Psychological Self-Sufficiency Among Ex-Offenders: A Pathway Toward Economic Self-Sufficiency

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how psychological self-sufficiency (PSS) affects economic self-sufficiency (ESS) differently among formerly-incarcerated job seekers compared to its non-formerly-incarcerated counterparts. The two main theoretical perspectives—human capital development and labor force attachment—have traditionally informed studies in welfare-to-work. However, there is dearth of research specifically studying the formerly-incarcerated, even though this population meets all welfare and low-income criteria, in addition to having individual and structural barriers that is seen as limiting their achievement of the ESS outcome. Previous studies have found that the ‘process’ of reaching ESS as an economic outcome can be captured by measuring an empowerment-based transformative process termed PSS. PSS—comprising perceived employment barriers and employment hope—has been found to impact ESS by employment hope mediating the path between perceived barrier and ESS. In this study it is hypothesized that PSS contributes to ESS differently in the case of formerly-incarcerated. This is significant because PSS, as a centerpiece toward lasting economic success, may have variant factors working uniquely within formerly-incarcerated with perceived barriers being more structural than individual.

Methods: This study uses survey data collected from two different local social service agencies in Chicago, IL. A total of 1,167 low-income job seekers—1,051 and 116 from two respective agencies, were available for analysis. The validated Employment Hope Scale and the Perceived Employment Barrier Scale were used to test the research model using a Structural Equation Modeling. As a measurement of ESS, we used the WEN Economic Self-Sufficiency Scale. Maximum likelihood (ML) was employed to estimate models, and missing data was treated with full information maximum likelihood (FIML) method.

Results: We tested the hypotheses from structural and individual employment barriers to ESS using SEM with employment hope as the mediator. Employment hope and perceived employment barriers together had a significant positive impact on ESS, but was distinguished strongly by whether the barrier is individual or structural. Individual employment barriers (IEB) were found to be significant for non-formerly-incarcerated while the structural employment barriers (SEB) were significant for formerly-incarcerated.  In the “non-formerly-incarcerated” group, IEB had a negative significant effect on employment hope and employment hope had a positive effect on ESS.  In the formerly-incarcerated group, SEB had a negative significant effect on employment hope; IEB had a positive effect on ESS; SEB had a negative effect on ESS; and employment hope had a positive effect on ESS.

Conclusion/Implication: IEB seems to be the dominant limiting factor for the non-formerly-incarcerated but SEB seems to compromise both employment hope and ESS among the formerly incarcerated. Interestingly, in the latter group, individual barriers positively affect ESS. The locus of barriers for the formerly incarcerated remaining structural thereby contributing to a stagnated reentry progress, intentional attention needs to be given to rebiographing the ‘impossibility’ of structural barriers into the ‘possibility’ of employment hope for improved reentry outcomes by achieving ESS. Opening up opportunities to remove human capital and labor market exclusion barriers, complemented by realistic assessment of individual barriers, is crucial for successful reentry work.