BAC K TO TH E C O M M U N IT Y
“Just Like Baking a Cake”: Women
Describe the Necessary Ingredients for
Successful Reentry After Incarceration
by Patricia O’Brien
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.
ONE OF THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES of the strengths
perspective is the belief that people have the ability to
grow and change throughout their lives. This faith in
human potential is likewise linked to the idea that peo-
ple often have untapped and therefore unrealized re-
sources that can serve them in even their darkest times
(Saleebey, 1997). Offenders in the criminal justice system
find their very selfhood is defined by the crimes they
have committed. The related stigma often follows them
out to the “streets” where statistics attest, they often fall
back into former patterns of behaviors and associations,
that then lead them back to prison as recidivists. What
the statistics of failure fail to convey are the individual
and almost heroic stories of those labeled “bad” who
successfully negotiate the journey back to the “free
world” regardless of their previous transgressions.
The 1990s were the most punitive decade in Unit-
ed States history. The response to convicted offenders
is most often that of detention and retribution as
demonstrated by the more frequent use of mandated
terms behind bars in correctional facilities over the
last 20 years. Due to get tough on crime policies and
an increasing willingness to put people in prison for
drug use, the United States leads the world in incar-
ceration: 2 million as of February of 2000, giving the
U.S. a quarter of the 8 million prisoners in the world
(Ziedenberg & Schiraldi, 1999).
This boom industry has been especially hazardous
for women. By midyear 1999, there were 87,199 women
Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services
Copyright 2001 Families International, Inc.
287
incarcerated in state and federal prison facilities in the
United States, accounting for 6.5% of all inmates. From
1989 to 1998, the number of women in prison in our na-
tion’s prisons increased by more than 100%, while the
number of arrests increased by only 27.5% (Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation, 1998).
Women in prison on average are over age 30, at least
high-school graduates or holders of a General Equiva-
lency Degree (GED), and are disproportionately African
American. Women are substantially more likely than
men to be serving time for a drug offense and less likely
to have been sentenced for a violent crime. Nearly six in
10 female inmates grew up in a household with at least
one parent absent, and about half reported that an im-
mediate family member had also served time. More than
four in 10 reported prior physical or sexual abuse
(Greenfeld & Snell, 1999: Snell, 1994).
Nationally, more than a quarter of a million children
have mothers in jail or prison (Greenfeld & Snell, 1999).
Most of these women lived with their children before their
incarceration; many are single mothers who were their
children’s sole caretakers. Maternal imprisonment affects
future generations because children’s psychological health
and sense of family is damaged by the separation from
their mothers. Increasingly, families are destroyed forever
through termination of parental rights. The ripple effects
of family fracture are felt in the community when the
adult caretaker is no longer available to parent or con-
tribute as a citizen to the social community we share.
FAMILIES IN SOCIETY • Volume 82, Number 3
Of concern to practitioners is that so many of the
families we see in counseling agencies, in public aid of-
fices, and in substance abuse treatment centers have
previous or current involvement with the criminal jus-
tice system. The research on transition from prison has
primarily focused on predicting failure on the basis of
demographic and psychological characteristics and has
relied mostly on male samples. Recidivism among
women is a matter of rising alarm as “we keep on
building prisons” (Dressel, 1994) to hold them. The
challenge then is how we can support women, consis-
tent with our belief in empowerment practice, who are
trying to beat the odds of recidivism to make it out in
the communities to which they return after incarcera-
tion? Gutiérrez and Lewis (1999) have described em-
powerment with women of color and other oppressed
groups as comprised of consciousness, connection with
others, and confidence. The current study sought to
answer the question, “What constitutes empowerment
for formerly incarcerated women?” (O’Brien, 2001).
The Study
The goal of this exploration was to explicitly identi-
fy women who had successfully negotiated the transition
from prison to community and through their eyes, un-
derstand the strengths and resources they used to man-
age their reintegration. The study, drawing on interviews
with 18 formerly incarcerated women examined how
family, friends, intimate partners, parole or supervision
officers, and experiences during incarceration promoted
the women’s progress after release form prison.
Participants
Invitations for participation in the study were dis-
tributed through both state parole and federal supervi-
sion offices. Women were selected based on their will-
ingness to engage with me in the interviews and who,
by their own definition, identified themselves as suc-
cessful after incarceration in a state or federal facility.
