Seminar
In 2008, more than 730,000 former felons were released from federal and state correctional facilities in the U.S. (BJS 2009). Given the selective isolation of people from impoverished places, and the disproportionality by race and class associated with incarceration, most of these persons return to distressed neighborhoods that have been made worse by their imprisonment. Yet within many of these “imprisoned communities” (Clear 2007), organizations are responding to the detrimental outcomes of mass incarceration. Reconstruction, Inc. is a successful capacity-building organization in North Philadelphia that began addressing the post-prison, reentry process in 1988. Principled transformation is the conceptual foundation reflected in the narratives of former and current members. Reconstruction affiliation guides their successful navigation of individual, family, and community tensions and triumphs of the reentry process. After providing a brief organizational history, an ethnographic evaluation of capacity-building made through Reconstruction’s collaborations, programs, and practices is presented. Many positive social and economic benefits of members' transformed lives help demonstrate Reconstruction's effectiveness. To build on these beneficial outcomes, this presentation will provide policy contributions of a grassroots organization toward the realization of restorative justice.