If you've never heard of The Joyce Foundation, chances are you don't live in the Great Lakes region. Yet, the foundation hopes to make headlines nationwide with its newest research endeavor that officials hope will change the way corrections industry views job programs.

“Transitional jobs provide a subsidized job and intensive support services and we think this employment strategy has shown promise with a welfare recipient population but need to evaluate how it works with ex-prisoners," says Jennifer Philips, senior program officer for the foundation. “We thought it would be really worthwhile to create a research demonstration program about employment for returning offenders.”

The foundation's recent $5.4 million in grants to test new offender job strategies will finally bring solid numbers and a workable post-release employment plan for corrections to review in 2009. Philips says that without a job many other important aspects of re-entry, such as housing and family, cannot be successfully managed.

“We know that jobs are a critical piece of the re-entry puzzle,” says Whitney Smith, Joyce Foundation's program manager. “This is a large investment, and at the end of the day, we want this research to be really credible. We know we need to address this issue comprehensively, and that's what we intend to do.”

With job re-entry research that could set the bar high for ex-offender employment programs, the Joyce Foundation hopes to set a new tone for offender job support.

Joyce isn't the only non-profit interested in addressing the job issue. New York's Justice Equality Human Dignity and Tolerance Foundation supplied an additional $1.1 million for the research. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor has expressed interest in the research results and in possibly using the model as a nationwide recommendation.

“This project really has the potential to change national policy,” says Smith.

The foundations will jumpstart re-entry research in January 2007 at five different sites in Chicago, St. Paul, Detroit, and Milwaukee. At each site, 400 offenders will participate in a blind study comparing transitional job programming to basic job search services. Open to male offenders within 90 days of release, these sites will randomly assign inmates to one of two groups.

“One group will get some help finding a job, but they will mostly only have access to a computer to do web searches for jobs and resume building. On the other hand, the transitional job program will set the offenders up with a paid job, as well as wrap-around support services for issues like substance abuse and mental health problems,” Philips explains.

After the offenders have been assigned, the foundations and the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, which was also awarded a grant for the project, will track their progress for one year.

“We will follow both of these groups over time. We're going to look at employment outcomes and criminal justice outcomes. The employment outcomes will be measured with unemployment earnings records, which each state maintains. These records indicate everyone working on the books. From criminal justice agencies, we will get records for recidivism and arrests,” explains MDRC head researcher Dan Bloom. “If the transitional job group has a lower rate of recidivism, we'll have pretty solid numbers that back up the success of the job model.”

According to Bloom, randomly assigning offenders to groups is the best way to get hard evidence of what is effective and what is not when it comes to employment after incarceration.

In order to provide jobs for the transitional group, the Joyce Foundation teamed up with two Goodwill Industries (Detroit and St. Paul), Heartland Human Care Services, The New Hope Project, and the Safer Foundation, organizations that will run the offender job sites.

Additionally, corrections agencies from each state are enthusiastically supporting the project. Philips says that the support of these corrections departments is absolutely crucial to the success of the research

By collaborating with these state and corrections agencies, the Joyce Foundation is able to ensure consistency across state lines. Each job site will offer support ranging from employment counseling to tips on how to behave on the job.

“The types of jobs offered in the transitional model will run the gamut from working in the retail operations of Goodwill to working on a company website,” explains Philips. “They will offer jobs that have springboard potential into an unsubsidized job when the program ends. Goodwill was really interested in doing this, as was the Safer Foundation.”

As partnering organizations, such as Goodwill and the Safer Foundation, work with offenders in the transitional job group, the experimental group will be able to search for employment on their own.

Philips and Bloom are hopeful that the transitional group will have more success, and hope to use the research to inspire corrections to set up similar programs across the country.

“After we get this research, if the transitional job group does succeed, we will be able to present these numbers to public policy groups and say ‘Here is what works'. We're really hoping that with even just our interim findings we can get people excited about the employment possibilities for the ex-prisoner population. Even if people don't want to rally behind transitional job programming, we're happy to open up a healthy dialogue about offender employment,” Philips says.

Bottom Line: Organizations like the Joyce Foundation may be able to bring much-needed clarity to corrections information and research.