“I Went Through it so You Don't Have To”: Faith‐Based Community Organizing for the Formerly Incarcerated

Flores, Edward Orozco; Cossyleon, Jennifer E.

doi:10.1111/jssr.12294

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Religious participation may be accompanied by concrete behaviors, including prayer, formal attire, and avoidance of alcohol and tobacco (Johnson & Densley, 2018). Religious narratives can facilitate prosocial community engagement (Flores & Cossyleon, 2016) and activism (Flores, 2018). Religious‐based redemption narratives can be a central component of “making good,” showing that “the desisting ex‐offender ‘changed’” (Maruna, 2001, p. 10) by adhering to conventional social norms and avoiding deviant behavior (Kerley & Copes, 2009; Sundt & Cullen, 1998).…”

Section: Narratives Of the Incarcerated Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redemption and reproach: Religion and carceral control in action among women in prison

Ellis

2020

Criminology

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Criminologists are increasingly interested in how a variety of justice‐adjacent institutions scaffold surveillance and punishment in the U.S. criminal justice system. A relevant but understudied institution within the carceral state is that of religion. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women's prison, I interrogate how religion—predominately conservative and evangelical Protestantism—served dual purposes in light of carceral control. Religion offered redemptive narratives to counter punitive carceral narratives promulgated by the state. At the same time, this narrative shift from “flawed” to “faithful” prescribed particular forms of embodiment: avoiding fights and rejecting sexual relationships with women. These forms of Protestant embodiment aligned with carceral purposes, such that women who reprimanded others for breaching religious norms were simultaneously enforcing prison rules. Although rhetorically challenging official prison narratives on the meaning of incarceration, Protestant narratives in practice regulated women's emotional and sexual behaviors and fostered a system of informal surveillance among incarcerated women. These findings illuminate how organizational narratives are linked to individual action. More broadly, they suggest how an institution such as religion can undergird state authority within an intractable context of carceral control.

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Section: Narratives Of the Incarcerated Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redemption and reproach: Religion and carceral control in action among women in prison

Ellis

2020

Criminology

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“…In contrast, local grassroots community organizing through CBOs enables socially and economically marginalized people—including returning citizens—to participate in the expansion of their rights in coalition with racially and socio‐economically diverse groups (Flores and Cossyleon 2016; Owens 2014; Toney 2007; Wood and Fulton 2015). CBO‐based social networks, which often include churches and congregations, plan and carry out collective action efforts to influence local and national policies around social and economic reform issues (Braunstein et al 2017; Bretherton 2015; McCarthy and Walker 2004; Swarts 2008).…”

Section: Returning Citizens Social Support and Cbosmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Really Belong Here”: Civic Capacity‐Building among Returning Citizens

Cossyleon¹,

Flores

2020

Sociological Forum

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This article focuses on unlikely movement actors whose civic engagement has been understudied: people with criminal records (“returning citizens”). We present findings from 18 months of ethnographic research with members (leaders) of Fighting to Overcome Records and Create Equality (FORCE), a civic group led by returning citizens. FORCE leaders received institutional support from Community Renewal Society (CRS), a larger faith and community‐based organization, to lead a rights reform movement in Chicago. Findings suggest that FORCE leaders constructed notions of kinship, recognition, and power through civic capacity‐building efforts—and that social belonging was core to such capacity‐building efforts. While bonding social belonging occurred as FORCE leaders formed kinship with people facing similar social and economic marginality, bridging social belonging emerged as leaders felt recognized by CRS staff organizers, affiliates, and elected officials. Bonding and bridging social belonging enabled FORCE leaders, who faced constant social exclusion in society, to experience much needed kinship, recognition, and power. Future studies should continue to uncover how local capacity‐building processes have life‐changing relational effects on movement participants from socially and economically marginalized groups.

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“…NGOs have responded to these conditions and to widened funding opportunities with increased service provision, community organizing, and advocacy (Flores and Cossyleon, 2016;Kaufman, 2015;Owens, 2014Owens, , 2015. The actors involved in this work include but are not limited to congregations; Prison Fellowship is the most prominent organization that follows a missionary model as it organizes prison visits, classes, and postrelease aftercare.…”

Section: Research On the Third Sector And Criminal Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Nongovernmental organizations and postprison life: Examining the role of religion

Kaufman

2018

Punishment & Society

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This article examines the relevance of religion for nongovernmental organizations that work with formerly incarcerated people. Despite the increased visibility of religious nongovernmental organizations working with criminalized people, research on the nongovernmental sector and criminal justice still largely focuses on secular organizations. This article argues for the conceptual importance of religion and its role shaping work in this sector, and draws from the sociology of religion to theorize the importance of discourses and practices in organizational settings. I present a typology identifying nongovernmental organizations' religious approaches, which I developed using archival, interview, and observational data from 18 nongovernmental organizations in Wisconsin. I differentiate among nongovernmental organizations that I call secular, which stay away from religion, religiously inspired, which operate based on religious principles, and reciprocally religious, which hold expectations of religious practices from program participants. Moving beyond single-case studies enables a comparative analysis of the ideas and practices among actors that serve and seek to shape people leaving prison, whose work varies in terms of predominant denominations, assumptions about morality and sin, and relationships with churches and the medical profession. The results encourage further inquiry into what religious nongovernmental organizations do, why, and how, given the distinctive discursive and material resources and practices that they bring into work with criminalized people.

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“I Went Through it so You Don't Have To”: Faith‐Based Community Organizing for the Formerly Incarcerated

Cited by 16 publications

References 54 publications

Redemption and reproach: Religion and carceral control in action among women in prison

Redemption and reproach: Religion and carceral control in action among women in prison

“I Really Belong Here”: Civic Capacity‐Building among Returning Citizens

Nongovernmental organizations and postprison life: Examining the role of religion

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