Factories Behind Fences: Do Prison Real Work Programs Work?
By Marilyn C. Moses and Cindy J. Smith, Ph.D.
About the Authors
Ms. Moses is a social science analyst at the National Institute
of Justice. Dr. Smith is the chief of NIJs International Center.
When someone is in prison, does
having a real job with real pay
yield benefits when he or she is
released? Findings from an evaluation funded
by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) suggest
that this might be the case.
Offenders who worked for private companies
while imprisoned obtained employment more
quickly, maintained employment longer, and
had lower recidivism rates than those who
worked in traditional correctional industries
or were involved in other-than-work
(OTW) activities.
Factories behind fences is not a new
idea. Traditional industries (TI)in which
offenders are supervised by corrections
staff and work for a modest sumhave
been a mainstay of corrections for more than
150 years. Examples of traditional industries
include the manufacture of signs, furniture,
and garments, as well as the stereotypical
license plates. By obtaining work experience
in these industries, inmates acquire the skills
they need to secure gainful employment
upon release and avoid recidivism.
Another programthe Prison Industry
Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP)allows
inmates to work for a private employer
in a free world occupation and earn the
prevailing wage. Created by Congress in
1979, PIECP encourages State and local
correctional agencies to form partnerships
with private companies to give inmates real
work opportunities.[1]
Over the years, PIECP operations have included
the manufacture of aluminum screens and windows
for Solar Industries, Inc.; circuit boards for Joint
Venture Electronics; street sweeper brushes for
United Rotary Brush Corporation; corrugated
boxes for PRIDE Box; gloves for Hawkeye
Glove Manufacturing, Inc.; and the manufacture
and refurbishment of Shelby Cobra automobiles
for Shelby American Management
Co. Other PIECP operations include alfalfa
production for Five Dot Land and Cattle
Company; papaya packing for Tropical
Hawaiian Products; potato processing for
Floyd Wilcox & Sons; and boat-building
for Misty Harbor.
PIECP seeks to:
- Generate products and services that
enable prisoners to make a contribution
to society, offset the cost of incarceration,
support family members, and compensate
crime victims.
- Reduce prison idleness, increase inmate
job skills, and improve the prospects for
prisoners successful transition to the
community upon release.
More than 70,000 inmatesan average of
2,500 per yearhave participated in PIECP
since the programs inception. By the end
of 2005, 6,555 offenders were employed in
the program. Although this number reflects
a 285 percent increase in PIECP positions in
the past decade, it represents only a small
fraction of the total number of inmates in
our Nations State prisons and local jails.
Does the Program Work?
In a sense, PIECP can be thought of as
a grand experiment. After 28 years, the
obvious question is: Does it work?
To find out, NIJ teamed with the U.S.
Department of Justices Bureau of Justice
Assistance to fund the first national evaluation
of PIECP. Researchers at the University
of Baltimore compared a group of postrelease
inmates who worked in PIECP with inmates from two
other groupsthose who worked in TI and those
involved in OTW activities, including
idleness.[2]
Cindy J. Smith, Ph.D., one of the authors of this
article, was part of that research team. Then
at the University of Baltimore, Smith and
her colleagues considered two questions:
- Does PIECP participation increase postrelease
employment more than work in TI and OTW programs?
- Does PIECP participation reduce recidivism
more than work in TI or OTW programs?
Although the findings are not conclusive, they
are positive. (See sidebar, A Word
of Caution: Selection Bias.) Researchers
found that, after they were released, PIECP
participants found jobs more quickly and
held them longer than did their counterparts
in the TI and OTW groups. Approximately
55 percent of PIECP workers obtained
employment within the first quarter after
release. Only 40 percent of their counterparts
found employment within that time.
Nearly 49 percent of PIECP participants
were employed continuously for more than
1 year, whereas 40.4 percent of the offenders
in TI and 38.5 percent of the offenders in
OTW programs were continuously employed
for that length of time.
Three years out, PIECP participants performed
better than releasees from the
TI or OTW groups. Almost 14 percent
of PIECP releasees were employed for
3 continuous years, but only 10.3 percent
of the other offenders maintained constant
employment for that same period of time.
(See chart, Length of
Continuous Employment Postrelease.)
Examining wages earned by the participants
after they were released, the researchers
found that the PIECP group earned more than
the TI and OTW groups. Of all the releasees,
however, 55 percent did not earn wages
equal to a full-time job at the Federal minimum
wage. Because the data available to
the researchers reported total earnings only
and not the number of hours worked, it was
impossible to determine whether this was
because the releasees were: (1) working part-time,
(2) working intermittently, or (3) earning
less than the Federal minimum wage.
Recidivism
The researchers measured recidivism rates
for all three groups using the traditional
yardsticks: new arrest, conviction, and
incarceration.[3]
The results showed that PIECP releasees had
lower rates of rearrest, conviction, and
incarceration than offenders who were in
the TI or the OTW groups.
