Preliminary findings from the initial evaluation of New York City's Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) program indicate that in the first year following study entry, 66 percent of program participants worked in an unemployment insurance-covered job, compared to 26 percent of individuals in the control group. The evaluation also found that program participants were twice as likely as those in the control group to work in all four quarters of the first year following study entry. Regarding recidivism, the evaluation found that the CEO program had no statistically significant impacts on arrest rates, parole measures, or overall incarceration, unless participants entered the program within 3 months of release from prison. This paper presents the results from an initial evaluation of the CEO program in New York City. CEO is a highly regarded employment program for former prisoners that employs a transitional employment model for assisting prisoner reentry. Data for this evaluation were obtained from several sources for a sample of ex-prisoners (n=977) randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups: the neighborhood work project group (n=568) or the resource room group (n=409). The research team evaluated baseline data, criminal justice administrative data, employment data, and program MIS (management information system) data for the first year following study entry to determine the effect of the program on participants' reentry efforts. The findings from the initial evaluation indicate that the CEO program is moderately successful at improving employment prospects for former prisoners, but that it has little impact on the former prisoner's risk of recidivism if they wait too long to enter the program. Tables and references