Barriers to Reentry?: The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America

Chapter 9 Local Labor-Market Conditions and Post-Prison Employment Experiences of Offenders Released from Ohio State Prisons

Chapter 9 Local Labor-Market Conditions and Post-Prison Employment Experiences of Offenders Released from Ohio State Prisons William J. Sabol I n this chapter we examine the impacts of local labor-market conditions on the post-prison employment experiences of offenders released from Ohio state prisons during 1999 and 2000. It uses administrative data from the state’s department of correction that are linked to data from the state’s unemployment insurance claims to track exprisoner employment experiences for two years following release from prison. We first use discrete duration models to analyze the impacts of county labor-market conditions on the probability that ex-prisoners will find a job upon release, conditional upon the length of time that they are unemployed when they are released from prison. Second, we use individual-level fixed-effects models to estimate the impact of county labor-market conditions on the probability of employment during the first two years following release from prison. Following Steven Raphael and David Weiman (chapter 10, this volume ) in their analysis of the impacts of local labor-market conditions on recidivism, and Hilary Williamson Hoynes (2000) and John M. Fitzgerald (1995) in their analyses of exits from welfare, we use county unemployment rates as the measure of local labor-market conditions. It allows these rates to vary over time so as to measure the effect of changing labor-market conditions on post-prison employment experiences . We also measure a variety of individual offenders’ attributes, such as type of offense, length of stay, prior incarcerations, participa257 258 Barriers to Reentry? tion in prison programs, pre-prison employment experiences, and demographic attributes, and assesses their impacts on post-prison employment experiences. We found, first, that county unemployment rates are negatively associated with the time to find a first job upon release from prison. The marginal effect of a 1 percent increase (or decrease) in county unemployment rates is to decrease (or increase) the probability of exiting the initial spell of unemployment and finding a job by about two percentage points, from a baseline exit rate of 16 percent. Despite the effects of local labor-market conditions, more than one-third of the ex-prisoners in the sample had not found a first job by the end of the eighth quarter after release. In addition, pre-prison employment experiences are found to have larger and more enduring effects on the probability of exiting the initial spell of unemployment than do local labor-market conditions , as one additional quarter of pre-prison employment (having had two quarters of employment during the year prior to incarceration instead of one quarter) increases the probability of exiting unemployment by 6 percent. Post-prison employment during the first two years following release is also affected by local labor-market conditions, as increases in county unemployment rates lead to decreases in quarterly post-prison employment probabilities. The estimated marginal effect of a 1 percent change in unemployment (evaluated at the mean level) is to reduce the probability that an ex-offender will be employed by about 4 percentage points (on an average employment probability of 36 percent). Here again, preprison employment has comparatively larger effects on post-prison employment outcomes than does variation in local labor markets. An additional quarter of employment during the year prior to incarceration can increase the probability that an offender is employed during the two years following release by about 10 percentage points. In both analyses, participation in prison programs is shown not to increase post-prison employment, but post-prison supervision is shown to increase both the probability of exiting unemployment upon release from prison and post-prison employment. Prior incarcerations lower post-prison employment probabilities, and black offenders were slightly more likely to be employed than white offenders, as were older offenders. Together, the findings about post-prison employment suggest that while employment prospects of ex-offenders are enhanced by local labor -market conditions, that offenders’ pre-prison attachments to labor markets appear to be more important in determining post-prison outcomes than in-prison participation in vocational training programs or policies that affect aggregate demand for labor. While these findings are consistent with employer demands for ex-prisoners with work ex- Post-Prison Employment of Offenders from Ohio 259 perience (for example, Holzer, Raphael, and Stoll 2003, 2004), a limitation of this study is that the covariates available in the administrative data that were analyzed are insufficiently...