Although I wanted a “theoretically rich” sample, it
was accidental that there was as much variety in the
types of women and experiences as there was. The
women resided in two Midwestern states at the time of
the interviews in 1996 and had served sentences of in-
carceration in four state facilities and five federal facil-
ities. They had been released in a period ranging from
1983 to late 1995. The women ranged in age from 20
to 67 years old with a mean age of 34.6. Of the 18,
four are African American, two are Latina, one is Ko-
288
rean/African American, one is Native American, and
the remainder (10) are European American. At the
time of the interviews, 13 were parents of minor chil-
dren, and three were parents of adult children. Seven of
the women were married or living with an intimate
partner, and one of the women identified as a lesbian.
Thirteen were part-or full-time employed.
The range of crimes and variation in criminal his-
tory is similar to the national profile of incarcerated
women (Greenfeld & Snell, 1999). Seven of the
women had been convicted of property crimes, an
equal number had been incarcerated for drug offens-
es, and four had served time for crimes of violence
against persons. Seven (39%) of the participants had
been incarcerated two or more times. Two of the
women reported they had each been incarcerated an
estimated 10 times. Participants in the study had
served sentences that ranged from 6 months to 8 years
and had been released from prison anywhere from 3
months to 12 years. At the time of the interviews, ten
of the women were either on parole with the state de-
partment of corrections or on supervised release by
the federal office of probation and parole.
Procedures
The findings were derived from in-depth inter-
views. The questions that guided the interviews broadly
focused on how women dealt with the immediate reali-
ties of being out of prison, their relationships before and
during incarceration and after release, their manage-
ment of post-release correctional expectations, reunifi-
cation with children, perceptions about prison life, and
insights about processes of change. The interviews elicit-
ed women’s factual information, stories, reflections, and
recommendations. As part of the participatory nature of
the study, and efforts to deepen the credibility of the
findings, I also conducted a member check (Lincoln &
Guba, 1985) group with a subset of the women to re-
view initial findings and to build on some of the initial
themes that had emerged from the interviews.
Analysis
Analysis consisted of an adaptation of the con-
stant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967;
Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) in
which I developed categories, concepts, and broader
themes inductively from the interview data. This
method, in which there is continuous and simultaneous
data collection and processing, provides the basis for
the integration of similarities and differences to pro-

duce the findings. I used both a software application
(Qualitative Solutions and Research Ltd., 1995) and
manual sorting on sheets of newsprint for coding and
comparative analysis.
Findings and Interpretations
The women’s narratives produced the overarching
themes of the immediate post-release need to address
basic survival issues and the importance of their intrap-
ersonal and interpersonal attitudes about their own
identity and functioning. The women provided many
examples of these two interwoven and overlapping
themes. For example, all discussed the necessity of find-
ing shelter or having “someplace to go” as a crucial
start to their transition. They also discussed the need to
address the impact of incarceration upon their relation-
ships, their everyday choices, and how they thought
and felt about themselves as a consequence. Often
women expressed insights about their experiences that
they had not been aware of before their articulation in
the interviews. They also identified internal strengths
that had nourished their sense of survival and hope.
These themes were not sequential or hierarchical but
rather unique to each woman and her particular psy-
chosocial context. Yet, all the women to some degree
identified five categories of markers that signified their
success. These included:
1. Finding shelter
2. Obtaining employment/legal income
3. Reconstructing connections with others
4. Developing community membership; and
5. Identifying consciousness and confidence in self
The following sections discuss the themes support-
ed by the women’s narratives that fit these categories.
Finding Shelter
Home as both a metaphor and a physical place of
being is crucial to human well being. Women coming out
of a state facility with limited resources often have to start
over to find safe and sufficient housing and so initially
stay with family members or a former or current partner.
On the other hand, selected federal inmates can serve part
of their sentence in a residential setting, as a step back to
the community. One of the latter, Deeni, (all of the women
used pseudoynms) said that this concrete resource facili-
tated her reentry because she did not have to depend on
others to support her when she was released.
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O’Brien • The Necessary Ingredients for Reentry After Incarceration
The halfway house was very helpful for me … be-
cause I really didn’t have any place to go. I’d rather
just be there and know what I had to deal with
there, and do what I had to do, because I’m a war-
rior, see. I had to be there for 6 months. One of my
goals was to save my money and make sure I had
my apartment and everything ready to go when I
got out. I set my goals and reached my goals.
