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Date: April 24, 2024 Wed
Time: 9:10 pm
Time: 9:10 pm
Results for evaluation
1 results foundAuthor: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority Title: Entrepreneurship for the Formerly Incarcerated: A Process Evaluation of the Pathway to Enterprise for Returning Citizens (PERC) Program Summary: Each year, over 25,000 individuals are released from Illinois prisons and nearly half of them end up returning to prison within three years (Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council, 2015; The Illinois Department of Corrections, 2018). Reentry entrepreneurship training programs have been implemented as one way to reduce recidivism and improve the economic stability of men and women returning to the community from jails and prisons. Entrepreneurship training programs were developed to help overcome barriers inherent in traditional reentry workforce development programs and services such as lack of education, work experience, qualifications, opportunities, and discrimination (The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2016). Some programs provide the opportunity for small loans to help fund new entrepreneurs. The body of previous research is small, but there is some support that entrepreneurship programs may be a way to help improve outcomes for formerly incarcerated individuals (Johnson, Wubbenhorst, & Schroeder, 2013; Keena & Simmons, 2015; Klein & Mohan, 2017). Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) researchers conducted an evaluation of Pathway to Enterprise for Returning Citizens (PERC). PERC offers classroom training on entrepreneurship and business, mentoring, and the opportunity to obtain a loan to start a business to individuals recently released from prison and living in Chicago neighborhoods. PERC is a collaboration between the Chicago Neighborhood Initiative’s Micro Finance Group (CNIMFG), ICJIA, Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), several community-based nonprofit training organizations, and multiple private funders. The goals of PERC are to increase employment and self-sufficiency of returning citizens; decrease recidivism; and produce businesses that operate for two or more years. ICJIA researchers completed a process evaluation examining program planning and development in the first six months of the program by using multiple methods of data collection. The evaluation of the PERC program focused on individuals that applied for PERC in Winter 2017 and completed training in Spring/Summer of 2018. The research attempted to answer the following research questions about PERC: -Who were the applicants and participants of the program? -How did the program operate in its first six months? -What did the stakeholders, training staff, and participants think of the program? -To what extent did participants learn entrepreneurship skills? Details: Chicago, Illinois: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, 2019. 80p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 28, 2019 at: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/assets/articles/Entrepreneurship%20for%20the%20Formerly%20Incarcerated%20-%20A%20Process%20Evaluation%20of%20PERC.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/articles/entrepreneurship-for-the-formerly-incarcerated Shelf Number: 156590 Keywords: EvaluationJailsPrisonsRecidivismReentryReturning Citizens |