Reentry, Employment and Persisting Inequality: Understanding the experiences of formerly incarcerated jobseekers with employment reentry programs

PI: Audrey Holm, PhD candidate, Management & Organizations, Questrom School of Business
Co-PI: Michel Anteby, Professor, Management & Organizations, Questrom School of Business

Today in the United States, 50% of formerly incarcerated people remain unemployed in the year following their release. Over the past decades, prisoner reentry programs have increasingly provided formerly incarcerated jobseekers with services such as job training, job-placement assistance and other job-search related resources. When examining the dynamics and outcomes of reentry programs, scholars have mostly focused on how these programs are designed. How jobseekers themselves experience their interactions with these programs, however, remains under-examined. Holm aims to understand formerly incarcerated people’s stories and interpretations of employment and reentry programs.

With racial inequality at the forefront of both incarceration and labor market dynamics, Holm especially aims to understand how formerly incarcerated jobseekers’ perceptions of reentry services vary across racial groups and how such perceptions might shape people’s employment and reentry trajectories. She draws inductively from interviews with formerly incarcerated people who have experienced reentry services, as well as observations, interviews and archives related to employment support and reentry work more broadly. Understanding the experience of racially diverse formerly incarcerated jobseekers with reentry programs and employment will extend the study of prisoner reentry and labor market inequality. Findings will also help reentry practitioners, policymakers and researchers develop effective and equal employment services for all returning citizens.

See more of our 2021 Early Stage Urban Research Award recipients