Voices of Experience: Focus Group Findings from the State of Rhode Island

Voices of Experience: Focus Group Findings on Prisoner Reentry in the State of Rhode Island Nancy G. La Vigne, PhD Samuel J. Wolf with Jesse Jannetta RESEARCH REPORT November 2004 URBAN INSTITUTEJustice Policy Centerresearch for safer communities Voices of Experience: Focus Group Findings on Prisoner Reentry in the State of Rhode Island Nancy G. La Vigne, PhD Samuel J. Wolf with Jesse Jannetta About the Authors Nancy La Vigne is a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, where she directs several projects on prisoner reentry, including Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry, a multi-state, longi-tudinal study of the reentry experience. Her other research interests include the geographic analysis of crime, situational crime prevention, and community policing. Prior to her current position, La Vigne was founding director of the National Institute of Justice’s Crime Mapping Research Center. Her other work experience includes consulting for the Police Executive Research Forum, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and the National Develop-ment and Research Institute. She also served as research director for the Texas Punishment Standards Commission. La Vigne has authored articles in journals, chapters in edited volumes, and textbooks and monographs in the areas of prisoner reentry, crime prevention, policing, and spatial analysis. She serves on a number of national advisory boards, including those for the Center for Spa-tially Integrated Social Sciences, the Allegheny County (PA) Jail Collabora-tive study, and the Institute of Higher Education Policy’s Prisoner Access to Postsecondary Education study. La Vigne holds a PhD from Rutgers Univer-sity, a Master’s degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and a BA from Smith College. Samuel J. Wolf is a research assistant in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute where he primarily works on prisoner reentry projects. His responsibilities have included performing qualitative data collection and analy-sis, literature reviews, and report writing and editing. Mr. Wolf holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jesse Jannetta is currently a Master’s candidate in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is concentrating in crime and criminal justice policy, and his research interests include the effects of pro-grams in correctional settings and the community-level impact of prison reentry. Mr. Jannetta holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Michigan and worked for two years as the administrator of the Prison Crea-tive Arts Project. © Copyright 2004. All rights reserved. URBAN INSTITUTE Justice Policy Center 2100 M Street, NW Washington, DC 20037 http://www.urban.org/ (202) 833-7200 The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to The Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. The Justice Policy Center (JPC) carries out nonpartisan research to inform the national dialogue on crime, justice, and community safety. For more information on JPC’s reentry research, visit http://jpc.urban.org/reentry/. To receive monthly e-mail updates on JPC research, send an e-mail to JPC@ui.urban.org. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank several individuals from the Rhode Island Department of Correc-tions (RIDOC) who made valuable contributions to this report. Director A. T. Wall and Assistant Director Roberta Richman provided the leadership support that was critical to the success of this project. We are also grateful for the support of Cheryl Kennedy, executive assistant, Office of Rehabilitative Services; Jennifer Olivelli, associate director, Planning & Research Unit; Teresa Foley, professional services coor-dinator; and Erin Boyar, principal planner, for their support and guidance and for providing us with in-formation on the reentry process in Rhode Island. We would also like to thank Sol Rodriguez and Ronald Fortes of The Family Life Center for providing assistance and logistical support in conducting the re-leased prisoner focus group. We also appreciate the work of the Urban Institute’s Meagan Funches, who assisted in planning and implementing the focus group meetings, and Dr. Cynthia Mamalian, a criminal justice research consultant who provided edits to the final report. Our funders and project partners, Helena Huang at the JEHT Foundation and Thomas MacLellan at the National Governors Association, provided the financial support necessary to complete this project. Finally and most importantly, we thank the 48 focus group participants who offered their time and shared their candid opinions with us; without them, this report would not have been possible. Table of Contents Executive Summary............................................................ 1 Introduction ..........................