Reducing recidivism by employing former offenders as furniture crafters
Abstract
Returning to employment can be difficult for ex-offenders for a variety of social, economic and psychological reasons. In the small town of Winslow, Maine, a carpentry shop provides permanent jobs, competitive wages, career guidance, and ownership opportunities for those formerly incarcerated. Azalea Aguilar, with the National Crime Prevention Council, submitted this effective practice in August, 2006.Issue
Ex-offenders returning to the community face many obstacles as they look for employment, including poor job markets in the impoverished areas to which they usually return, and generally possessing inadequate job skills and qualifications.Action
Under the auspices of Set Free in Maine, HIS Carpentry Shop (a Christian nonprofit) provides ex-offenders with the opportunity for permanent jobs offering a fair wage in manufacturing unfinished furniture.Income from furniture sales is the funding mechanism for the program, which teaches job and life skills.
Program directors and the organization contact prerelease programs at jails and prisons, seeking referrals from social workers, chaplains, prison guards, and even other inmates.
Once potential participants are identified, mentors work with the prisoners three to six months before their release, providing a spiritual support community, substance abuse treatment referrals, and help with housing.
The business is self-sustaining, and the sponsoring congregation doesn't have to seek grants or public funds. The profits go to fund employee scholarships, transitional housing, and a multiservice center to serve this population.
Context
Most incarcerated individuals have very limited job skills, based in part on lack of education and educational opportunities. As reported by Shawn Bushway in the study, Reentry and Prison Work Plans, "There is fairly strong empirical evidence that an individual's criminal behavior is responsive to changes in his or her employment status." (See the "Resources" section for other results of studies that corroborate this statement.) Not surprisingly, one of the keys to a successful reentry and continued "desistance" of criminal behavior is meaningful employment, within a positive social network.
In 2003, Holzer et. al. surveyed employers and found that many were not so much worried that ex-offenders would commit another crime in the work setting, but that they would be substandard employees. Consequently, if an ex-offender can hold a job for at least one year — during which time the vast majority of failures occur (Langan 2002) — other job opportunities may follow.
In 1992, Pastor Ken Stevens started a carpentry shop with a social mission in Winslow, Maine. In addition to producing quality furniture sold to retailers across New England, HIS Carpentry Shop teaches valuable job skills to individuals who may be otherwise unemployable. The result is a win-win arrangement for the company's ever-changing group of nine employees and the customers who enjoy their products. Pastor Stevens has worked with the Maine Small Business Development Center (SBDC) for over ten years on a full range of business issues including improving operations, strategic planning, and cash flow management.
The town of Winslow is an employment center and residential suburb, located just east of Waterville across the Kennebec River in Maine. The Sebasticook River is also within the town's 37 square miles, as is Patties Pond. Winslow has dispersed, but growing, commercial development along its major corridors, U.S. Route 201 and State Route 137. Winslow has a large urban residential center, where much of the town's 9,000 residents live. In 2003, Kennebec County had an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent.
Outcome
Ex-offenders earn enough money to support themselves while they learn transferable life and job skills. The program is supplemented with housing assistance, opportunities for fellowship, spiritual enlightenment, and guidance. Members of the sponsoring congregation help offenders put together a life plan.Evidence
The program is self-sustaining. HIS Carpentry Shop also wholesales furniture back to community organizations for their fundraising efforts, collects and distributes food donated by local congregations, and donates scrap wood from the shop to low-income families to heat their homes in the harsh Maine winters. Set Free in Maine used profits from HIS Carpentry Shop to open the Dream Center, a multiservice transitional facility for ex-offenders and substance abusers. As a result of the program's success, the Maine Department of Corrections has asked the congregation to set up a statewide mentoring program for all returning offenders.Posted On
August 16, 2006For More Information
Resources
The Urban Institute's Reentry Roundtable Discussion Paper: Reentry and Prison Work Plans, by Shawn Bushway (University of Maryland), May 19-20, 2003, New York University Law School. (270 KB)
Sampson and Laub (1993) used data from the Gluecks' 1939 Boston cohort to show that job instability from age 17 to age 25 was correlated with higher arrest rates from age 25 to age 32, even after controls for stable individual differences were included in the model. Thornberry and Christenson (1984) found unemployment positively correlated with more arrests, especially for minority youths in Wolfgang's 1945 Philadelphia cohort. Farrington et al. (1986) used data from the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development to show that the probability of conviction for property crime increased when an individual was unemployed, provided that the individual was predisposed to criminal behavior. Needels (1996) used data from a ten-year follow-up of ex-offenders in Georgia to show that crime and wages were negatively related. Finally, Uggen and Thompson (1999) showed that legal earnings have a negative effect on illegal earnings using data from a contemporary sample of Minnesota youth.
Related Practices
Related sites
Family and Corrections Network