Doctoral Dissertation Research: Re-entry organizations and the formally incarcerated

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Mass incarceration is a social problem in the U.S and it creates the concern of how to reintegrate a large number of former prisoners, many of whom have served lengthy sentences, back into society and back into the workforce. Even as the trend towards mass incarceration seems to be reversing, a large population of people remains who exit jails and must attempt to reenter society. Racial minorities represent a significant portion of these returning prisoners, notably African Americans and Latinos. Women also have also been affected by mass incarceration; as a result of the War on Drugs, drug felony convictions (in addition to non-violent property offenses) account for nearly 80 percent of the female inmate population (Women in Prison Project 2006). Furthermore, as scholars have demonstrated, there is a social stigma attached to a criminal record that serves to limit the job opportunities of people returning from prison, even more so, when those individuals are minorities. The successful reintegration of former prisoners is a social good that benefits all of society as it reduces the risk of future crime (and the cost of re-incarceration) and makes for a safer, less unequal society. This study is a qualitative case study of a private re-entry organization in Cleveland Ohio that will help understand the re-entry process. The proposed research is a qualitative case study of a private reentry organization in Cleveland, Ohio. The major research questions are: 1) Do reentry organizations purposefully broker social and cultural capital for their clientele? How does such brokerage occur? 2) Does the gender of the formerly incarcerated client affect how and what social and cultural capital is brokered by the organization? If so, how? And finally, 3) What is the impact of such brokerage of social and cultural capital on the formerly incarcerated individual who is seeking to reintegrate into society? Data were collected via participant ethnography and interviews with those who make use of the reentry organization and their caseworkers. The intellectual merit of this research is that it will illuminate the sociological processes of reentry of the formerly incarcerated particularly in relation to the brokerage of social and cultural capital by a reentry organization. The findings of the research should have the impact of informing future programming models for future reentry organizations and should also influence policies adopted by the governmental agencies that fund those organizations. The findings of this research will be useful, not only to the reentry field, but also to organizations attempting to reintegrate any stigmatized or marginalized population such as the homeless, the disabled, and refugees. Due to the focus on gender, this research will also be useful for other organizations that work with mixed populations by making them more cognizant of the potential pitfalls of "gender-neutral" policies.