People returning home from incarceration consistently name barriers to securing and maintaining employment as a key challenge to their reentry to the community. In response, custody settings like jails, prisons, and reentry facilities consistently provide technical training and licensure programs to help individuals secure employment. However, these programs almost exclusively prepare individuals for the technical aspects of work and rarely provide individuals skills about managing the interpersonal aspects of work settings. To solve these issues and increase the likelihood that people leaving prison can enter the workforce and maintain employment, we need to approach employment readiness programming in prisons differently.

JSP, in cooperation with the National Institute of Corrections, is developing an employment-focused immersive learning curriculum for people who are incarcerated. The immersive learning curriculum will feature innovative technologies to replicate, as much as possible, real experiences and situations individuals may encounter in the community. The immersive curriculum will help those in prison develop interpersonal and emotional skills that will better prepare them to navigate challenging workplace dynamics and triggers that may create behavior dysregulation. Taking a behavioral health approach to employment training will not only increase the comprehensiveness of custodial programming, but holds promise for helping individuals develop the skills they need to not only succeed beyond incarceration, but thrive.