The U.S. Sentencing Commission has published a report from its recent series on recidivism of federal offenders released in 2010. Titled Recidivism and Federal Bureau of Prisons Programs: Vocational Program Participants Released in 2010 it is the sixth report in the series and examines Bureau of Prisons (BOP) vocational program participants who participated in one of the programs listed below. The study is a first-in-decades examination of vocational programming and first-of-its-kind undertaken by the Commission.
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- Occupational Education Programs (OEP)
- The first group comprises 7,310 offenders who participated in at least one OEP vocational or technical training course.
- OEP offers a variety of programs where participants can take courses in vocational and occupationally oriented areas for the purpose of obtaining marketable skills.
- Federal Prison Industries (FPI)
- The second group comprises 5,082 offenders who participated in FPI.
- FPI provides offenders with work simulation programs and training opportunities through the factories it operates at BOP facilities.
This study observed no statistically significant difference in the likelihood of recidivism among offenders who participated in Occupational Education Programs or Federal Prison Industries compared to offenders who did not participate in the programs.