Incarceration & Reentry

Prepared For: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation Office of Human Services Policy

The conference summary report synthesizes key aspects of the Prisons to Home project including the state symposium discussions, conference plenary and break-out sessions, and the research papers developed for the conference.

This review updates the previous literature on what we know about inmate needs and the programs designed to address those needs. A more neutral terminology than inmate "deficits" or "needs" is used by referring to the different domains as "skill sets." A skill implies mastery and competence rather than a personal liability.

Reentry may be thought of as a community-level process when it occurs in high concentrations. The concepts of social capital and collective efficacy have been used to explain the production and maintenance of disadvantage and its consequences.

From Prison to Home: The Effect of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities A Womans Journey Home: Challenges for Female Offenders and Their Children By: Stephanie S. Covington, PhD, LCSW Co-director, Center for Gender & Justice December 2001

Presentation/slides of the topic. [PDF - 16 pages]

For imprisoned mothers, one of the greatest punishments incarceration carries with it is separation from their children. As one mother put it, "I can do time alone OK. But its not knowing what's happening to my son that hurts most". As this quote suggests, when parents are incarcerated, "what's happening" to their children is a great concern. It is a concern for us as well.

By virtue of their developmental stage, it is the adolescents of incarcerated parents who have the potential to have the greatest impact on society at large, and in this paper, we focus on the most powerful problem that they can exhibit, antisocial behavior.

This paper provides an overview of family matters during incarceration as one means of informing public debate and actions in this emerging area of social policy and practice. The problems that families face when a parent is incarcerated and the strategies they use to manage those problems are described.

This paper addresses the psychological impact of incarceration and its implications for post-prison freeworld adjustment.