The state inmates, who were released from state fa-
cilities directly to the streets, tended to move from place-
to-place, depending on more temporary supports until
they had amassed enough money to move into their own
home. Several of the inmates came out of prison with
money they had saved while working prison industry
jobs. Nan saved $3,500 from the employment that she
had while in federal custody; Sadie and Laura also saved
money from their private industry jobs in the state sys-
tem. Sadie came out of prison after 8 years of incarcera-
tion with enough of a lump sum that she was able to
make a down payment and secure a mortgage loan for a
house about 6months after her release.
Mandi’s situation was more typical among the
women. She began her reentry by sleeping on the sofa in
her brother’s crowded two-bedroom apartment. She re-
ported feeling very uncomfortable and left there after a
few weeks. She then moved to a friend’s house but be-
cause she did not want to start a relationship with him,
she moved from there as soon as she was able to save
enough money from her minimum wage job at a Taco
Bell to rent a small apartment.
However, she needed a much larger place in order to
regain custody of her four children who had been in her
mother’s care before and during her incarceration. She
describes what she calls a “Christmas present” she re-
ceived when she called a landlord about a house for rent
that she saw as she was walking to her apartment from
her job. She went to meet with the landlord and was hon-
est with him about her lack of credit and her prison his-
tory. She recalled she told him:
“You know, I know how to paint and stuff. So, in-
stead of a deposit, I’ll just paint the house for
you.” He ended up giving me the keys. I didn’t give
him a dime. I remember walking away from there
crying. It was my Christmas present from God.
Mandi may have considered this accomplishment divine
intervention, but it was also likely that the landlord was
impressed with her determination, honesty and nerve.
FAMILIES IN SOCIETY • Volume 82, Number 3
Securing and Maintaining Employment/Legal Income
While it may be obvious that the savings from in-
prison employment enabled the women to manage their
immediate and concrete needs after release from prison,
employment during incarceration also imparted a nor-
malizing effect for the women. Nan expressed this when
she related, “you kinda like still get to be human in a
sense.” Sadie said that the inmates (who worked at these
jobs) “didn’t get involved in near as much the everyday
life in the prison … a pretty good benefit too” meaning
these inmates might be less likely to get caught up in po-
tentially negative activities in the institution.
The idea that employment could be meaningful as
well as sufficient for support was also important to the
women in this group who were working at the time of
the interviews. As is true for many women, a lack of ed-
ucation and gender discrimination as well as the specific
stigma attached to a drug or criminal background some-
times worked against their success. However, these
women discussed how they had managed their circum-
stances and exploited opportunities to eventually sup-
port themselves and in some cases, their children.
Ashley found that she was able to manage her child-
care challenge and obtain useful employment when she
went to work as an aide at the childcare center her
daughter attended. Mandi was sure that acknowledging
that she was an ex-felon would prevent her from getting
a job. She drew upon personal contacts (as many of us
do) to find her initial job:
My parole officer gave me this sheet of paper and
said, “When you find a job, your employer has to sign
this. That way they know you’re on parole.” I thought,
“I’m never gonna get a job.” I ended up gettin’ a job at
Taco Bell because my brother’s wife’s sister was the
manager there.
Mandi moved from her minimum wage job at the
Taco Bell to increased wages as a manager at McDon-
ald’s in part due to her personal engagement skills. She
recounted that when she would stop in at McDonald’s
“The manager there would tell me, ‘You’re very friend-
ly.’ I try to be, you know.” And even though she had
some hesitation about working at McDonald’s since it
was every inmate’s hope she could do better than get a
job at McDonald’s she took the job and found that hav-
ing the title of manager “meant something.”
Anita reflected that the controlling prison culture re-
inforced the lack of planning for future responsibilities
that women face when they exit the institution. Yet she
used some of what she had learned in maintaining a reg-
ular schedule while in prison to manage the routine she
290
developed while working at a dry cleaner. Anita also
talked about the connection between her employment
and her new identity when she said she had put on “new
clothes” for her “new life” since her release from prison.
The women who resided in the community place-
ment facility were expected to obtain employment and
pay toward their room and board. They were already
identified as ex-inmates due to their residence, and so
did not report as much concern with stigma related to
finding a job, as did those women who came out to the
community directly from a prison facility. Jeanette de-
scribed her relief when a computer skills class sponsored
by a local job training agency provided her an opportu-
nity for employment, and in that setting, the fact that she
was a felon provided her with additional currency: “I
covered a lot of slots for them in one big hiring.”
