“Just like Baking a Cake”: Women Describe the Necessary Ingredients for Successful Reentry after Incarceration

Abstract

Eighteen female ex-prison inmates describe the strengths they used to manage their reentry after release from prison. As a group, the women stressed that a mix of personal resiliency, interpersonal capacities, and social resources facilitated their successful transition. On the basis of study findings, the author suggests practice and policy changes to assist women in the transition from institution to community.

Hoping Against Hope: The Prison-to-Community Transition Experience of Men With Co-Occurring Severe Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorder

“…Complementing and extending the work on the role of social capital is a body of literature supporting the notion that both individual and social factors impact on the prison-tocommunity transition experience and that there is interaction between individual agency and the structural environment (Farrall, Bottoms, & Shapland, 2010;Farrall & Bowling, 1999;Farrall et al, 2011;O'Brien, 2001). Others debate the "chicken and egg" (LeBel, Burnett, Maruna, & Bushway, 2008) of the role of agency and structure, such as "which comes first" and which has the greatest impact on offending behaviour (Laub & Sampson, 1993).…”

“…Thus, it seeks to hear the voices of participants and what is meaningful and relevant to them in terms of their needs and challenges during this time through the use of in-depth interviews. There are a small number of qualitative studies on the transition experience of the general custodial population (Howerton et al, 2009), of youth (Halsey, 2007) on women leaving prison (Baldry, 2010;McHugh, 2013;O'Brien, 2001) and a study specifically examining factors potentially impacting on post-release death (Binswanger et al, 2011). However, no known qualitative studies with the specific focus of the transition experience of men with diagnosed severe mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorder were found.…”

“…An early attempt at understanding and theorising the transition experience was by O'Brien (2001), who conducted a qualitative study involving 18 formerly incarcerated women, to understand "through their eyes" the strengths and resources they had used to manage their transition. The sample consisted of women who considered that they had negotiated a "successful" transition back into the community after imprisonment.…”

“…The sample consisted of women who considered that they had negotiated a "successful" transition back into the community after imprisonment. O'Brien (2001) found that all of the women, to some extent, identified five "markers" that signified their success. These included: finding shelter, obtaining employment, reconnecting with others, developing community membership, and identifying consciousness and confidence in self.…”

“…Much of the innovative work in understanding prison-to-community transition support has come from studies involving women offenders (Baldry, 2010;McHugh, 2013;O'Brien, 2001;O'Brien & Young, 2006;Reisig, Holtfreter, & Morash, 2002;Sheehan et al, 2010;Trotter et al, 2012). This research might also have relevance to men with a mental illness, or indeed to the broader male offender population.…”