CEO Expanded History:
CEO has nearly 40 years of experience in workforce development programming. Our evidence-based program was developed as a demonstration project of the Vera Institute of Justice in the 1970s. In 1996, CEO was incorporated as an independent nonprofit organization with headquarters in New York City. As one of the largest reentry employment providers in the country, we now operate in 30 cities across eleven states, with the capacity to serve roughly 8,000 participants annually, and have made more than 36,000 placements into full-time employment for individuals who were formerly incarcerated.
External Evaluations:Unlike organizations that provide services to hard to employ populations more broadly, CEO is wholly focused on returning citizens and has a proven track record of success in working with them. From 2004 to 2010, CEO participated in a random assignment evaluation of our program conducted by the independent research firm MDRC and funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The study found that CEO reduced re-arrests, re-conviction, and re-incarceration of recently released individuals by 16-25% in the three years following release from prison. Among participants assessed as high risk for re-incarceration, there was a 30% reduction in time spent in prison or jail. To date, CEO is one of the only employment reentry programs in the country to submit itself to such a rigorous evaluation and show a measurable impact. MDRC deemed the outcomes in its study “rare” relative to similar studies. The program was also found to be cost-effective; for every dollar spent, CEO generated up to $3.30 in taxpayer savings, primarily in reduced criminal justice spending.Furthermore, a New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) evaluation using a matched-sample comparison methodology found improvements in employment at every observation point in the study, a first for CEO. Twelve months post-enrollment, CEO participants were 52% more likely to be employed than their counterparts in the comparison group. Three years post-enrollment, CEO participants were 48% more likely to be employed than the comparison group. CEO has replicated its program model with fidelity across the country, and brings similar levels of recidivism reduction and positive employment outcomes where we operate.
CEO has set out to show that its program is a scalable, effective solution to the challenges that reentry presents. CEO’s growth has been focused on communities where there is a need for CEO’s services but also by working to bring new resources into a community that can be leveraged locally. These offices have remained open because of CEO’s ability to translate that initial investment into a sustainable local operation. Bringing its years of experience and national presence to bear on local issues enables CEO to contribute to local efforts in a meaningful way.
Recognizing the need for local workforce reentry support, CEO Detroit launched in June 2018 to create greater opportunity for people who are systematically excluded from realizing economic success.