Although Ashley attributes her employment success
to “luck,” she was also able to present herself in a man-
ner that attenuated the “ex-con” stigma:
I had to go in there and tell this lady, “I was in
jail for this but I want to do social work.” And, I
basically sold myself. “I know I can do this. I
love kids.” And, she hired me. That was a good
step in the door.
Sadie’s involvement with an in-prison domestic vio-
lence program became a support system in multiple ways
when she left prison. Sadie used this support system and
what she reframed as “7-and-a-half years experience in
the criminal justice system” as a bridge in her transition:
My major support system … was the people at
[the shelter] who had been coming into the prison
for all that time … those women were a great
support system for me. They were like friends,
and being in that group was real good. I certainly
learned a lot about domestic violence, which ben-
efited me in getting a job.
Although not all the women worked full-time after
their release, almost all in some way drew upon family re-
sources for concrete assistance in the early days of their
transition. An exception was Bernie, the oldest member of
the group who was 65 when she was released. Instead, she
recalled that it was the kindness of strangers in the net-
work of social and church-based services and the assis-
tance of a another former inmate that enabled her to both
obtain a home and to find the means to support herself.
She related that when she got off the bus that deposited

her after her final incarceration, she had “nowhere to go.”
She initially spent several nights with the former inmate
while she applied for subsidized housing and other forms
of public assistance. She was fearful that her criminal
record would nullify her eligibility but apparently her po-
lice report sent over by the Sheriff’s office indicated “no
warrants and no arrests” so she secured an apartment.
Out of her recognition of “Who better but we people” to
help each other, she later started a thrift store with the
help of a local church that not only supplemented her
meager fixed income but also enabled her to assist other
inmates who were returning to the community.
Soon after Susan’s release, she went to work in a
family-owned business. Later, she began working in a
nursing home where she acquired her certified nursing
assistant license. At the time of the interview, her hus-
band had agreed to financially support their family while
she returned to school to study for her licensed practical
nurse designation.
Connection With Others
Recent developmental models have demonstrated
the importance of relationships for enhancing women’s
well being throughout the life span (Jordon, Kaplan,
Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991). For the women in this
study, relationships were crucial both for their manage-
ment if their incarceration as well as their release.
One of the major ways that family members sup-
ported the participants was by caring for their children
while the women were incarcerated, and for some of the
women who were not yet financially stable, continuing
to provide a home for their children after release. Sever-
al of the women found themselves in the position of
“proving themselves” to their family but also finding
that as they did, the response was positive. For example,
Nicole related that her mother told her that if “you start
working and tryin’ to save some money, and we’ll go
look for a car, and I’ll try to help you out and see what I
can do about co-signin’.” Regina, the youngest partici-
pant, returned home on parole after release from prison
and found her parents sheltered and supported her (and
soon her newborn infant) “as long as I show them I’m a
responsible person.” Several of the women had the ex-
perience of reconstructing their lives after prison with a
new partner. Rene, who at the time of the interview had
been released from the federal residential facility for only
a few months, described the process of building support
for her and her two children with the help that her new
fiancé provided:
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O’Brien • The Necessary Ingredients for Reentry After Incarceration
I started while I was there in prison. It’s just like
doin’ a diagram of a house, and you’re gonna have
this what’s gonna hold it up, and you’re gonna do
all these things to keep it standin’. And, it’s like
keeping all the bricks in place. The basic thing is
keepin’ straight. Keep straight and maintain, and
then workin’ everything around. That’s what I did,
because my boyfriend was there. He came to see
me. He stuck in there with the kids.
At the time of the interviews, eight of the participants
had alternative physical or legal custody arrangements for
their children. Most of these children resided in the care
of their mothers or other family members. These parents
chose a more graduated process of regaining eventual cus-
tody that facilitated them developing the financial and
emotional means of supporting their children.
The reawakened capacity to care for their children
made some participants feel rewarded by their re-
sumption of their mothering role. Nan explained how
creating a home for her children enabled her to over-
come some of the compulsions that had resulted in her
previous convictions:
Havin’ to go to prison, livin’ in a matchbox room
and only havin’ X-amount of dollars and havin’
nowhere to go and nobody to turn to. I don’t
ever want that again, Honey. All them fine fancy
clothes and good livin’, I don’t want that, because
I had all of that, I wasn’t even happy. Now, I’m
so happy bein’ right here with my kids. With little
money and nothin’, because it’s real, true love
right here in the home with me and my kids.
