NCJ Number
75777
Journal
OFFENDER REHABILITATION Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Dated: (Summer 1977) Pages: 335-342
Date Published
1977
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Three interrelated problems facing correctional administrators in developing healthy employment and career development programs for the adult offender are discussed, and potential help is suggested from theories developed by Donald E. Super and Edmund W. Gordon.
Abstract
Employment and career development obstacles confronting the adult offender are (1) socioeconomic status of the offender prior to involvement in the justice system; (2) a general failure of typical educational, vocational training, and counseling programs operating in correctional institutions; and (3) the criminal label attached to the ex-offender. In regard to socioeconomic status, a disproportionate nmumber of previously unemployed, undereducated, or otherwise underutilized individuals are serving sentences. Rehabilitation and/or education programs of American correctional institutions generally are inadequate or irrelevant, and thereby fail to counter the rejection or underutilization of the offender in the community prior to his release, which often causes the ex-offender to renew his old habits. Moreover, the frustration of discriminatory employment practices against the ex-offender is exemplified by discrimination by correctional agencies against the hiring of former prisoners. As a solution, Super (1969) advocates vocational guidance and career development processes that involve the total person, including family and on-the-job interactions. Gordon (1974) provides the correctional administrator with a developmental ecological model of career development that includes such activities as expanded alternative choices for career development, optimizing decision behavior within these expanded situations, and facilitating movement toward vocational objectives. The article concludes that correctional agencies can use Super and Gordon's models by coordinating with available resources within the offender's community to assist in the former inmate's reintegration into the work world. Nineteen references are provided.