What does it take for a person returning home from incarceration to find their own way to stability?
Historically, justice involvement has led to lifelong structural barriers: a employment market that doesn’t see your value, a housing market rife with instability, and a healthcare system that doesn’t address underlying mental and physical health needs. All of these barriers often compound and make accessing economic power harder — which contributes to the cycle of incarceration that spreads across communities.
And the cost of these barriers is borne by all of us. For one example, over the last 20 years, recidivism has cost the taxpayers of Chicago over $1 billion.
This fall, the University of Illinois Chicago released a study on the links between employment and recidivism, as part of their Great Cities Institute. They collaborated with longtime Redefine Alliance member North Lawndale Employment Network to carefully track the costs of the cycle of incarceration, and compare the effect of reentry programs.
The results of this research were decisive — and to those of us in the know about employment social enterprises, they’ll come as no surprise.
Since 2004, North Lawndale has operated a community-based reentry program called Sweet Beginnings, which operates an employment social enterprise, Beelove. Their programs combine dignified work and wraparound supports, like job training, housing assistance, and mental health resources — all while manufacturing popular consumer goods that generate revenue for the organization to invest back in programming and people.
Data shows that North Lawndale’s program achieved significant return on investment. Every $1 invested produced $5.60 in social change and economic return. That far outpaces the average reentry return on investment of $1 to $3.
For every 10 individuals enrolled as North Lawndale clients, $405,000 in annual incarceration costs are diverted for Illinois taxpayers.
Put simply, dignified work plus wraparound supports breaks the cycle of incarceration AND uses taxpayer money responsibly.
And these effects ripple outward, too. “Remember the impact is not just the impact of that individual, but the halo effect around them — their kids, the people they go to church with, the people they kick it with on Saturday, their neighbors, their family,” shared our president and CEO Maria Kim, as part of the Chicago Tribune’s news story (paywall) on this report’s release. “When people see Person X step into their new beginning, it’s contagious in all the positive ways. Those are the kinds of ripple effects we need in our society to heal.”
Many thanks to the Great Cities Institute and North Lawndale Employment Network for their work bringing this research to light.