Many of the women said the necessity of repairing
fractured relationships with family members, especial-
ly their mothers, was also a priority. This was surpris-
ing since their mothers had served as caretakers of the
participants’ minor children during the time their
daughters were in prison. Ten of the 18 study partici-
pants described their relationships with their mothers
as historically problematic, and sometimes abusive.
Working out the difficulties in their relationships with
their mothers contributed to the women’s sense of
growth following incarceration, even if their mother
was no longer living. For some women, regaining the
ability to parent their children also depended on their
mending these relationships.
Ashley indicated that asserting herself to her mother
opened the door to having a more healthy relationship:
FAMILIES IN SOCIETY • Volume 82, Number 3
My mom and I were never really close, because she
did abuse me. I would never open up to her and
talk to her. So, about a year ago, I just sat her
down one day, and I said, “look, Mom, this is me
and this is the way I am. You either deal with it or
you don’t, because you don’t have another daugh-
ter. But, I’m not gonna let you downgrade me and
talk bad about me. You have to accept me the way
I am, because, if not, I can just walk out of your
life like I’ve come back in.” You have to make
those steps forward sometimes.
In counseling sessions during her incarceration and
after her release, Susan reported that she gained insight by
examining some of the abuse prior to her incarceration:
From the time I was 3, my mom was real abusive
to me and I grew up with it so all my boyfriends
were guys who were abusive and everything’s al-
ways my fault so I was a very big people-pleaser
and I did what ever I had to make them happy
and a lot of times it had to do with money so I
would steal money to give it to them so I would-
n’t get beat or so they wouldn’t just fly off and
leave me.
Meanwhile, Susan’s mother also obtained therapy
and began to understand and own some of what she had
perpetrated upon her daughter:
The second time, my mom had started counseling a
year before I went in … we both worked through a
whole bunch of stuff and they came up and talked
to me a lot; there was no, “I blame you”; they
were there to support me and stood behind me,
and they helped me when I came out. I’m closer to
my mom and dad than I’ve ever been in my life.
Most of the women discussed the importance of
their relationships with their parole or supervision offi-
cers as facilitating their success in their transition.
Racque, who essentially married out of her life “on the
streets” in a west coast city and moved to a small town
in the Midwest, recalls that she had an “understanding”
parole officer who helped her deal with the paperwork
required for moving from one state to another.
Mandy came out of prison for the second time,
steered clear of old associations, and settled in a larger
city where she knew no one. She faced an overwhelming
292
list of both parole conditions and family court expecta-
tions that she had to meet in order to regain custody of
her four children in foster care. She recounts the diffi-
culty of her first few months:
I didn’t have a car. I found a house within walk-
ing distance of Taco Bell. I couldn’t have a phone
in my name because of an outstanding bill, so I
couldn’t get a phone in my house, but I had to re-
port once a month by phone and you get charged
for that. So, finances were a real big struggle, get-
ting to work without a vehicle, trying to go see
the parole officer without a vehicle.
Mandi met her conditions, but not without some per-
sonal cost, and at great risk to her freedom. After a relapse
in her use of crack cocaine, it was the understanding as-
sistance of her employer that facilitated Mandi’s acquiring
the treatment she needed to get clean again. Soon after the
interview, she celebrated her first year of sobriety and
eventually she regained legal and physical custody of her
children and received a discharge from parole supervision.
She attributes much of her success to her parole officer
who was willing to be flexible and responsive to her indi-
vidual situation and assist her in managing the conditions
despite her massive financial challenges.
Other women also identified positive attributes of
their parole officers that facilitated their transition.
These included being treated “as a person rather than a
number,” being “left alone,” without intense intrusion
into the woman’s daily life; willingness to respond to
changing circumstances by modifying conditions when
appropriate to do so; and providing accurate informa-
tion about the supervisory process. In several examples,
the parole officer facilitated the woman’s early discharge
from supervision.
Confidence
This section describes what participants identified
as internally derived indicators of change since the in-
carceration. These self-initiated changes include devel-
oping a sense of efficacy for managing everyday life,
creating relational competence, making decisions to
promote physical health, and using internal resources
to cultivate hope. For example, Nicole related some of
the differences she recognizes that have enabled her to
feel more confident and self-assured as a consequence
of her experiences in prison.

