challenges to Reducing Recidivism among Ex-OffendersUndoubtedly, ex-offenders had to overcome a variety of challenges in order to successfully reenter the community upon release from prison. Realistically, finding employment was one of the immediate challenges to an ex-offender upon release from prison, and it was increasingly difficult during the recessionary period. Ex-offenders were frequently kept from employment due to criminal background checks (Holzer, et al., 2004; Pettit & Lyons, 2007; Travis, 2005) or deficiencies in education and job skills (Fashey, et al., 2006; Hollin & Palmer, 2009; Rossman & Roman, 2003; Vacca, 2004). During the economic recessionary period, it was extremely difficult for ex-offenders to compete with law-abiding citizens for limited job opportunities in all industrial sectors. Additionally, employers were generally reluctant to hire ex-offenders due to issues of liabilities or concerns about their customers' discomfort (Albright & Denq, 1996; Backman, 2011; Clear, et al. …