Vocational education programs in America's correctional institutions have been financially handicapped, since security demands the greatest portion of resource allocations. Four eras in the development of the correctional system are generally identified: era of punishment and retribution, era of restraint or reform, era of rehabilitation and treatment, and the emerging era of reintegration. Several models have been developed for providing vocational education to prison populations. Institutionally-based programs are of three types: correctional administrators and staff with sole control of program design, implementation, and evaluation; involvement of community members in curriculum design and instruction; and use of inmates for institutional maintenance or prison industries. In community-based programs inmates are released for training in a community facility. (Recent innovations are described.) Other innovations in corrections are the recently developed programs for female, juvenile, and mentally handicapped offenders. Rigorously designed research of program effectiveness is conspicuously absent. Before vocational education can successfully demonstrate its rehabilitative potential, its status must be improved, barriers to employment must be removed, and funding must be increased. National initiatives to improve vocational education's funding and status are standards and accreditation, Corrections Program in the Department of Education, and legislative initiatives. (YLB)