For two decades, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has invested substantial funding toward programs serving justice-involved individuals. Among its recent investments, DOL awarded over $243 million in Reentry Projects (RP) grant programs between 2017 and 2019 to improve participants’ employment and justice outcomes. DOL prioritized awarding grants to programs that were evidence-informed, and many went to experienced providers. They were awarded across a broad range of intermediaries and non-profit community-based organizations serving a total of 17,361 participants across 34 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico. RP grants were 36-39 months long and were at different phases when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. RP grantees served a total of 9,098 adults (individuals over 24) and 8,263 young adults (individuals between ages 18 and 24) after their release from jail or prison.

In 2017, the Chief Evaluation Office, in collaboration with the Employment and Training Administration funded the Reentry Project Grants Evaluation. This implementation and impact evaluation aims to identify and evaluate promising practices used in reentry employment programs, which are comprehensive strategies to address the range of challenges formerly incarcerated adults and young adults who have been involved in the justice system face in making a successful transition back to the community.

This issue brief describes the differences and similarities between adult and young adult grantees in terms of the services they offered, and the implementation challenges they reported. The analysis draws on quantitative data from a survey of all 116 organizations that received RP grants. Data from the grantee survey were analyzed using descriptive statistics as well as chi-squared tests to determine whether differences across grant types were statistically significant. The brief also draws on in-depth qualitative data from a subset of nine grantees that received both adult and young adult grants.

Some key findings from RP grantee survey include:

• While both adult and young adult grantees relied heavily on referrals from criminal justice system partner agencies, a higher proportion of young adult CBO grantees than adult CBO grantees indicated that community outreach efforts were their largest referral source and a lower proportion of young adult CBO grantees reported word-of-mouth as their largest source of referrals compared with adult CBO grantees.
• Analysis of grantee survey and qualitative data suggest that adult and young adult services may differ in four key areas: (1) positive youth development components (2) legal services for child support and diversion, (3) educational services and requirements, and (4) program length.
• Young adult grantees reported the following challenges significantly more often than adult grantees: recruiting participants, engaging, and retaining those participants throughout the course of service delivery, and placing participants in employment.