Good afternoon class,
As we all have come to know by now much of our debate next week will be on whether to give CEO grant money or not. As a advocate for CEO it is obvious to understand where my opinion lies, but we should examine the organization deeply in order to gain a complete understand of its success.
The main issue that has been raise against CEO is its overall success. In class we specifically discussed the test results of the MDRC evaluation. Before we address the tests findings we most first recognize the importance of CEO openly participating in this test. First, the MDRC is the most accepted and rigorous test to evaluate the effectiveness of social policy. The fact that our other finalist organizations have never been subjected to this type of rigor demonstrates CEO's commitment to success. I believe this fact was under-estimated in class. Mom's House, CHOW, and Planned Parenthood have never, I repeat never, undergone a governmental evaluation such as this. Once again I believe the fact that CEO actively fought to participate in this test shows the organizations determination to be successful.
At the same time it seems the MDRC found that CEO is making positive strides in achieving their social change. CEO has significantly reduced recidivism, significantly increased employment opportunities in the first year, its financial benefits outweigh its costs, and they are most effective with higher risk clients. The exact numbers to support these positive claims can be found in the MDRC's report. With all of these successes it is important to note that CEO is the only program of its kind in the community. So it would seem that CEO is doing a good job. For some classmates this is unpersuasive, considering that this is the most accepted and successful evaluation test in the country these results are concrete. But lets entertain some objections.
Majority of critiques that were posited in class were concerning the overall effectiveness of CEO. One, was the fact that CEO was only effective within the first year of parole. This is an important question that CEO must tangle with. We all can agree that the first year of a recently released prisoner is the hardest year of their life. This is the time period where we see many re-incarcerations, drug-use, and violence. So I would ask classmates to keep this in mind. CEO is most effective within the hardest and most troubling time of a prisoners life, this is a huge impact. Once again, I believe that when we evaluate the overall effectiveness we must remember and take note of the clientele that CEO is working with, because it is extremely unique compared to the other finalists. Second, the other argument is since CEO has nothing to compare itself to how can we accept a 50% success rate? This is a foolish question and should be dismissed. Any positive impact that can be made within these recent prisoners lives is important. Whether successful or not, the people who CEO works with are trying to make a better life for themselves. As a criminal these is extremely hard to do. Since there is no other program to help these individuals any help given is plausible.
I believe that CEO is a unique organization that should receive some of our grant money. Its overall impact within its target community is extremely successful, even if it is only with one year. If the class is concerned with CEO's sustainable impact, I would ask you to look at it in another way. The value of one successful CEO participant is much higher than those who do not succeed. I am interested to hear others opinions on CEO and welcome constructive criticism.
In class this past week I came off as though I was arguing against CEO, but I just wanted to clarify that I actually do think that CEO is an organization we should donate to, especially after re-visiting the MDRC report. My only concern though is that there is no significant effect on long lasting employment across the entire population. If individuals that receive CEO’s services end up unemployed after a year just like individuals that did not even go through the program, then how effective is CEO in that aspect? It makes CEO’s services almost irrelevant when it comes to lasting employment. It is important to note though that CEO’s services does have a positive impact on lasting employment in later years for those recently released from prison which is definitely a success. If CEO could focus more on getting participants in that category they could be even more successful.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think that CEO is effective and a worthy organization in other ways. I think it is these arguments that we need to focus on when trying to convince the class to donate to CEO as opposed to the argument about their job placement rate. For instance, CEO significantly reduces recidivism by about 16 to 22% across three different areas (re-incarcerations, reconvictions, and rearrests). Like you said Derek, this population that CEO deals with is extremely hard to work with and the fact that CEO is able to reduce recidivism is a huge accomplishment. I think reducing recidivism is equally as important as the employment goal’s of CEO. If CEO were just an organization that tried to reduce recidivism and did not even try to tackle employment, then maybe people would see CEO as an even more effective organization. Also, when I went to my site visit, I found out that another jail might have to be built because the current one is becoming overcrowded. If CEO is able to help that problem in just a small way, it is still beneficial to the community especially since no other organization in the area addresses this issue.