I’m pretty much the same person I was before—a
little bit older and a little bit wiser—I guess it’s
just part of growin’ up and goin’ through hard
times and realizin’ that things can get better,
which they have for me in a lot of ways. I think I
still relate to people the way I was before I was in
—some people say I’m a little hard—I’ve been
called an evil woman by an old friend. I said,
“Well, when you’ve been where I have and gone
through things that I have, I learned to build a
wall and it takes a lot to get through it.” If I feel
that somethin’s not right, then I’m goin’ the other
direction. I woke up and realized had I not went
there and went through the things I had, I don’t
think I’d be where I am today.
Mandi recalled that a correctional officer told her
while Mandi was incarcerated that, “the company you
keep will determine the trouble you’re in.” In order to
grow the fragile seed of her sobriety, Mandi surrounded
herself with what she describes as “positive people,” in-
cluding her self-help group, her church sponsor, and one
of her employers who first noticed her potential.
A number of the participants recalled particular
ministers, counselors, or other prison staff members who
simply treated them as “human beings.” Most of the
women who had resided at the community placement fa-
cility spoke glowingly of the drug counselor who worked
with them. For example, Elena found that he encouraged
her to “prove ‘em all wrong”:
When I came out of prison, I had the same atti-
tude that I was gonna do everything like before. I
wasn’t gonna change. I just thought, “They made
me wiser, you know.” I was just gonna be slicker.
I had a terrible attitude. My drug counselor was
the one that really helped me decide on what I re-
ally want out of life. He was like … my inspira-
tion, somebody that I really looked up to.
Although these women described major struggles in
gaining housing and employment, they reflected an abil-
ity to bounce back from adversity by taking advantage
of what they could while incarcerated and being strate-
gic in using resources when they exited prison. The
women identified some of their strengths that promoted
their success as “stubbornness,” “problem-solving
skills,” and “confidence” all of which often relate to
competence for handling challenges (Bandura, 1992).
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O’Brien • The Necessary Ingredients for Reentry After Incarceration
Community Membership
Once the women had met their concrete needs for
survival, they recognized the motivational force that
membership in the world around them provided. The
ability to “give back” or contribute to others was an im-
portant marker that many of the women discussed as re-
flective of their citizenship in the communities to which
they had returned.
For example, Nan wrote letters to the friends who
were still in prison about what she had learned about
managing her freedom and the continuing supervision.
Mandi became a volunteer with a prison advocacy orga-
nization and returned to the women’s prison facility to
facilitate an inmate support group. Elena talked about
her dream of working with Latina girls to help them
avoid some of the troubles she experienced. Bernie gave
out bras and bus tokens to newly released women so
they can look presentable and get around the city for job
interviews. Deeni negotiated with the community place-
ment facility so the residents could attend exercise class-
es she taught. Sadie helped organize an annual crafts sale
that features the work of local women artists as well as
led off-road bike trips for novice trail bikers. Elizabeth
worked in a substance abuse center with other previous-
ly jailed women. Participants expressed pride in the ways
in which they felt their giving reflected their inclusion in
the free world.
In addition to having some insight about the ele-
ments that contributed to their successful reentry, these
women expressed aspirations that reflected their sense of
hope for transforming their lives. These aspirations in-
cluded returning to college, better-paying employment
and doing meaningful work.
Discussion and Implications
Running through the women’s narratives is a sense
of both dormancy and growth. The women project wis-
dom sharpened by experience for how they must func-
tion in order to free themselves from correctional in-
volvement. The process of successful integration depends
on both the woman’s developing a sense of self-efficacy
and her strategic use of family, correctional, and com-
munity resources. These findings are consistent with
what others have identified as necessary for addressing
the continuum of service needs for formerly incarcerated
women in an empowering process (Zaplin, 1998) and fit
with the elements of consciousness, connection, and con-
FAMILIES IN SOCIETY • Volume 82, Number 3
fidence Gutiérrez and Lewis (1999). A crucial difference
is the necessity of addressing the concrete realities of re-
constructing families and lives after separation from
home and community. As Denni so eloquently stated, “It
has to be a combination. It’s just like bakin’ a cake. You
can’t leave out the flour. You need all the ingredients to
make it come out right.”
