Issues in Reentry
Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities. Edited by Jeremy Travis and Michelle Waul. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 2003, 396 pp. $32.50 paper.
Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett. By Jennifer Gonnerman. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, 356 pp. $24.00 cloth.
REVIEWED BY DAN RICHARD BETO
HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS
On October 11, 1970, George J. Beto, Director of the Texas Department of Corrections, delivered his presidential address at the Centennial Congress of Correction of the American Correctional Association held in Cincinnati, Ohio, during which he spoke on the past, present, and future of corrections in America. During that portion of his speech devoted to the future, Beto made the following observation:
The future will bring an expanded use of pre-release programs. It is sheer folly to keep a man in prison two or three or four or five years and, at the termination of his sentence or upon parole, release him with a few dollars, a cheap suit, and the perfunctory ministrations of the dismissing officer. To an even greater degree, the future will witness programs which devote themselves to easing the inmate's transition from the most unnatural society known to man—prison society—to the free world. Myrl Alexander is correct when he says: "We must blur the line between the institution and the community."
More than three decades later, on January 20, 2004, in his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush also addressed the issue of prisoner reentry:
In the past we've worked together to bring mentors to children of prisoners, and provide treatment for the addicted, and help for the homeless. Tonight I ask you to consider another group of Americans in need of help. This year, some 600,000 inmates will be released from prison back into society. We know from long experience that if they can't find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely to commit crime and return to prison. So tonight, I propose a four-year, $300 million prisoner reentry initiative to expand job training and placement services, to provide transitional housing, and to help newly released prisoners get mentoring, including from faith-based groups. America is the land of the second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
The issue of prisoner reentry, while appreciated as important by criminal justice practitioners and academics, has, until recently, received woefully inadequate attention by policymakers. One of the driving forces behind the current interest in the reentry of prisoners has been Jeremy Travis, Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and former Director of the National Institute of Justice. Through his tireless efforts, and with the assistance of some few others, the Urban Institute has brought to the forefront the importance and the challenges of the successful reintegration of offenders back into the community. Over the past several years the Urban Institute has devoted considerable time and resources to researching and commenting on the problems faced by offenders and their families. Copies of speeches, reports, and monographs related to the subject of reentry may be accessed and downloaded from the Urban Institute's website at www.urban.org.
In late 2003 the Urban Institute Press published Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities, edited by Travis and Michelle Waul, formerly with the Urban Institute and now Director of Special Projects with the National Center for Victims of Crime. Contained in this volume is a collection of thoughtful and timely chapters written by some of the leading minds in the area of reentry. In the first chapter, the editors provide an insightful and thorough overview of current correctional policies and the impact incarceration has on the children and families of prisoners. In concluding their introductory chapter, Travis and Waul write:
Families of prisoners generally struggle with a range of challenges that are often exacerbated by the imprisonment of a family member. Broadening our perspective to include incarceration's impact on prisoner families—from the arrest, to imprisonment, and on through release— raises a number of important questions. How can family bonds be strengthened during the prison term? Are there ways to help families cope with the period of incarceration? How should a parent and child be reunited? Is there a risk that the stresses of incarceration will limit inmates' ability to be effective parents upon release? Is there a heightened risk of domestic violence and child abuse as prisoners adjust to their new reality? Can the process of reentry be viewed as an opportunity for intervention with these families?
Developing innovative answers to these questions would require new policy collaborations and partnerships between corrections departments and child and family welfare agencies. These new alliances could help smooth the transition by helping prisoners and their families stay in touch and work through the difficult dynamics of reunification. Working together, corrections professionals and local service providers could develop policies and programs that significantly improve the likelihood of a successful transition from prison to home—an outcome that has far-reaching benefits for all involved.
With Travis and Waul defining the scope of the problem and identifying some of the relevant questions, the authors of the remaining 10 chapters expand on various issues related to imprisonment and reentry and attempt to provide some workable solutions. The book is divided into three topical parts, with the first three chapters focusing on the impact of imprisonment on the individual offender. Chapters five through eight explore incarceration's influence on children and families of offenders, and the remaining three chapters examine how communities are impacted by incarceration and reentry.
In Chapter 2, Craig Haney, professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, discusses the declining state of corrections in America, witnessed by increased incarceration rates, overcrowding, deteriorating conditions of confinement, a reduction or elimination of meaningful services and programs, and shortsighted but politically expedient policies. Haney also identifies some of the psychological effects of incarceration on inmates and provides a scholarly review of them, which may include: dependence on institutional structure and contingencies; hyper-vigilance, interpersonal distrust, and suspicion; emotional over-control, alienation, and psychological distancing; social withdrawal and isolation; incorporation of exploitative norms of prison culture; diminished sense of self-worth and personal value; posttraumatic stress reactions; and challenges in transitioning to post-prison life. He also discusses the impact of incarceration of special needs prisoners and the obstacles they face upon release. In concluding his chapter, Haney suggests policy and programmatic responses to the adverse effects of incarceration and offers a blueprint to successfully return inmates back into the free world.
Next, Stephanie S. Covington, co-director of the Center for Gender and Justice in La Jolla, California, examines the challenges faced by female offenders and the need for gender-specific programs. She offers recommendations on how this particular offender population might be successfully transitioned from prisons to the community.
Chapter 4, written by Gerald G. Gaes, visiting scientist at the National Institute of Justice and former Director of Research for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Newton E. Kendig, Medical Director for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, supplies a comprehensive review of the skill sets and health care needs of released offenders. This is a particularly informative chapter, not only because it thoroughly identifies the needs, but because it provides a prescribed course of action.