I have to be honest, I am not one of the biggest supporters of CEO. But I do understand the absolute necessity for programs that assist newly released prisoners, and CEO does just that. At first I (and I’m sure others) would rather donate to organizations that help feed or educate kids, and basically helping those that haven’t already “messed up majorly.” This article puts everything into perspective for me. Yes it’s a bit lengthy but it’s an easy read.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/business/25offender.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I especially like how both liberal and conservative politicians are in support of programs just like CEO. As we all know, politicians can never agree on anything, but if both sides are supporting efforts to keep recidivism low than I think we should take an extra look. With the ever present issue of budgeting and funding, prisons are much way to expensive to keep up as well as completely care for the prisoners while incarcerated. The author stated that in Michigan it was more expensive to have an inmate in prison for a year than to pay for the schooling of one student at the University of Michigan.
Someone said something a few weeks ago in class along the lines of yeah, a 50% success rate is not great, but look at the population they are working with. The fact that CEO’s efforts are working in any way are pretty great. This stuck with me, and got me thinking a bit more. In reality, the condoms that Family Planning gives away aren’t effective 100% of the time. Yeah one time it MIGHT keep someone from becoming pregnant or getting a STD, but that’s just that one time (I still support funding Family Planning). With CEO, the participants of the program will carry that knowledge with them for a long time. Even if they don’t end up keeping that first job they get out of prison, they will still have that success and experience of completing the program.
Lauren stated a good question, and I agree, but at the same time, I don’t think that we can actually say that the success of the program lies only in the participants hands. Yes they must be motivated, but being motivated does not guarantee that there will be jobs available. And when filling out an application you usually have to check a little box if you have been arrested or spent time in jail/prison. In an area where unemployment is high and many people seem to be looking for work, wouldn’t it be easier (and less of a risk) for the employer to hire the person that hasn’t been incarcerated?
I’ve rambled on, but basically no organization I know of is completely 100% successful with every single participant. Why not donate to CEO? I’m sure those boots will do all of those participants a load of good.
I could not agree with you more, I definitely believe that CEO is deserving of our grant money and is a very unique organization in regards to the population that it serves. I was rather put off by people’s hesitance towards supporting this organization; I think many were hesitant because of the very population that CEO serves. CEO is still a fairly new organization and I am confident that it will expand and improve its services in the future as the organization matures, and I think we need to have hope that it will improve. I agree with you Derek that the value of one successful CEO participant is much higher than those who do not succeed.
ReplyDeleteCEO has a clear mission however, it is dealing with a wide range of different people, all of which choose to deal with the help that CEO provides in a different manner. An organization that feeds those that are hungry (like a food bank) may be much more successful because the people that are utilizing the food banks services all truly want and need the food that they are providing. However, when thinking about CEO, although many of the participants may truly want and need to reintegrate themselves back into society and get jobs, they have many outside factors pushing against them that make it a lot harder for them to successfully utilize CEO’s services (such as addictions, unsupportive family and friends, unsafe/unsupportive living situations). Therefore, I do believe that any success that CEO is able to accomplish proves that CEO is an overall successful organization and we must not forget that they are providing very helpful and positive services. Comparing CEO’s success to a human services organization’s successful is irrelevant. Ultimately, I believe that since CEO is a fairly new organization in Binghamton it has many possibilities to grow in the future and I would be very happy to support it by providing them a portion of the grant money.
Meredith mentioned how in Michigan it is more expensive to support a prisoner for a year, than a year of university education is. In a similar vein, I read the other day that California currently spends more money on their prison system than their education system:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cacs.org/ca/article/44
The funding for corrections has been steadily increasing, while the funding for education has been doing the opposite. As this article,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/california-prisons-colleges_n_1863101.html
(which references the above report) says,
"There's a direct relationship between how much money the Golden State spends on prisons and how much it spends on higher education, according to a report put out by the non-partisan public policy group California Common Sense. When one goes up, the other goes down."
It got me thinking, especially combined with the CEO discussion that had been lingering in my mind. I know that one of the core values that keeps being mentioned in class is education. A proper education can prevent a lot of life problems, including unemployment, poverty, and crime. CEO helps to educate the parolees on job skills, interview skills, and more, and also deals with the unemployment problem.
CEO may have a 50% success rate, but those people who do find success are removed from the prison population, meaning a smaller amount of funds needs to be allotted to corrections. The number of people CEO affects might not make a financial difference in the scheme of the entire state of California or New York, but I think it makes a significant enough difference in terms of Broome County/Binghamton, the other cities it has programs in, and the lives of the individuals and families it affects. Any money that is saved from the corrections budget is free to go to education, unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the other needs that we have discussed in class. As the bad (size of convict population/spending) in society goes down, the good (funding for education, hunger, mental health etc.) goes up. And as the amount of good, educated, well-fed, happy, people goes up, the crime rates and convict populations go down. It is a self-perpetuating cycle that organizations like CEO are trying to help kick-start, and that is why I am in support of funding them.
Though everyone raises interesting points in support of CEO, I do not believe that we should give them any of our grant money. In class, I was intrigued by Heawon’s story about the boots. However, I realized that I supported what CEO was planning on using the money for rather than the organization itself. CEO provides extremely unique services, but I do not feel that the argument for CEO is nearly as strong as the argument for the other organizations. Our entire class was able to agree on three of the organizations and I believe that we should stick to those.
ReplyDeleteI completely disagree with Derek when he says that questioning the success rate of CEO is foolish. Yes, CEO is the only organization in the area dealing with people recently released from jail and yes, this is a difficult population to work with. However, we cannot generalize that CEO’s target population is much more difficult to work with than others. Broome County has a high teen pregnancy rate compared to the state average; therefore Family Planning is working with a difficult population. Broome County has high poverty rates and low graduation rates, so Mom’s House is working with a difficult population. Broome County is also a food desert and since CHOW must cater to such a large number of people, this is also a difficult population to work with. I do not believe that a 50% success rate should not be celebrated, but I would like to see exactly what CEO is doing to improve its services and raise this number. We should not accept mediocre results just because the population CEO works with is “a little difficult.”
I agree that CEO makes a good effort in working to reduce recidivism in the community. However, I disagree with Betty’s comment that we are hesitant to give to CEO because of the population it deals with. As I said above, giving to all of the organizations is a risk, as they all deal with populations that are not generally easy to help. That is the reason all of the finalist organizations exist. There was a population in the community that needed assistance and a new, unique organization was created to help them.
The only developed argument I have heard in favor of CEO is that it deals with a population that no other organization helps. I feel that we have exhausted this argument and I would challenge the class to find another argument for CEO that does not involve comparison other organizations.
I agree with you Derek in the sense that CEO is worthy of our money. They are a good, effective organization that definitely needs to be in Broome County. They greatly benefit the community and provide an outlet for previously incarcerated individuals to seek refuge and get help in order to get their lives back on track. If 50 people out of 100 get a job coming out of the program, then that is 50 more people with a job and 50 less people back in prison. That in itself is an amazing accomplishment considering how hard it can be to keep an inmate from going back to prison, especially one with a drug addiction.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when I tried to search for retention statistics for Broome County for our discussion on Tuesday, I came across this:
http://ams.nyscommunityaction.org/Resources/PastEventsDocuments/2013/June%202013%20Conference/BroomeCounty%20ReEntry.pdf
It is a link to Broome County's very own prisoner re-entry program. I thought this was very interesting because one of the main arguments on the side of CEO is that CEO is the only program around the area that deals with this type of clientele. After reading through this pdf, I've realized that there is another program geared towards recently incarcerated individuals. Let me be clear and say that I'm not against CEO. Like I said, I really like the organization and they are worthy of the money, but I wanted to bring this issue up because I think it is very crucial to our discussion and I encourage everyone to read it before our class.
This ABLE Re-entry Program boasts a 24 month success rate of 86%. So it brings up the question, how effective is CEO? We said before that is didn't matter because it was the only one of its kind, but here is another, more effective program that does the same thing.
There wasn't a lot of information on this program other than this link however. I don't even know if it is free or not, but I had to share it. Hopefully we will get some answers in class from Professor Campbell but it should make for an interesting discussion.
