How Offenders Transform Their Lives

240 Pages·2013·5.178 MB·English

by  Christian, Johnna, J. Martinez, Damian, Veysey, Bonita

How Offenders
Transform
Their Lives
Edited by
Bonita M. Veysey,
Johnna Christian
and
WILLAN
Damian J. Martinez
PUBLISHING

How Offenders Transform
Their Lives
Edited by
Bonita M. Veysey, Johnna Christian
and Damian J. Martinez
WILLAN
PUBLISHING
Published by
Willan Publishing
Culmcott House
Mill Street, Uffculme
Cullompton, Devon
EX15 3AT, UK
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
e-mail: info(a. willanpublishing.co.uk
Website: www.willanpublishing.co.uk
Published simultaneously in the USA and Canada by
Willan Publishing
c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave, Suite 300,
Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
e-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.isbs.com
© The editors and contributors 2009
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence
permitting copying in the UK issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House,
6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
First published 2009
ISBN 978-1-84392-508-8 paperback
978-1-84392-509-5 hardback
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Project managed by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock, Devon
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound by T J International Ltd, Trecerus Industrial Estate, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
List of tables vii
Notes on contributors ix
1 Identity transformation and offender change 1
Bonita M. Veysey, Damian j. Martinez and Johnna Christian
2 Moments of transformation: formerly incarcerated individuals'
narratives of change 12
Johnna Christian, Bonita M. Veysey, Bryn Herrschaft and Heather
Tubman-Carbone
3 Looking-glass identity transformation: Pygmalion and Golem
in the rehabilitation process 30
Shadd Maruna, Thomas P. LeBel, Michelle Naples and Nick Mitchell
4 Former prisoners, their family members, and the
transformative potential of support 56
Damian J. Martinez
5 'I got a quick tongue': negotiating ex-convict identity in
mixed company 72
Lois Presser and Suzanne Kurth
6 Thinking inside the box: prisoner education, learning
identities, and the possibilities for change 87
Emma Hughes
7 Accounts of change and resistance among women prisoners 104
Barbara Owen
8 Parole supervision, change in the self, and desistance from
substance use and crime 124
Merry Morash
9 Identity change through the transformation model of the
public safety initiative of LIFERS, Inc. 143
M. Kay Harris
How Offenders Transform Their Lives
10 Formerly incarcerated persons' use of advocacy/activism as
a coping orientation in the reintegration process 165
Thomas P. LeBel
11 Lessons learned about offender change: implications for
criminal justice policy 188
Russ Immarigeon
Index 205
vi
List of tables
2.1 Characteristics of all and formerly incarcerated participants 17
2.2 Moments of transformation 21
3.1 Dimensions in the client typology 44
8.1 Intensity of supervision and one-year post release outcomes
for women in gender responsive and traditional county 128
10.1 Descriptive statistics 176
10.2 The advocacy orientation scale 177
10.3 Regression analysis results for the advocacy/activism
orientation scale 178
10.4 Relationship between the advocacy/activism orientation
and outcomes 179

Notes on contributors
Johnna Christian is Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice
at Rutgers University-Newark. She received her PhD in Criminal Justice
from the University at Albany, State University of New York. In 2004 she
was the National Institute of Justice W.E.B. Dubois fellow and conducted
a study of family members' connections to incarcerated individuals. She
is currently the Co-Principal Investigator of a research project evaluating
family oriented reentry programs for juveniles. Dr Christian is also
conducting a qualitative study of the process of identity transformation
and recovery. She has published articles about prison visitation and the
social and economic implications of family connections to prisoners. She
recently co-authored a policy guide aimed at criminal justice agencies,
community-based organizations, schools, and other stakeholders, with
concrete strategies for addressing the needs of offenders' families in the
reentry process.
M. Kay Harris is a member of the Graduate Faculty in the Department of
Criminal Justice and an Affiliated Professor of Women's Studies at Temple
University. She has conducted policy-oriented research on positive peer
intervention and cognitive transformation, reducing jail and prison
crowding, community corrections legislation, programs for women in the
justice system, restorative and community justice, and judicial interven­
tion in corrections. She teaches in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange
Program and is an external member of the Steering Committee of the
Lifers Public Safety Initiative at the State Correctional Institution at
Graterford, PA. Previously Kay held positions with the National Council
on Crime and Delinquency, the National Moratorium on Prison Construc­
tion, the American Bar Association's Resource Center on Correctional Law
and Legal Services, the Attorney General of the United States, the National
Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, and the
federal Bureau of Prisons.
How Offenders Transform Their Lives
Bryn Herrschaft is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at
Rutgers University-Newark. She received her bachelor's degree in psy­
chology and sociology from New York University in 2003. Her research
interests include reentry and offender change, women and the criminal
justice system, prison culture, restorative justice, and gender and crime.
Bryn is currently employed by the Center for Women and Work at
Rutgers University-New Brunswick in the Evaluation Research Depart­
ment that is currently responsible for several reentry initiatives and
programs for women in the state of New Jersey.
Emma Hughes is Assistant Professor of Criminology at California State
University, Fresno. She has an MPhil in Criminology from the University
of Cambridge and earned her doctorate in Criminology from Birmingham
City University (BCU) in the UK, where her research focused on
prisoners' experiences of education. She has also worked as a lecturer at
BCU, and has conducted research for British charities involved in
educational and arts provision in prisons.
Russ Immarigeon, MSW, is editor of Offender Programs Report, Community
Corrections Report, and Women, Girls & Criminal Justice, all published by the
Civic Research Institute. He is also a contributing editor of Crime Victims
Report, Corrections Managers Report, and The ICCA Journal of Community
Corrections. He edited the volumes Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice
System: Policy Strategies and Program Options (Civic Research Institute,
2006) and Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System, Vol. 2 Policy
Strategies and Program Options (Civic Research Institute, 2010). He also co­
edited, with Shadd Maruna, the volume After Crime and Punishment:
Pathways to Offender Reintegration (Willan Publishing, 2004). He currently
serves as Town Court Justice in Hillsdale, New York.
Suzanne Kurth is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the
University of Tennessee. She received her PhD from the University of
Illinois, Chicago in 1971. Her areas of interest include social psychology,
gender, sexual harassment, technological change in communications and
social interaction/relationships.
Thomas P. LeBel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal
Justice in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Helen Bader School of
Social Welfare. In 2006 he received his PhD from the School of Criminal
Justice at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Tom is
the author or co-author of articles and book chapters on prisoner
reintegration, desistance from crime, prison reform, substance abuse
treatment, and stigma. He has served as a consultant, panelist, and
discussant for prisoner reentry related projects sponsored by the National
Academy of Sciences-Committee on Law and Justice and the Urban