Overcoming Post-Incarceration Employment Challenges Through Technology and Entrepreneurship

• In Event: Lightning Talk: Reentry: Prison Programs and Community Supervision

Abstract

Research shows that involvement in the criminal legal system can pervasively and seriously damage prospects for employment, training, and earnings over an individual’s working career. Both the time spent incarcerated and myriad collateral consequences of a criminal record restrict access to certain occupations and job sectors and underpin discriminatory hiring practices, having a debilitating impact on the ability to rebuild and reintegrate back into society. Founded by Marcus Bullock, a tech CEO who was formerly incarcerated, the Perspectives Partnership is a national nonprofit harnessing technology through its Flikshop continuum of coordinated reentry supports to empower individuals who are currently or were formerly incarcerated by equipping them with skills and resources to thrive in the technology industry and entrepreneurship. The Perspectives Partnership serves this hypermarginalized population by providing technical and entrepreneurship skills, supporting transitions into the workforce, providing microgrants, and facilitating connections between families and their loved ones who are incarcerated. Learn how the research and technical assistance team at the American Institutes for Research is working with the Perspectives Partnership to conduct a developmental evaluation of the Flikshop program model and to build the program’s capacity to effectively serve more scholars in an increasing and diverse array of settings.

Author

• Nicholas Read, American Institutes for Research