The study findings have important implications for
social work practice. They suggest that interventions
must address both the psychological and the social as-
pects of women’s lives upon release from prison. The
interaction between the women in this study and their
environments demonstrates a need for effective coping
strategies and a sense of self-efficacy, but also a need
for accessible resources. In addition to the women’s in-
sights about their change in consciousness or attitudes
about “making it,” their development of strategies for
fostering and rebuilding relationships, and their ability
to build upon small successes in order to develop con-
fidence, they expressed their need for counseling and
support to help them deal with past traumas and con-
flicts with family members.
Women exiting prison also need concrete assistance
for acquiring safe and sufficient housing and employment
that would enable them to support themselves and their
children by legal means. Although much has been written
about the importance of maintaining family ties, particu-
larly the connection between mother and children (see for
example, Bloom & Steinert, 1993; Hairston, 1991), this
study also recognizes the need for support of a more grad-
uated process of resuming parenting, a rewarding yet de-
manding and often stressful role expectation.
Given the intersection of correctional issues with
many others that affect vulnerable populations (poverty
and racism, among others), it is crucial that the social
work profession have greater visibility in correctional
settings and in educating future workers who can sup-
port and help actualize individual potential. Women in
the study were motivated and inspired by helpers they
believed recognized them for what they could be despite
the label they carried. Goldstein (1997) among others
have described the ways in which the totalizing language
of helping often obscures and limits these possibilities for
revitalization and change within human beings.
The study also suggests important policy implica-
tions, particularly given the financial and social costs of
incarceration (Chesney-Lind, 1992; Dressel, 1994). It is
time to look at alternatives to incarceration, especially
considering the mix of social and environmental factors
294
that are producing female inmates at an increasing rate
and the fact that the largest proportion of the increasing
bulge in our state and federal penal institutions consists
of inmates convicted on drug charges. Further examina-
tion of community-based programs for female (and
male) offenders is a crucial area of needed research. We
have indications that these alternatives are successful for
some women offenders (Devine, 1997; Morash, Bynum,
& Koons, 1995). While many questions remain about
the most effective ways to respond to relapse and recidi-
vism, it seems crucial to adopt and maintain a rehabili-
tative and a broad-based perspective to comprehensive
treatment as opposed to a single focus approach that tar-
gets one risk factor alone.
Conclusion
Consistent with social work values of self-determi-
nation and belief in the individual capacity for growth
and change, “restorative justice” concepts may hold
promise for doing justice better. Described as both “an
umbrella concept and social movement” (Daly & Im-
margeon, 1998, p. 38), restorative justice is a reparative
approach as compared to the current punitive approach
and requires a change in the paradigm of correctional re-
sponse (Holquist, 1999) that is consistent with an em-
powerment and strengths-based focus on change.
A justice process that addresses women’s need for
healing and promotes reintegration while holding them
accountable for harm done to self, victims, and the
larger community makes sense. We can begin using this
approach immediately with many offenders through
community-based alternative sentencing strategies that
both hold women accountable and address some of the
social structural issues that many report led to their il-
legal choices. For women exiting incarceration, prac-
tices that emphasize community reconnection can pro-
mote the restoration of offenders. Social workers can
facilitate offender connections to community members
through mentoring programs, spiritual/religious min-
istries, and involvement in community projects with
non-offender participants.
Finally, social workers must work within correc-
tional “host” institutions to promote the inculcation of
a “free world” attitude within prison facilities. This
shift in attitude would mean that all programs and poli-
cies would be directed toward the successful transition
of the inmate from prison from the time she enters the
institution. As Sadie reminds us, “we (ex-inmates) are
 O’Brien • The Necessary Ingredients for Reentry After Incarceration

your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends, and Koons, B. A., Burrow, J.D., Morash, M., & Bynum, T. (1997).
your family members.” Expert and offender perceptions of program elements linked
to successful outcomes for incarcerated women. Crime &
This study provides us with valuable insights from
Delinquency, 43, 512–532.
some formerly incarcerated women about the numer- Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. Bever-
ous internal and external strengths they demonstrated ly Hills, CA: Sage.
as they returned to the community. The study also O’Brien, P. (2001). Making it in the “free world”: Women in tran-
challenges us to recognize that women coming out of sition from prison. Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press.
prison require individualistic responses to their situa-
Saleebey, D. (1997). Introduction: Power in the people. In D.
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Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research:
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