Every year, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ Office of Diversion and Reentry ( ODR ) provides reentry services for thousands of people involved in the justice system. These services cover a wide variety of needs, ranging from employment services and skills training for individuals on adult felony probation to connections to community organizations...
Roca, Inc . delivers services to young men between the ages of 16 and 25 who are involved in the justice system and who are at a high risk of being incarcerated or reincarcerated. Roca uses a cognitive behavioral intervention model that aims to create behavioral change in such young men. Its four-year program starts with two years of intensive interaction with a young...
Since 2006, Responsible Fatherhood programs across the country have received federal funding administered by the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These programs aim to promote positive father-child interactions, improve parents’ relationship with each other and their capacity...
A Guide to Social Impact Bond Investing
MDRC President Gordon Berlin draws lessons from MDRC’s implementation of the first social impact bond (SIB) project in the United States, providing valuable insights into the inner workings of SIB deals and explaining the challenges and the potential of this impact investing model.
Cognitive-behavioral approaches have proven effective in promoting change in areas such as criminal behavior and substance abuse in hundreds of studies over the past 25 years. Cognitively focused approaches take aim at thoughts and beliefs that undermine mental health and turn the focus toward solutions. Behavioral skill-building, in contrast, concentrates on changing...
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) emphasizes targeting out-of-school youth with training and services that are employer driven and linked to labor market demand. Drawing upon available research and on-the-ground experience, this paper summarizes existing knowledge that can guide implementation of key WIOA provisions for serving out-of-school youth.
MDRC is implementing and evaluating a range of projects that use various models of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to reduce recidivism, promote employment, and foster trauma recovery in adults and children. This two-page issue focus offers background on CBT and brief summaries of the projects.
With 750,000 people released from prisons each year, there is a pressing need for rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of reentry strategies. Former prisoners face a range of challenges to successful reentry into the community, including low levels of employment and substance abuse problems, all of which impact recidivism rates. Although the prisoner reentry issue...
MDRC participated in the nation’s first Social Impact Bond, an innovative way to fund promising new programs at no cost to taxpayers. MDRC oversaw the implementation of a cognitive behavioral therapy program for 16- to 18-year-olds detained at New York City’s Rikers Island with the goal of reducing the high recidivism rate for this population by focusing on personal...
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