D: Managing the Key Transition Period
2: Many of the communities that receive released individuals are ill prepared to absorb those with low employability.
Most inmates return to low-income, disadvantaged communities with limited employment prospects. [1] These communities often have large numbers of low-skilled residents and relatively few unskilled jobs, let alone skilled jobs offering long-term employment stability. Peer groups in these neighborhoods presumably provide relatively few contacts to the world of legitimate work. [2] All residents in these neighborhoods are adversely affected by what has been coined "spatial mismatch" - a surplus of workers relative to the number of available jobs in certain neighborhoods. [3] Weak networks and contacts will continue to exacerbate the employment difficulties of this population. [4]
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, A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in Illinois (Washington D.C.: The Urban Institute) ; , A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in Maryland (Washington DC: The Urban Institute) .
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, When Work Disappears: the World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Random House) .
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, "The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: A Review of Recent Studies and Their Implications for Welfare Reform," Fannie Mae Foundation Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 4 ; , "Racial Differences in Spatial Job Search Patterns: Exploring the Causes and Consequences," Economic Geography 76, no. 3, 201 - 23 .
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, Employment Barriers Facing Ex-Offenders (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute) . , "Informal Job Search and Black Youth Unemployment," American Economic Review 77, no.2 .
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