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Integrated Reentry and Employment Strategies: Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Job Readiness

“Employment providers are already serving large numbers of individuals released from correctional facilities or who are required to find jobs as conditions of their probation or parole. Yet the corrections, reentry, and workforce development fields have lacked an integrated tool that draws on the best thinking about reducing recidivism and improving job placement and retention to guide correctional supervision and the provision of community-based services. To address this gap, this white paper presents a tool that draws on evidence-based criminal justice practices and promising strategies for connecting hard-to-employ people to work. It calls for program design and practices to be tailored for adults with criminal histories based on their levels of risk for future criminal activity” (p. v). Sections of this publication include: introduction to the relationship between employment and recidivism; what works to reduce recidivism-principles for improving outcomes among unemployed individuals with corrections system-involvement; proven and promising practices for improving outcomes for hard-to-employ individuals; and the resource-allocation and service-matching tool-an integrated approach to reducing recidivism and improving employment outcomes.