cjrc-sponsored research

  • Project:
  • Re-entry and Reconstruction, Inc: Mapping the Organizational Process of Community Capacity Building in the Era of Mass Incarceration

  • Investigator:
  • Townsand Price-Spratlen (Sociology)
  • William Goldsby (Founder Reconstruction, Inc.)

  • Abstract:
  • Beginning in the late 1970s, there has been an explosive expansion in the U.S. prison population. This era of mass incarceration over the last generation has been highly disproportionate by race, has magnified many longstanding local and national inequalities, and has led one of every five African American males to experience a prison term before age 35. Some have labeled this process a “new stage in the life course” of African American men (Pettit and Western 2004:15 1). This new stage is associated with a set of interacting instabilities, racial disproportionalities, and related disenfranchisements, marking all aspects of life and life chances in many African American communities across generations. Amidst these bleak circumstances, many are organizing in communities to build community capacity at all levels of its expression: individually, familially, organizationally and communally (Chaskin et al. 2001).

    • Reconstruction, Inc. of Philadelphia, PA is one such organization that has established a sustained history of capacity building. The re-entry and desistance literature does not provide a coherent picture of what role organizations have played in contributing to the successful desistance of individuals in these “imprisoned communities” (Clear 2007). Organizations are proactively resisting this bondage. Yet very little research has investigated the organizational level of influence in the re-entry process to understand better, how this 2l century peculiar institution is being deconstructed. If funded, this project will generate pilot data for a longitudinal, multimethod, qualitative research project, by beginning to document and analyze Reconstruction’s re-entry capacity building strategies. These strategies have allowed a culturally centered organization to exist for nearly a generation, and experience success beyond organizational survival, as it continues to build community capacity, and contribute to improved quality of life outcomes.