From Incarceration to Reintegration: Understanding the Challenges of Reentry
By Erin Jamison
On September 18th, I attended the Reentry Conference and Expo held at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco to learn more about organizations and people working in reentry. I visited tabling organizations that offer resources such as housing, food, employment, including Glom Transitional Housing and St. Anthony’s. I also attended a talk by Melanie Kushnir, April Torres, and others about preventing youth and young adults from becoming involved in the criminal justice system and helping them access the support they need to build a future.
I participated in a reentry simulation exercise, moderated by Terah Lawyer and Bobby Jones, which showed me how quickly limited resources run out. Individuals leaving prison may get only $200 to cover immediate expenses, which becomes stretched thin when they have to journey to the DMV to get a state ID or birth certificate, or to get to their place of work, or to buy groceries. On top of that, they may also be required to undergo regular drug testing and meet other parole conditions. This exercise showed me the physical, emotional, financial, and legal challenges people face once they leave incarceration as well as the ongoing pressure to demonstrate their readiness for successful reintegration.
The last talk I listened to was from the people who operate the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (SQRC). Cultural humility was the core factor of SQRC, and the classes offered are directly applicable to individuals once they leave incarceration. They recognize that health is holistic and must be self-directed, and they draw on the social determinants of health to guide their care, which aims to address each person’s root issues as well as their immediate, visible problems. Participants can pursue vocational work, construction work, plumbing work, HVAC systems, cooking programs, and educational programs like completing High School and getting Associate degrees.
The Reentry Conference opened my eyes to real struggles individuals in the criminal justice system face. It reminded me of cura personalis, a philosophy defined as caring for the whole person, a core concept taught at the University of San Francisco, because of the discussions of the overall mental and physical care of the individual. Cura personalis is the holistic care of the whole person and recognizing one’s individual dignity and unique needs.
The care must understand external factors that are not necessarily health related but contribute to one’s overall health, and the care must be tailored from person to person. The overall themes of the day discussed family upbringing, language barriers, and how some young adults may not feel supported by their family which makes the care one needs so important upon entering reentry. From this experience, I learned the importance of providing meaningful care that looks beyond an individual’s immediate needs.
Hearing about the challenges individuals face helped me better understand how difficult it can be to rebuild one’s life while meeting various requirements. This experience also helped me realize how much more work needs to be done to ensure that reentry programs include each individual’s overall health and well being and to provide them with the resources they need to successfully reintegrate into society. Overall, this experience highlighted the much needed relationship between public health and criminal justice by addressing the social and environmental factors that affect one’s ability to successfully transition back into the community.
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