Donald Braman, currently studying law at Yale University, and Jenifer L. Wood, Managing Director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, describe in the fifth chapter the generational impact incarceration has on family life, particularly in poor, urban areas. Moreover, they suggest changes in policy that could ease the stress encountered by the released offenders and family members. Their worthy effort is followed by that of Ross D. Parke, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Family Studies at the University of California at Riverside, and K. Alison Clarke-Stewart, Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California at Irvine, who provide a wellresearched and detailed review of the devastating effects of parental incarceration on children. Parke and Clarke-Stewart suggest an ambitious research agenda to better understand the developmental problems encountered by children of imprisoned parents. They also urge the review of current policies to reduce the chances of children of incarcerated parents becoming unintended victims of our criminal justice and social services systems.
The theme of the preceding two chapters is continued in Chapter 7, in which research scientists J. Mark Eddy, Associate Director of the Oregon Social Learning Center, and John B. Reid, founder of the Oregon Social Learning Center, focus on adolescent conduct problems found in children of incarcerated parents and graphically describe a developmental model of antisocial behavior. In addition, they offer several suggested interventions, including an integrated prevention effort, and additional research. Next, Creasie Finney Hairston, Dean of the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago, contributes policy direction and strategies to change public policy and redirect criminal justice and social services systems response to prisoners' children and families. Hairston's chapter represents a "call to arms":
Congressional bodies and state legislatures must take ownership of familyrelated incarceration issues as a matter of national interest and make prisoners' family matters an integral part of discussion on criminal justice and family policy.·The correctional environment and prison programming are not internal matters to be left solely to the discretion of prison administrators. They are instead public concerns with relevance to broad social welfare goals and of importance to different community constituency....Leaders in child welfare, corrections, and professional associations must develop principles and national standards covering parents in prison and their children and adopt these standards as a part of the accreditation process for child welfare agencies and correctional institutions.
In Chapter 9, Eric Cadora, a program officer with the After Prison Initiative of the Open Society Institute, discusses the potential for coordination of service delivery. Using Brooklyn as a case study, Cadora draws on Geographical Information System (GIS) analysis to show the overlapping needs, resources, and interests in various neighborhoods. One might conclude, as the author does, that armed with the detailed information now available from computer mapping, federal, state, and local criminal justice and health and human services agencies would be foolish not to pool their limited resources and enter into collaborative and mutually beneficial relationships. In the following chapter, Dina R. Rose, Director of Research at the Women's Prison Association, and Todd R. Clear, Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, discuss the impact of coercive mobility on neighborhoods, the concepts of social capital and collective efficacy, and some of the reentry problems encountered by returning offenders—finances, stigma, identity, and relationships.
The concluding chapter, contributed by Shelli Balter Rossman, Senior Research Associate in the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center, summarizes many of the reentry issues and encourages the development of partnerships to improve services integration, quality of care, and outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. She also offers suggestions for accomplishing these laudable goals. In Prisoners Once Removed, Travis and Waul have made a significant contribution to correctional literature on a topic that is vitally important to the quality of urban life and the well-being of American society. This book should be required reading for policymakers, elected officials, criminal justice practitioners, and persons engaged in the delivery of human services. In addition, Travis and Waul's effort would be an excellent text for an advanced course in criminal justice, social work, government, and public administration.
Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett approaches the issue of reentry from a very personal perspective. Expertly crafted by Jennifer Gonnerman, an awardwinning staff writer for The Village Voice, this biography traces the life of Elaine Bartlett, a resident of a housing project in East Harlem, who at age 26 was arrested for selling a small quantity of cocaine to an undercover police officer in November 1983 in Albany, New York, and subsequently sentenced to serve 20-years-to-life under the draconian Rockefeller drug laws. From 1984 until she received executive clemency from Governor George Pataki, Bartlett spent the next 16 years in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where she initially experienced some adjustment problems before becoming a model prisoner. Following her release on parole in 2000, Bartlett returned to a dysfunctional and stressful life and to a world that had significantly changed.
Elaine Bartlett and her family are not particularly sympathetic characters. The subject of this study was one of seven children born to Yvonne Powell Bartlett, who died in 1998 while her daughter was in prison. Two of Bartlett's four brothers are imprisoned, another was murdered on a street corner, and yet another died of an AIDS-related illness. One sister, a drug addict and HIV positive, died following her release from prison, leaving the youngest sister the only sibling without a criminal record. Bartlett has four children, two sons by a former gang member turned minister and two daughters by her codefendant, who is still incarcerated.
While she availed herself of some educational and self-improvement programs during her period of incarceration, Bartlett was ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of urban life upon release. Saddled with a questionable value system, Bartlett experienced difficulty in finding suitable employment, managing her limited financial resources, maneuvering the social service system, avoiding persons with criminal records, reestablishing herself as the mother of her children, and providing some semblance of order to her chronically troubled family. Were it not for a few responsible friends, a forgiving employer, and an understanding parole officer, she would have likely found her way back into prison.
Despite her personal limitations and the challenges she faced—and they were many rather than few—she survived her period of supervision and was discharged from parole in 2003. According to the author, Bartlett celebrated her release from parole "by going to the apartment of a former coworker and smoking weed." Life on the Outside is a remarkable book in that the author has been successful in "getting inside the head" of her subject and, in doing so, she has provided an honest, revealing, and instructive case study into the life of an offender and the members of her family. In addition, Gonnerman did a more than credible job of researching the criminal justice system and post-incarceration issues, as evidenced by an impressive bibliography and list of persons interviewed in connection with the writing of this book.
Life on the Outside, in addition to being good reading, could easily serve as a supplemental text in a college course dealing with correctional policy.