Method:
The in-depth, two-part interviews were
completed with all accessible Project Release participants (individuals
referred to Pathways to Housing from alternative to incarceration programs,
mostly the Nathaniel Project, but also Project Link and Treatment Alternatives
for the Dually Diagnosed): 20
of the 25 total participants were interviewed, 5 were in prison, hospitalized
or lost to follow-up despite repeated efforts to find and contact them.
A coding scheme was developed based largely on the content of the
interviews since this was a descriptive study of the process whereby formerly
incarcerated and still court-involved individuals with serious mental
illness made their way in a consumer-oriented, recovery-focused, and harm-reduction
embracing housing program (Pathways to Housing).
The coding system was applied to all of the interviews (transcribed)
and Atlas TI was used to analyze the coded text segments.
A particular focus of the interview was how participants felt about
dealing with the these two very different philosophical approaches, i.e.,
the social control and carrot-and-stick approach of the court as compared
with the normalizing relapse, consumer choice driven, recovery as a process
approach of Pathways to housing. However,
very few consumers experienced this potential conflict as particularly
relevant or difficult. The court was a presence in their lives but
not a major one. Interviewees’
lives were marked by long-term involvement with institutions that could
be described as having at least some goals related to social control (from
foster care, to inpatient hospitals, to group homes or juvenile detention
facilities, to shelters, and jails and prisons) and we speculate that,
therefore, the court did not figure prominently as participants were used
to having such an institution in their lives.
Instead, consumers focused on the role of their specific relationships
with staff members, be they from the alternative to incarceration program
or Pathways, and on having their own apartment, as critical to their happiness,
satisfaction, and outward success.
Ultimately, analysis of the rich data yielded some important insights
into the challenge of what has been called community reintegration:
most of the interviewees had very little experience with being
part of community, especially a law-abiding one, and therefore applying
the concept of reintegration or reentry may not be appropriate. The people we interviewed were not re-entering a stable community
of which they had once been a member – they were seeking to find a positive
community, to learn what it takes to be considered a member of that community,
and to develop the skills to take on that role. Having an apartment was a crucial first step for everyone in that
process – but each had next step goals and aspirations, plans that seemed
to have been freed up by the security of having their own place, often
for the first time in their lives.
Results:
These results were presented at the
Center for Mental Health Services and Criminal Justice Research Conference
(Reentry to Recovery: People with mental illness coming from jail or prison)
in April, 2004 (Philadelphia, PA) by John Jost, PhD, a recent graduate
of the doctoral program at Wagner, former NKI employee, and current ethnographer
at NDRI. The presentation was
entitled: Gillespie, C.C., Hopper,
K., McDonald, M., Louison, A.M., Bernier, A., Dubin, K., Flores, G. and
Talton, S. What does it take to make an alternative to
incarceration program for people with serious mental illness work? Anatomy of the award-winning Nathaniel Project.
American Public Health Association Conference, San Francisco, CA,
November, 2003.
Results document the importance, at
least from the perspective of consumers, of consumer/case manager relationships,
a stable, secure, independent place to live, and the pursuit of meaningful
social roles in helping former offenders with serious mental illness “make
it in the community.”
POLICY
IMPLICATIONS
Results will shed
light on the ways in which consumers negotiate two very different and
possibly conflicting settings, the ways in which each setting (Pathways
and the court as filtered through the Nathaniel Project) can be made
aware of the tensions that their goals and underlying missions may engender
in the lives of consumers involved with both settings, and the ways
in which frontline staff can recognize and respond to these inherent
conflicts. Such results are expected to be generalized to the interaction
of the full range of agencies and programs providing services to people
with serious mental illness involved with the criminal justice system.
PLANS
Two papers based on these data are in preparation.
John Jost is first author on the article version of the above-mentioned
presentation; the working title of that paper is “What Matters is a
“Nice” Place to Live: Court Supervised (Re)entry into the Community
Mediated by a Consumer-Oriented Housing Program.” And
Colleen Gillespie is first author on a paper that focuses on
providing an in-depth description of the lives of the interviewees,
using timelines to graphically depict the degree of involvement each
has had with multiple institutions throughout their lives and drawing
conclusions about what these experiences mean for living independently
in the community.
Entered:
July 17, 2003
Updated:
July 2004
