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 brief highlights the service needs that interviewed RP participants reported when leaving incarceration; their barriers to employment; their experiences during and after they participated in the programs; their perspectives on program elements such as vocational training, supportive services, and job placement; and their recommendations for improvement. Drawing on insights provided through participant interviews, this brief seeks to understand how selected participants experienced RP services, as well as learning from them to understand potential challenges participants faced when engaging in reentry programming and practices they perceived as successfully addressing their needs. The findings reflect the views of selected participants from the subset of grantees included in the virtual site visits. The interviews were conducted from December 2021 to April 2022 over video.

Key takeaways include:

• Interviews with RP participants provided an opportunity to better understand how RP participants experienced services in select sites.
• While findings cannot be generalized to all RP participants, they help illuminate the interviewed participants’ service delivery needs, characteristics, and barriers faced when engaging in services and seeking to enter employment.