Beginning in April 1978, 61 men about to be released from New York City's correctional facility at Rikers Island were interviewed, and 40 of the releasees were reinterviewed at least once within the next few months. The aim of the study was to develop questionnaires, probe issues associated with the relationship between employment and crime in a key high-risk population, and examine the problems of coping confronting releasees. Also interviewed was a sample of eight persons who were participants in an evaluation of the New York City Court Employment Program (CEP). An examination of the linkages between employment and crime for both samples showed different patterns of association between employment and crime at different stages of development. For both young and old, some alternation between crime and employment seems to prevail. For the youth, such alternation represents an exploration of possible income-producing options. For the older group, such alternation may reflect the perpetuation of adolescent patterns in a lengthy and delayed process of 'maturing out' of crime. Although the number of those who mixed employment and crime simultaneously was far smaller, the existence of such a group in the Rikers sample suggests that automatic opposition between employment and crime is a false one. Details of the study methodology and tabular data are appended.