Nearly 100,000 of the 730,000 people who exit state and federal prisons each year in the US are women. This population has grown quickly since the 1970s. Women are targets for intervention by organizations that work to reform, educate, save spiritually, or otherwise prepare ex-prisoners for community life as citizens with rights and duties. This process is known as prisoner reentry: voluntary or mandatory programming to make prisoners worthy of their belonging as citizens. Increasingly, this work falls on community-based organizations (religious and secular, for-profit and not-for-profit). With the increased outsourcing of this work, organizations with different visions for women ex-prisoners as citizens are engaged, sometimes targeting women particularly, but sometimes merely including women in predominantly male reentry programs. This research examines what such community organizations actually do, in their delivery of messages about belonging and rights in gendered ways, and in the treatment of women as inviting targets for morally-motivated interventions. The PIs use re-incorporation as citizens as a framework for examining programs addressing work, parenting, and romantic relationships. Three types of organizations are compared: secular organizations guided by therapeutic practices; religiously inspired organizations guided by faith principles, expecting workforce participation or education in participants; and reciprocally religious organizations expecting an expression of faith from participants. The study employs multiple data sources, including administrative and organizational records, interviews with organizational staff and officials, and personal observations of programming in two southern Wisconsin counties.
The project will illuminate variation in how organizations understand women ex-prisoners as citizens along the dimensions of work, parenting, and romantic relationships. The research team includes undergraduate researchers who are being trained in data coding and basic textual analysis. Ultimately, the project will inform the criminal justice system with regard to the utility of community-based organizations that provide services to women ex-prisoners attempting to reenter society.
An unprecedented number of people is now leaving prisons and returning to communities, in the United States overall and in the state of Wisconsin in particular. In response, over the past 10 to 15 years, the field of services geared toward ex-prisoners has rapidly grown. The field encompasses such varied work as drug treatment, job readiness classes, and bible studies. The process of devolution (passing off work to non-governmental parties) has made non-governmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly important in this field. This study examined NGOs that work with formerly incarcerated people to prepare them for post-prison life. The approach values NGOs as providing means to social inclusion. The research focused on 18 NGOs as well as the policies under which they operate. The analysis relied on several forms of data gathered between 2009 and 2013: policy documents, public and private funding data, organizational documents, interviews with officials and NGO staff, and observations of routine programs. To describe the field, the co-PI investigated which NGOs are involved and their attributes: their goals, activities, and locations within communities organized around place, common interest or values, or a common sense of origin or destiny. She also examined policy goals, funding sources, and the forms of relationships with correctional agencies NGOs held. She sought to compare three types of NGOs based on their approach to faith . The research was also designed to better understand the role of NGOs in shaping the meaning of formerly incarcerated people as citizens: members of a community who are treated as belonging. The study investigated how staff members' and policy-makers' visions of ideal citizens corresponded to programming and expectations of participants. _Key results_. The project makes four scholarly contributions. 1) The study examines a wide field of services, not only famous programs receiving earmarked "reentry" funds. Doing so reveals the varied ways in which NGOs use faith. This is a contribution to feminist and critical penology. 2) The study examines gendered work at NGOs, moving past a limiting analysis of gender as a variable that merely explains recidivism or desistance. The analysis highlights the variation in how NGOs approach program participants, showing the ways in which ideas about faith, gender, citizenship, and race shape one another. 3) By drawing attention to inclusive activities in the civic sector, the study broadens discussions of punishment, citizenship, and exclusion. The concept of "prisoner incorporation" that the analysis offes reveals institutional processes rather than merely individual-level "reentry." The study reveals the patterned ways in which NGOs work to systematically include formerly incarcerated people, closely related to their funding and approach to faith. 4) By highlighting variation in the kinds of community environments in which NGOs operate, the research challenges the idea of a generic community to which ex-prisoners return, as discussed in reentry policy. In demonstrating the ways in which some NGOs operate beyond state policy goals and resist hierarchical funding relationships, the research also shows that organizational diversity offers a range of communities into which NGOs can invite ex-prisoners. _Impacts on the development of human resources_ The co-PI worked with seven undergraduate researchers (all women) who came from varied background, including one non-traditional student and one member of a historically underrepresented group in this field. The researchers helped the co-PI to collect and analyze data on policy and organizational missions, and to screen NGOs to see if they would qualify for the research. They have since applied their skills and interests toward attending law school, advancing victim's rights, and working on prisoner advocacy causes. _Broader impacts_. Another impact of the study was to create closer ties between NGOs doing post-release work and educational institutions in Madison, WI. For instance, the co-PI invited representatives of one organization into her classes as guest speakers at UW-Madison and Madison College (a community college) between 2009 and 2013. These discussions introduced students to a range of issues and in some cases led to longer-term volunteering. _Policy implications_. This project is a step toward systematically addressing the work being done to meet the needs of ex-prisoners, especially women. The research suggests two policy proposals to improve current arrangements. First, the state's determination of needs used to allocate funding for post-release work could be open to more participatory involvement by these NGOs and their clients. Second, the field could be made more transparent for staff and clients by creating an updated web listing of programs for formerly incarcerated people that crossed networks. This virtual "reception center" could be linked to county ACCESS sites, so that anyone applying for Foodshare, energy assistance, or other county assistance programs could access it.
