The Effects of Incarceration and Reentry on Community Health and Well-Being Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
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5 Reentry: Effects on the Individual and the Community
5 Reentry: Effects on the Individual and the Community
Pages 29-42
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From page 29... ...
Three presenters at the workshop examined the many needs of people reentering society from jails and prisons. These needs have many implications for the communities in which releasees reside and for efforts by government and nonprofit organizations to meet those needs.
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From page 30... ...
For example, she said that she could not claim that being a high reentry community caused a decrease in home prices or population loss, even though these are probably related. Features of the community could also have made it an attractive place to site halfway houses, recovery houses, and treatment clinics.
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From page 31... ...
At night, Frankford Avenue is mostly unoccupied except for drug sellers, sex workers, or people who are visibly drunk or high. Frankford's declining business base represents a larger decline in key social institutions in the past decade, Fader reported.
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From page 32... ...
Creative criminals scour obituaries in the newspaper, identify unoccupied houses, break in and replace existing locks, and attempt to illegally hook houses up to water and gas, after which they sublet the house to others. Much of the housing stock is too large for single families, and these structures now house dozens of regulated and unregulated halfway houses and treatment houses.
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From page 33... ...
When individuals at community meetings have called for harsh treatment of people who commit public order offenses, Fader has witnessed subtle signs of disagreement, such as head shaking and quiet statements that locking people up does not work. A small but active group of long-term residents has worked tirelessly to weave together a patchwork of outreach efforts.
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From page 34... ...
In addition, such investments could improve the neighborhood's reputation, slow the loss of taxpaying residents and businesses, and create local jobs. Fader suggested that police in these communities reduce their focus on arresting individuals engaged in quality-of-life offenses when residents support using a public health approach instead: The residents of Frankford rightly view police as a scarce and invaluable resource needed to address drug sales and gun violence.
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From page 35... ...
Rather than looking at themselves with a stigmatized label -- "I'm a criminal" -- they say, "I'm a dad, I'm a brother." Families also generate social capital and buffer material hardship. When someone reenters a community, that person needs a place to stay, transportation, and social support.
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From page 36... ...
Because of the disproportionate involvement of racial and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system, a large burden for support falls on women of color. For many families, the needs of a formerly incarcerated person may require the last reserves they have.
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From page 37... ...
MAINTAINING A COMMUNITY CONTEXT Clinton Lacey, director of the District of Columbia Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, took a broad perspective on issues of reentry based on the positions he has had during his career. Given the political retrenchment taking place when the workshop was held, "It's a scary time," he said, but it is also "a time of great opportunity for us to continue to do what we do, for researchers to do their work, for activists to do their work, for practitioners, for all of us to play a role." In the 1990s, Lacey worked with teenagers coming out of Rikers Island, and since then he has continued to work as a practitioner in direct service and as a policy advocate.
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From page 38... ...
The lesson Lacey took from those experiences is the need to maintain a community context. Change needs to occur "through a community lens, with community people at the table and forming the conversation." He drew the same conclusion in his next position, as deputy commissioner of probation at New York's City Department of Probation.
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From page 39... ...
The answers were in the communities that were often blamed as the source of the pathology in the first place. An example of the success of this approach is an initiative called Arches, which is a transformative mentoring initiative done in partnership with nonprofit organizations.2 "Credible messengers," mainly people who were formerly incarcerated, were hired to be mentors, life coaches, and sponsors of people ages 16 to 24 who are on probation.
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From page 40... ...
40 THE EFFECTS OF INCARCERATION AND REENTRY "You're bringing in felons to tell us how we're supposed to serve these delinquents." … But we're pushing it, and it's growing. A next step, he said, would be to go into prisons and help create credible messengers who are still in prison, creating "a new vision for transitioning." Lacey explained that this approach can take different forms in different communities, where credible messengers might be known as "cultural brokers" or "wounded healers," adding that it also bears risks, in that credible messengers can become an exploited group of people.
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From page 41... ...
"He's allowing people to do a different type of programming that's age appropriate." Also in the question-and-answer period, Christian pointed to the irony that the criminal justice system erects barriers against forming relationships like those with credible messengers, such as parole requirements against associating with other people with a felony conviction, even if that means someone within one's own family. "The system can hinder these types of informal relationships that could help people in the desistance process," she said.
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From page 42... ...
42 THE EFFECTS OF INCARCERATION AND REENTRY Fader made the same point: Why is the criminal justice system responsible for dealing with mental health problems? Why are we using the justice system to deal with a ddiction problems?
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