At the end of the first year postrelease,
82 percent of PIECP participants were
arrest free. The average amount of time
from release to first arrest for PIECP
participants was approximately 993 days
(slightly less than 3 years). At 1 year postrelease,
offenders in the TI and OTW groups
remained arrest free at approximately the
same rate (77 percent and 76 percent,
respectively) as PIECP participants. By
3 years out, however, the arrest-free rates
for all three groups declined to 60 percent
for the PIECP participants and 52 percent
for offenders in the TI and OTW programs.
Looking at conviction and reincarceration
rates, the researchers found that 77 percent
of PIECP participants were conviction free
during the followup periods, compared to
73 percent of the OTW group. Ninety-three
percent of PIECP participants remained
incarceration free during the followup
periods, compared to 89 percent of the
OTW participants.
Inmate PIECP Wages
Wages earned by PIECP participants in
prison benefit taxpayers in addition to helping
the inmates themselves. Although the program
requires a percentage of PIECP wages
to be saved to assist the inmate when he is
released, the remaining wages make their
way back into the national economy, either
directly or indirectly. A significant portion of
the wages earned by prisoners in the program,
for example, goes directly to the State
to cover the cost of prisoner room and board.
PIECP wages also provide child support and
alimony to family members, as well as restitution
to crime victims. (See chart,
Distribution of PIECP Wages.)
An Underutilized Rehabilitation Option?
The research suggests that PIECP has been
successful. Inmate PIECP wages benefit
inmates, taxpayers, victims, families, and
States. PIECP participants also acquire
postrelease jobs more quickly, retain these
jobs longer, and return to the criminal justice
system less frequently and at a lower
rate than inmates who worked in traditional
industries or engaged in other-than-work
activities. These findings suggest that
PIECP is an underutilized rehabilitation
option and that additional efforts to increase
the number of PIECP jobs could have an
important impact on the Nations prison
and jail populations.
NCJ 218264
Charts
Length of Continuous Employment Postrelease
Length of Employment |
Percent of PIECP Group |
Percent of Traditional Industries Group |
Percent of Other-Than-Work Group |
1 year+ |
48.6 |
40.4 |
38.5 |
3 years+ |
13.7 |
10.3 |
10.3 |
Return to text
Distribution of PIECP Wages
Return to text
Sidebar
A WORD OF CAUTION: SELECTION BIAS
Although the results of the Prison Industry Enhancement
Certification Program (PIECP) study are positiveshowing
better outcomes for participants in the PIECP group compared
to the traditional industries (TI) and the other-than-work
(OTW) groupsthey do not definitively show that the
better outcomes were due to PIECP itself. This is because
the participants in the three groups were not randomly
assigned to the groups, a process that ensures that the
differences in results are due to the program, rather than
to preexisting differences among the participants.
How then were participants in this study assigned to the different
groups? First, prisoners volunteered to participate in a work
program. They were then interviewed by prospective employers in
both the TI program and PIECP. Therefore, inmates who worked in
either the TI program or PIECP were self-selected and may have
had different motivations and backgrounds than the OTW inmates,
the third group studied, which may have led to better outcomes.
This concern, known as selection bias, can be definitively ruled
out only by random assignment to groups that are going to be
compared. In this study, selection bias seems a larger concern
when comparing the volunteers (that is, PIECP and TI participants)
to the non-volunteers (the OTW group) than in comparing the
results of the two employment (PIECP and TI) groups.
The researchers in this study attempted to ensure that the
groups were comparable by matching inmates in the three
groups using a number of factors, including demographics
and time served. Nevertheless, this matching may not have
completely eliminated the selection bias. Therefore, the
results should be interpreted with caution.
Return to text
For More Information
- Smith, C.J., J. Bechtel, A. Patrick, R.R.
Smith, and L. Wilson-Gentry, Correctional
Industries Preparing Inmates for Re-entry:
Recidivism and Post-release Employment,
final report submitted to the National
Institute of Justice, Washington, DC:
June 2006 (NCJ 214608), available at
www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/214608.pdf.
- Petersik,T., T. Nayak, and M.K. Foreman,
Identifying Beneficiaries of PIE Inmate
Incomes, The National Correctional Industries
Association, July 31, 2003.
Notes
[1] |
With the exception of PIECP, U.S. jail and
prison inmates are prohibited, under the
Amhurst-Sumners Act of 1935, from
producing goods for sale in open interstate
commercial markets; PIECP-certified
programs are exempt from the $10,000
limit on the sale of prisoner-made goods
to the Federal Government. |
[2] |
The sample size included 6,464 inmates,
with subjects nearly equally divided among
groups. The sample included offenders
released from 46 prisons in 5 States that
implemented PIECP from January 1, 1996, to
June 30, 2001. The followup period began on
the day the inmate was released and ranged
from slightly under 2 years to 7.5 years. |
[3] |
Technical violations were not considered
new arrests. |