The Prison Reentry Experience of Justice-Involved Veterans

Prison reentry programs attempt to equip justice-involved veterans with life skills necessary for their transition out of prison. This qualitative study addressed the scant understanding of the impact pre-released prison reentry programs have on justice-involved veterans’ transition and reintegration back to the community. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the perceptions of justice-involved veterans regarding prison reentry programs that have impacted their transition out of prison. The well-being development model and Castro’s military-to-civilian transition model provided the conceptual framework for this qualitative study, using semistructured questions to interview 11 justice-involved veterans regarding their participation in prison reentry programs. Directed content analysis was used to categorize, synthesize, and interpret data. The first theme revealed that prison reentry programs helped with transition when there was family support, when one participated in industry reentry training, when there is community support, and housing. The second theme that emerged from the data revealed that prison reentry programs did not help with transition when prison reentry programs were cancelled due to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), prisoners faced difficulty in adjusting, had no knowledge of community resources, received no help from prison, and did not have access to housing, transportation, or healthcare. The research findings may contribute to positive social change by engaging justice-involved veteran stakeholders to review and revise prison reentry policies for justice-involved veterans

The Prison Reentry Experience of Justice-Involved Veterans

Prison reentry programs attempt to equip justice-involved veterans with life skills necessary for their transition out of prison. This qualitative study addressed the scant understanding of the impact pre-released prison reentry programs have on justice-involved veterans’ transition and reintegration back to the community. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the perceptions of justice-involved veterans regarding prison reentry programs that have impacted their transition out of prison. The well-being development model and Castro’s military-to-civilian transition model provided the conceptual framework for this qualitative study, using semistructured questions to interview 11 justice-involved veterans regarding their participation in prison reentry programs. Directed content analysis was used to categorize, synthesize, and interpret data. The first theme revealed that prison reentry programs helped with transition when there was family support, when one participated in industry reentry training, when there is community support, and housing. The second theme that emerged from the data revealed that prison reentry programs did not help with transition when prison reentry programs were cancelled due to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), prisoners faced difficulty in adjusting, had no knowledge of community resources, received no help from prison, and did not have access to housing, transportation, or healthcare. The research findings may contribute to positive social change by engaging justice-involved veteran stakeholders to review and revise prison reentry policies for justice-involved veterans

Healthy Relationships, Employment, and Reentry

This brief will provide an overview of the evidence supporting the interrelatedness of employment, healthy relationships, family well-being, and recidivism. It will also give the perspectives of expert program practitioners who are successfully integrating programming related to employment, prison reentry, healthy relationships, and responsible fatherhood. Finally, this brief will offer program and policy recommendations for leveraging the positive impacts of healthy relationships on employment and reentry and vice versa

Book Review: Rethinking Prison Reentry: Transforming Humiliation into Humility

Review of the book: Gaskew, T. (2014). Rethinking prison reentry: Transforming humiliation into humility. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ISBN: 978-0-7391-8312-0

Hopeful Homecomings: Women, Prison Reentry and the Arts

Previous studies have highlighted the importance of having gender-responsive programs for women involved in the criminal justice system, that address their different needs, separate from men. Formerly incarcerated women face many challenges as they transition from prison back into society. There are an increasing number of artists with an interest in providing arts programming for this special population as a tool for rehabilitation and transformation. Using website analyses, survey responses, and interview transcriptions, this comparative qualitative study explores why and how three different arts organizations – Poetic Justice Project, Prison Creative Arts Project, and the Judy Dworin Performance Project – use various art approaches to help formerly incarcerated women transition from prison back into society. Although these organizations are limited in resources, my findings suggest that the arts programs provide a community of support for formerly incarcerated women, increase their self-sufficiency, and increase public awareness about incarceration and those affected

The Interaction Effects of Subjective and Structural Factors on Crime Among Formerly Incarcerated Males

The high rate of recidivism in the over 600,000 individuals who return from incarceration each year is an important social problem facing U.S. society and the criminal justice system. Efforts undertaken so far early in the 21st century to address the problem of recidivism in the formerly incarcerated, particularly prison reentry programs, have produced disappointing results at reducing the rate of recidivism. Therefore, there is a need to identify new ways for prison reentry programs to reduce recidivism among individuals recently returned from prison, and social work with its person-in-environment perspective can make an important contribution through conducting research to understand the behavior change process that facilitates termination from crime. Explanations for how individuals terminate from crime are dominated by either a structural perspective or a subjective perspective, but new research has identified a third school of thought, the structural-subjective perspective, that attempts to create an integrated theory from both structural and subjective theories of crime termination. The purpose of the current study was to contribute to the literature on crime termination and the structural-subjective perspective by exploring the nature of the relationship between structural factors, subjective factors, and crime termination in a sample of adolescents with serious criminal backgrounds. Secondary data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a longitudinal study that followed youth convicted of serious crimes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Phoenix, Arizona for seven years, was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to answer the research questions. The method of multisample analysis within structural equation modeling was also used to examine significant relationships for invariance across race and socioeconomic status. Results found support for an inverse relationship between the latent measure Pro-Social Orientation and Self-Reported Offending. In addition, greater levels of Social Capital were found to increase Pro-Social Orientation, which in turn decreased criminal behavior three-years later. Implications and recommendations for how social workers and prison reentry programs can help to intervene at the structural level and develop social capital in order to increase the likelihood of success among the formerly incarcerated is discussed

Mental Illness and Prison Reentry in a High Risk Context

Reentry programs for persons with serious mental illness (SMI) leaving jails or prisons have produced mixed results (Chandler & Spicer, 2006), including those for evidence-based treatments (EBT). These interventions occur in the complex nexus of the mental health and criminal justice systems and the effects of the intervention can be facilitated or constrained by the environment in which they operate (Smith, Jennings, Cimino, 2010; Solomon and Draine, 1995; Weisman, Lamberti, & Price, 2004). This dissertation explores how the economic, social, physical, and political factors that comprise the risk environment interact with an EBT for persons with SMI and contribute to poor outcomes for this population. Utilizing a multi-informant, multi-perspective framework, in-depth interviews were conducted with 28 participants and 6 staff members involved in a randomized field trial testing the effectiveness of Critical Time Intervention (CTI) for men with mental illnesses leaving prison in New Jersey. Participants completed between one and five interviews (total, 38 interviews) in order to capture the different stages of reentry. Other data collection methods included observation through attending team meetings and conducting go-along interviews and document analysis through reviewing team meeting notes and client progress notes. The risk environment posed significant challenges for participants in acquiring basic needs, including income and housing, as punitive public and social policies excluded resources to individuals based on their criminal history. These policies played within an environment with multiple opportunities to engage in illegal activities under heightened criminal justice scrutiny, but few prosocial opportunities. Case managers were also challenged to provide resources under this context and relied on emotional support as a primary component of their work. A combination of individual, interpersonal, and environmental factors combined to produce risk for reincarceration and also impinged on the intervention possibly undermining its effectiveness. As EBTs are disseminated widely, adapted to different settings, and applied to new populations, there are more opportunities for their effectiveness to be undermined by the noise of real-world settings. The risk environment in certain high-risk communities needs to be addressed or else they little chance of improving the lives of those we seek to help

Opportunity and Empowerment in Female Prison Reentry in Wooster, OH

This study investigates the process of reentry after prison for women in Wooster, Ohio, using theories of morality and punishment by Durkheim and Foucault, general strain theory by Broidy and Agnew, and intersectionality by Hill Collins. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected to gain a broad understanding of this particular court system and the people involved in it. Statistics on the people sentenced to prison through this court from January 2012 to October 2015 were gathered and analyzed to learn of the demographics of those sentenced to prison and how different backgrounds, especially gender, affect the charge and sentence length. To supplement this, interviews were conducted with four women in the process of reentry, as well as three staff members of the courthouse. The results revealed that despite the fact that many women sentenced to prison come from marginalized backgrounds, prison programs and a supportive probation department have aided successful reentry

Resurrection

This article was originally published in The Prophet -- a journal created by and for the students at the Boston University School of Theology (BUSTH) to amplify the voices of STH students by promoting and sharing a range of perspectives on matters of concern including, but not limited to, spiritual practices, faith communities and society, the nature of theology, and current affairs. It serves as a platform for STH students to share their academic work, theological reflections, and life experiences with one another and the wider community."I spent the summer of 2017 immersed in a contextual education internship at South Street Ministries in Akron, Ohio. Though involved in many aspects of South Street’s summer programming, my main areas of study were... " [EXCERPT

Can a Good Person Be a Good Prosecutor?

Most people who become prosecutors are honest and ethical public servants who take that job for varied reasons including protecting the community, assisting victims of crime, gaining trial experience, or enhancing future employment prospects and long-term political goals. Earnest and hard-working, these prosecutors bristle at the very question of whether a good person can be a good prosecutor. The question though is not about a good person and their motives or ethical compass, but about the role: What does it mean to be a good prosecutor especially in the era of mass incarceration