Mentoring Formerly Incarcerated Adults: Insights from the Ready4Work Reentry Initiative

"Ready4Work provided newly released inmates with traditional employment and training services as well as mentoring and other “wraparound” social services (e.g., housing assistance and drug rehabilitation). These services were offered through partnerships among community- and faith-based organizations.

This report explores mentoring within the context of a larger programmatic strategy as a tool for supporting successful reentry among the formerly incarcerated. It describes how mentoring was implemented in the Ready4Work sites, the extent to which mentoring was attractive to participants, the types of adults who volunteered to serve as mentors and how receipt of mentoring services was related to participant outcomes" (p.1). (Abstractor: Author)

• "Ready4Work participants received relatively little mentoring, and the structure of the program differed greatly from site to site and person to person" (p.21). • "Our findings indicate that mentoring, in conjunction with intensive case management and employment services, may offer a promising approach for helping previously incarcerated individuals reintegrate into their communities, but much remains unknown. Further projects and research are needed to develop best practices for mentoring" (p.20). • "More work needs to be done to learn how to make mentoring more attractive to formerly incarcerated individuals in general—and to young males in particular" (p.20). • "We also do not yet understand what mentoring for ex-prisoners ideally looks like and which participants will benefit most. Ready4Work sites employed several approaches: one-on-one mentoring, group mentoring and a combination of both" (p.20). • "More research is needed to determine with certainty if mentoring for ex-prisoners works. The nature of our comparison group limited our study, allowing us to consider only how those who elected to participate in the mentoring component compared with their peers who did not. A study with a carefully constructed comparison group or a randomized control group would allow us to determine definitively if mentoring provided the decisive difference and whether it produced other positive outcomes, such as improved family relationships, higher self-efficacy and reduced drug and alcohol use" (p.20). (Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2009
• Author(s): Bauldry, Shawn; Korom-Djakovic, Danijela; McClanahan, Wendy; McMaken, Jennifer; Kotloff, Lauren
• Organizational Author(s): Public/Private Ventures
• Funding Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Ford Foundation
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
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• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies