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37 Fed. Probation 48 (1973)
Evaluating Work Furlough: A Followup

handle is hein.journals/fedpro37 and id is 122 raw text is: Evaluating Work Furlough: A Followup BY ALVIN RUDOFF, PH.D., AND T. C. ESSELSTYN, PH.D. Department of Sociology, California State University, San Jose HIS IS a followup of a preliminary report of the same title which was published in FED- ERAL PROBATION, March 1971.1 It was ex- plained there that in 1965 the Sheriff of Santa Clara County, California, called upon the present authors to undertake an independent and detailed evaluation of the work release or work furlough program which had been administered in his De- partment since 1957. The financial returns to the county and to the inmate were not an issue although this was investigated. What the Sheriff wanted to know was what impact the program had on continued criminality, on family ties, and on the job history of the inmates after release. These were accepted as the problems which the Work Furlough Study would explore. While work furlough had gained wide popularity as a correc- tional expedient throughout the United States, its growth was based largely on faith rather than on reliable evidence. Support in kind was pro- vided by the Sheriff's Department, funding was provided through the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,2 and the State Depart- ment of Rehabilitation provided a vocational counselor on a salary reimbursement basis. The Work Furlough Study began in 1967 and con- cluded with the submission of its final report 4 years later. The preliminary report in FEDERAL PROBATION (March 1971) explained that the Sheriff's staff operated the work furlough program from the Elmwood Rehabilitation Center. This is a mini- mum-security facility housing about 600 jail in- mates serving sentences ranging from a few days to a year or longer in the event of consecutive sentences. On any one day, about 200 Elmwood inmates out of this total of 600 were off the premises working at their civilian jobs at prevailing wages. They returned to Elmwood each night. This is work furlough-furlough or releasing an inmate for standard civil employment during the day on I Alvin Rudoff, T. C. Esselstyn, and George L. Kirkham, Evalu- ating Work Furlough, FEDERAL PROBATION Vol. 35, No. 1, March 1971. pp. 34-38. 2 SRS Grant No. 12-P-55261/9-04 (RD-2506-G) See Alvin Rudoff and T. C. Esselstyn, Jail Inmates at Work, Final Report, 1971. Copies available on request through the authors, California State University, San Jose. condition that he return to custody at night. This process continues until his sentence expires. All Elmwood inmates were eligible for work fur- lough. Many applied. Some did not. Some were accepted, some were denied. The process of selec- tion and the criteria governing it had been de- veloped by the Sheriff's staff over many years. Neither the process of selection nor the criteria were modified by the Work Furlough Study dur- ing its 4-year history. It was designed to test the results of the existing program. The only change in the ongoing system was the introduc- tion of a Department of Rehabilitation counselor on an experimental basis to provide special serv- ices to a limited number of jail clients. Methods The methods employed can be summarized here only roughly. Between 1968 and 1970, data were collected on 2,360 inmates. Forty-two percent of these were on work furlough, 58 percent were not. Thus the Study was able to compare the traits and performance of two groups-work fur- lough and nonfurlough inmates. Data were col- lected through various standard test instruments and some that were developed specifically for this project. Some instruments were applied only once, for example, the Inmate Background Question- naire and the Family Background Questionnaire. Some were applied upon arrival and on the eve of release for longer-term inmates-the Califor- nia Psychological Inventory, the Adjective Check List. Some involved a search of the records of other agencies, for example, records of the De- partment of Social Service and the Criminal In- vestigation and Identification Division. All data were coded, keypunched, and transferred to com- puter tapes. Various statistical manipulations were then undertaken depending upon the prob- lem to be analyzed. This was partially true also of data on staff although some of this could not be quantified. These methods yielded voluminous findings on the characteristics of a jail population for that part of the United States and on the outcome of its work furlough program. Some of these findings

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