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Giving Compass' Take:
• The authors at Urban Institute report how job seekers recently released from prison face challenges that make landing a job extremely difficult. Kentucky’s Justice to Journeyman program seeks to expand opportunities for prison apprenticeship.
• Which of these reforms has the biggest potential for impact?
• Here's a study finding transitional employment programs beneficial.
Apprenticeship opportunities for people who are incarcerated or recently released from prison could help solve this problem. Apprenticeship combines occupational training in the classroom with productive employment and on-the-job training. By directly connecting training to work experience and a job, apprenticeship forges stronger ties with the labor market than other types of education and training.
Apprenticeship programs in prisons are still relatively rare, but we studied several operating prison apprenticeship programs and identified key strengths and weaknesses. This research suggested that incarcerated apprentices could obtain well-paying jobs after release and make valuable connections to people in the labor market.
Research shows that securing employment after release reduces the chance that people return to prison. In-prison education and training programs are largely effective and increasingly popular, but demand for them far exceeds supply.
Our data analysis showed that apprentices in prison had higher program completion rates than apprentices outside of prison, although they are paid much less. The apprenticeship model is heralded for offering market wages with scheduled increases, but federal law allows prisons to pay very little or no wages.
Read the full article about prison apprenticeship programs by Ian Hecker and Daniel Kuehn at Urban Institute.