Programs The Work: INTUIT
by Matthew Koval (based on findings by Victoria A. Shivy, PhD)

The INTUIT: Work and Careers program is a 13-week career-related psychoeducational intervention that represents a partnership between the VA Department of Correctional Education and Virginia Commonwealth University. The program currently is delivered for times a year exclusively at the Richmond Women’s Detention Center. Since its inception, well over 300 detainees have completed the program. The program works through helping offenders with their career related concerns.

The positive outcomes from this intervention are that the participants:

• Gain a significant level of confidence in their career related ‘self-appraisal;’ that is, in understanding the realities of their vocational situation.
• Gain a significant degree of confidence in their ability to obtain career-related information.
• Become more confident in their abilities to make and take tangible steps towards specific career-related goals.
• Gain a significant degree of confidence in their career planning abilities.

Another important finding relates to the socioeconomic functioning of these groups of female offenders.

• Females in the intervention’ control group show a significant increase in non-physical aggression over the time they spend in Community Corrections. However, no such change was seen in females who participated in the INTUIT program. As an inmates’ release date approaches, stress levels typically increase. It seems that females who receive career-related programming either do not experience, or do not ‘act on’ some of the stress related to societal reentry.

INTUIT has already received exposure at the national level by being one of only 3 Virginia-based programs to be included in the State Council of Government’s “Report of the Re-Entry Policy Council” and by being one of only a handful of State Agency/University partnerships in the country. A full report on the 5-years of this study is set to be completed this summer.