Charlie: This document is an excellent find! My impression of the Task Force report is that it is about how all of the organizations involved in prisoner re-entry coordinate their work. I don't think--though I'm not completely sure--that the ABLE Re-Entry Program duplicates what CEO does. Rather, it looks as if ABLE coordinates the range of services provided to people returning to Broome County from prison. That means that vocational training and placement, the work that CEO does, is only one of several distinct services created to support people returning from prison and geared to reducing recidivism. It may be that the success rate numbers in the report were for the totality of effort provided by all of the participating organizations. That's my impression, at least, though I'm not completely sure. The best way to find out would be to ask Katie Blaine or anyone else involved with this work in Broome County.
DeleteMartha I applaud you for your critique, unfortunately I am not convince. You offered the other organizations target population as equivalent to CEO's. I urge you to look deeper into your argument. Recently released prisoners are the same as young adults getting an education? Most of these me are uneducated without a high school diploma or GED. As the presenter for Mom's house stated a lot of their clients are pursuing masters degrees. I am not arguing against Mom's house, let me be clear, I just don't think the target population is the same, but the both are still in need. I am arguing that the risk of failure in general life is dramatically higher in CEO's participants, in comparison to masters candidate.
ReplyDeleteAlso I would ask you to address my initial statements about your source information to criticize CEO's success. No other finalist organization has been examined with the rigor and expertise as CEO. I am curious how the other three organizations would fair? Furthermore, the MDRC found many positives of CEO. Although the effects of their programs dissipate after a year, the successes of CEO outweigh its long-term failure.
The first success is its reduction of recidivism as you stated. The analysis states, and I quote, “By using employment as an immediate engagement strategy after release, CEO intervened early on and placed those people on a different trajectory, deterring future criminal activity. Reductions in recidivism are difficult to achieve and have rarely been seen in rigorous evaluations such as this one (19).” This would demonstrate the difficult CEO is faced with, in comparison to college kids who want free condoms (this is meant to be an extreme example).
The second success is the fact that CEO generates benefits in comparison to cost. This is intended specifically for classmates who rely heavily of data, this is the highest governmental study which proves CEO as a cost effective social program. For every member of the program, average 75, the total net benefit is $4,100 for the tax-payer and $4,900 for society. Even more convincingly for the sub-group, which CEO was originally designed to target, their total net benefit was $8,300. At the most conservative estimates for every $1 spend CEO generates $1.26-$3.85. I am unaware of any other finalist organization that has these type of statistics from an external source, specifically the government. Calculated at the $3.85 rate this means our "investment" of $2000 would yield: $7,700.
To answer you final challenge, CEO does deal with a population no other organization does. More importantly they are a mechanism of positive change as it has been cited in the MDRC report, not to mention the internal data CEO has collected. They significantly reduce recidivism and are cost-efficient. This program achieves something that is not normally done, in other words it is unique compared to similar national organizations. Just because the class has agreed on three does not mean that we should remove all potential finalists. I encourage you to re-examine your argument, specifically the equal qualification of the 4 finalists target population and the overall positive change that CEO is generating for troubled individuals and society as a whole.
I'm really glad this is a conversation that we've had on our blog comments. I think the different views that have been shared are very important in terms of whether or not we should give to CEO. I do believe that we should give to CEO - however, I am a bit hesitant because the more organizations we give to, the less money we have to give to each. I think that because all the groups agreed on the other three organizations we should definitely give to those - the fact that we didn't all agree on CEO is part of what makes me so hesitant. While I know that CEO provides a great service and is incredibly important to the community, I almost feel like we should go with our gut feelings. The fact that the entire class agreed on three organizations is not something that can be overstated because it is incredibly significant. I think a final thing we need to consider in terms of our decision making is how important it is to us to maximize how much we give to each organization. The less money we give to each, the less they can do in terms of fulfilling the goals they have stated they need our money for. At this point, the question becomes whether we should maximize how much we give to each organization so as to help them as much as possible, or whether we still want to give to CEO and give less to all the others.
ReplyDelete