Employment and Recidivism

My guest will be Mindy Tarlow.  Mindy is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), a New York-based nonprofit corporation that provides employment services to men and women with criminal convictions in New York, and beginning in 2011, in Oklahoma and California.  CEO was created by the Vera Institute of Justice in the late 1970s and has been operating as an independent corporation since 1996.

Prior to joining CEO, she spent close to ten years at the New York City Office of Management and Budget where she rose from Senior Analyst in 1984 to Deputy Director in 1992.  She guided many criminal justice projects during her tenure in government including co-authoring the Mayor’s Safe Streets, Safe City Omnibus Criminal Justice Program.  Mindy serves on the executive committee of the National Transitional Jobs Network and the New York City Employment & Training Coalition, and served on Mayor Bloomberg's Commission for Economic Opportunity. Most recently, Ms. Tarlow was named Chair of Governor Cuomo's Work for Success Committee, a statewide task force devoted to meeting the employment needs of formerly incarcerated people.

We will be discussing the role of full-time employment in curbing the recidivism rate.