Crime and Employment: Critical Issues in Crime Reduction for Corrections

Crime and Employment crystallizes the issue of work as a rehabilitative instrument in the modern correctional environment. It explores the effect of employment on crime and recidivism, with its implications for correctional programs and operations as well as for ex-offender reintegration into the community. The professionals contributing to this volume evaluate the effectiveness of employment in enabling offenders to desist from crime; the roles of prison versus community correctional services; the success of work programs for older versus younger offenders; the effect of industrial employment on reducing prison misconduct and post-release recidivism; the relevance of prior employment, substance abuse histories, poverty, and family contexts on subsequent inmate work programs; and the availability of quality employment, lawful lifestyles, and community vocational programs in sustaining economic rehabilitation of offenders. This book will be of great value to practitioners and policymakers alike in the areas of corrections, criminal justice, criminology, social problems, labor policy, social welfare, deviance and social control.

Jessie L. Krienert is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, Illinois State University, and does research in community and institutional corrections, gender and crime, and violence and victimology. Mark S. Fleisher is a cultural anthropologist and criminal ethnographer, a former administrator in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Director of the Begun Center for Violence Research, Prevention and Education at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of the award-winning Beggars and Thieves: Lives of Urban Street Criminals, Warehousing Violence, and Dead End Kids: Gang Girls and the Boys They Know.