Working Toward Recovery: The Interplay of Past Treatment and Economic Status in Long-Term Outcomes for Drug-Involved Offenders

Abstract

Research on the relationship between employment and substance use tends to focus on employment lowering use. It is also potentially the case, however, that lowered substance use among addicts may lead to better employment and thus to greater long-term abstinence. In this article, we utilize complementary elements of three mainstream criminological approaches to suggest how therapeutic community-based treatment of drug user(s) during the transition from prison to community may lower clients' levels of substance use and thus increase their likelihood of better economic outcomes. We then use structural equations modeling to demonstrate how this process might play out. The data for this study were collected from 1992 through 1998 from the Delaware Department of Corrections. The study's limitations are noted.

The Impact of Substance User Treatment Participation on Legal Employment and Income Among Probationers and Parolees

“…A strong sense of self-efficacy predicts subsequent job search intensity among the unemployed (Nesdale & Pinter, 2000;Wanberg, Glomb, Song, & Rosol, 2005), brings about the end of dependence on public assistance among welfare recipients (Sullivan, Larrison, & Nackerud, 2004), and enhances job satisfaction and professional commitment among new employees (Sacks, 1995). Contradicting a recent claim that selfefficacy could simply be a proxy or a statistical artifact for past achievements and performance (Heggestad & Kanfer, 2005), our finding on self-efficacy suggests that selfefficacy can be nurtured during treatment to become a protective factor against posttreatment joblessness regardless of how unimpressive are criminal justice clients ' vocational, educational, and criminal backgrounds (Brown et al, 2002;O'Connell et al, 2007). Effective interventions for self-efficacy enhancement among criminal offenders, substance users, and patients of other addictive disorders include placebo tailoring (Webb, Simmons, & Brandon, 2005), motivational enhancement therapy (Lit, Kadden, & Stephens, 2005), and group therapy (Landouceur, Sylvain, & Boutin, 2003;Washington & Moxley, 2003).…”

“…Despite their posttreatment gains in employment and income, the overall employment rate of 40.4% and personal income of $10,883 reported for this latter group of recovering offenders still remain far below averages for the general population, which had an employment rate of 93.9% and per capita income of $22,047 in 1994-different definitions of unemployment notwithstanding (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 1996Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006). Whereas a small group of educated clients can take full advantage of treatment services to considerably improve their economic wellbeing (O'Connell et al, 2007), most recovering offenders find jobs in the entry-level, dead-end service sector (Leukefeld et al, 2003;Staton et al, 2001), where employers frequently ignore regulations governing minimum wages, medical and unemployment insurance, and worker's compensation. As a consequence, they are often the last to be hired and the first to be fired in the postindustrial labor market (Sung, 2001).…”

“…Nevertheless, while some evidence points to the enduring nature of the improved work status resulting from criminal justice-sponsored treatment, with benefits lasting between 3 and 5 years (Butzin et al, 2005;O'Connell, Enev, Martin, & Inciardi, 2007;Sung, 2001), the lack of experimental control or the failure to control for baseline employment differences, or both, in these longitudinal studies renders their findings inconclusive and the contamination from self-selection highly plausible. A recent drug court evaluation using a randomized experimental design, but without measurement of baseline employment, concluded that no employment differences existed between treatment participants and comparisons (Gottfredson, Kearley, & Najaka, 2005).…”

Factors Influencing the Employability of Latinos: The Roles of Ethnicity, Criminal History, and Qualifications

“…Among parolees, employment histories predicted poor employment outcomes (Hanlon et al 2000). Simply put, higher levels of qualifications lead to better employment outcomes for ex-offenders (Harrison and Schehr 2004;O'Connell et al 2007), as employers are more willing to hire such educated ex-offenders (Albright and Denq 1996). In addition, employers are also more willing to hire offenders with work experience compared to those with no work experience (Holzer et al 2004).…”

Drug Abuse Treatment Beyond Prison Walls

“…Research to date has established a few firm principles for assisting substance-involved offenders during this period. We know that:prison-based treatment can enhance offenders’ chances of making a successful transition (Leukefeld, Farabee, and Tims, 2002);offenders who attend community aftercare following prison-based treatment have less drug use and fare better economically than those who do not (O'Connell et al, 2007); andin the broad population of offenders, coerced community treatment results in outcomes that are as good as those obtained with uncoerced treatment, and these results very likely apply as well to offenders in re-entry.…”