Jamie J. Fader: Falling Back: Incarceration and Transitions to Adulthood Among Urban Youth

Secluded in a dense forest, a five hour drive west of Philadelphia, rests a place where you will find young delinquent males between the ages of 13 and 18 carefully marching in single-file lines with their hands behind their backs, doing highly structured activities while cadence-like ‘‘thank yous’’ and ‘‘you’re welcomes’’ roll off their tongues. These boys, who have been involved in drugs, violence, and other criminal delinquency, are in the process of a behavioral reform in order to help them reflect, make better decisions, and lead a better life for themselves and for others. Jamie Fader, graduate of the University of Philadelphia, inner city godmother, and now assistant professor of criminal justice at the University at Albany SUNY, writes in her book, Falling Back, about the transition to adulthood for these young inner city males of color who have already been imprisoned by the age of 18. The book is based on her ethnographic research with black and Latino males who help to answer the question of how these vulnerable youth transition back into their urban Philadelphia neighborhoods as adult men after being incarcerated at the Mountain Ridge reform school in Pennsylvania (Mountain Ridge is the name she uses to protect the identities of staff and clients). The reform school uses a ‘‘criminal thinking errors’’ approach that is supposed to help the young males identify patterns of thinking that lead them into delinquency and to replace these patterns with prosocial and corrective thoughts, and behavioral change will follow along with it. The young men were informed at the academy about where their delinquent behavior stemmed from, and that they would not be released until they learned to identify and correct their errors. Fader spent over three years exploring their transitions back home after they were released from reform school, doing intensive participant observation and interviews with fifteen of the young black and Latino men, documenting their experiences and struggles of ‘‘falling back’’ and becoming productive members of society. Fader is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, educated white girl, which makes her the complete opposite from those who were participating in her study, and many people ask how it was possible to establish rapport with these young men. For one, Fader had many previous years of being an evaluator for juvenile justice programs and had a good understanding of the system, along with access to the programs. She also did preliminary field research examining the various stages of reentry into the community, which helped her establish relationships with reintegration workers that were later useful. Fader says that establishing a relationship with these young men was quite simple, as they were eager to tell their stories about reform school because it helped alleviate boredom and monotony, as well as giving them freedom to say whatever they wanted about the school behind closed doors. She also says that being a straightforward person and sharing things about herself helped her to gain their trust and respect. She openly talked about the differences between them, and made them comfortable to talk about race and different perceptions. Fader quickly became close with these men and soon began to accompany them almost everywhere they went; to work, to school, to the stores, and met many of their family members and friends along the way. What Fader found throughout the process is that, despite the high costs, energy, and time put into it, the program failed to deter the young men from returning back to the & Dana Ford danaford@indiana.edu; danaford18@gmail.com