Pathway Home Evaluation Brief: Establishing Grant Programs Inside Correctional Facilities

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) funded Mathematica and its partner, Social Policy Research Associates, to conduct an evaluation of the Pathway Home grants. This brief focuses on the 22 Pathway Home grants awarded in 2021 and describes their experiences establishing the pre-release components of their programs during their first year of implementation.

Prior evaluations of reentry grants funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) highlight the many challenges community service providers faced when integrating workforce development programs inside correctional facilities. Such challenges include limited physical space, restricted staff and participant movement within the facility, the culture of corrections, recruiting and hiring qualified program staff who can pass background checks, and sharing data across partners. The COVID-19 pandemic posed additional challenges to providing in-person pre-release services given restrictions on entering facilities. This brief describes how the Pathway Home grantees awarded by DOL in 2021 established programs within correctional facilities, including the challenges they encountered and the solutions they identified to address those challenges.