Bringing employers to the correctional facility enables prisoners to establish connections with these employers prior to release and to build valuable professional networking skills. In addition, seeing employers in the institution encourages inmates to begin job searching prior to release. To these ends, corrections administrators should provide job fairs, private sector joint ventures, guest speakers, or mock interview sessions, or other programs that will engage employers.

Example: Inmate Transition Branch, Federal Bureau of Prisons

The Federal Bureau of Prisons' Inmate Transition Branch assists in the implementation of job fairs and mock job fairs in federal prisons and (by request) in state prisons or jails. Its precursor, the Inmate Placement Program Branch, assisted with over 350 job fairs in 100 federal prisons. The Branch also distributes instructional publications such as a Mock Job Fair Handbook to corrections staff nationwide.

The type of facility and its location may make it particularly difficult for an employer to come to the institution. For example, people incarcerated in county jails are usually situated geographically close to where they will be released. It may be easier for employers and One-Stop staff to partner with county jails than it is to partner with state prisons, which may be a significant distance from the home communities of inmates and relevant potential employers.

State prisons are often far from the communities to which prisoners will return, which exacerbates the problems a person in prison faces when searching for a job. Corrections administrators should consider transferring prisoners to community-based facilities such as jails as they are nearing their release dates, in order to facilitate job searches as well as to allow prisoners to make other connections in the community. (See Policy Statement 25, Development of Supervision Strategy, for more on transferring state prisoners to local facilities prior to release.)