Nothing’s Changed but Me: Reintegration Plans Meet the Inner City

Abstract

This chapter draws on an ethnographic study of 15 young men of color returning to Philadelphia after release from “Mountain Ridge Academy,” a therapeutic facility designed to target “criminal thinking errors.” I describe the disjuncture between the young men’s plans to “fall back” or refrain from further offending and the realities they faced when returning to impoverished urban neighborhoods. Although they were trained to view their post-release trajectories in terms of improved weighing of risks and rewards, their good intentions were dwarfed by marginal positions in the labor market, limited human capital, and stigma linking men of color to criminality. They often “fell back” on old ways of solving problems. When they returned home, they realized “nothing’s changed but me.” Helpful reintegration professionals and well-thought-out reentry plans were insufficient to overcome real material conditions their communities and families presented. Because the juvenile justice system is ill equipped to address these realities, it must define the problem of criminal offending as the product of the young men’s individual deficits, creating a mismatch between services and needs.

Reprinted from Falling Back: Incarceration and Transitions to Adulthood Among Urban Youth (Rutgers University Press, 2013) Edited for length