INTRODUCTION
From the onset of the prison reentry movement (Petersilia Reference Petersilia2003; Western Reference Western2018) returning citizens (i.e., former felons) have been vital resources in responding to mass incarceration—the explosive growth of prisons and the societal infrastructure associated with that growth. Recent research is expanding our understanding of peer support resources and the value of an empathic infrastructure to improve prison reentry outcomes (LeBel et al., Reference LeBel, Richie and Maruna2015; Matthews et al., Reference Matthews, Bowman, Whitbread and Johnson2020; Mijs Reference Mijs2016). The return to community of those who have been incarcerated has been a process of social concern for many years. In 1982, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger noted with “urgency and alarm” that the U.S. prison system had nearly doubled during the 1970s. Justice Burger (Reference Burger1982) recommended that the U.S. criminal justice system “try a new approach [and] change our thinking and the reactionary statutes that stand in the way [of the] proposition to which I adhere today: when society places a person behind walls and bars it has a moral obligation to do whatever can reasonably be done to change that person before he or she goes back into the stream of society” (pp.112-113, 120).
Contrary to the sentiments of Justice Burger, “three strikes” statutes soon followed. These mandatory sentencing enhancements for prior felony convictions required judges to impose punitive sentences based on one’s criminal record rather than the severity of the current offense (see Owens Reference Owens1995). While three strikes narratives and policy were moving through state legislatures and the federal government, a countermovement was underway. From the ACLU to local, grassroots initiatives across the country, many concerned individuals and organizations questioned “whether the costs of the legislation outweighs its benefits” (Starks and van Gundy, Reference Starks, Gundy and Bowman2014, p. 425; see also Owens Reference Owens1995). Little work has explored this countermovement, especially at a local level, to understand the capacity building strategies grassroots organizations used in the early 1990s to challenge these laws and the “tough on crime” narratives that fueled them.
This article explores Reconstruction, Inc., a capacity building reentry organization founded and led by returning citizens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Specifically, the analysis focuses on Reconstruction, Inc.’s documentary-making process in the mid-1990s. In exploring phases of its new program in the lives of its returning citizen affiliates, their family members, and other community members, the documentary conveys multiple challenges, goals, and subjectivities informing the development of a reentry-focused community capacity building curriculum (Chaskin, Reference Chaskin2001; Cossyleon and Flores, Reference Cossyleon and Flores2020; Goodman et al., Reference Goodman, Speers, McLeroy, Fawcett, Kegler, Parker, Smith, Sterling and Wallerstein1998). By doing so we further “a ‘counter-visual’ scholarly practice that can better perceive and intervene in the visual and ideological prevalence of the carceral state” (Schept Reference Schept2014, pp. 201–202), and explore foundations of empathic infrastructure to improve prison reentry outcomes.
MASS INCARCERATION AND RETURNING CITIZENSHIP
The social and community context of incarceration has been a focus in sociology since the origins of the discipline. In The Philadelphia Negro, W. E. B. Du Bois ([1899]1967) considered the interdependence among crime, resistance, and alienation. He wrote that, “Crime is a phenomenon of organized social life, and is the open rebellion of an individual against his social environment…[a] lack of harmony with social surroundings lead[s] to crime” (p. 17). Recently, increased attention has been paid to the role of urban social justice organizations in addressing that “lack of harmony” given the links of mass incarceration and reentry to civic engagement, education, employment, familial stability, health and health disparities, wealth inequalities, and gender and other subgroup differences related to them. Mass incarceration’s effects are far reaching, extending beyond prison walls.
Reentry is now receiving long overdue attention in media outlets, books, public policy discussions, and research on health and citizenship. Profound disparities by race, class, and gender lead mass incarceration’s “synergism of plagues” (Wallace Reference Wallace1988, p. 1; see also Drucker Reference Drucker2011) to be most deeply experienced by those most marginalized within society. Much of the existing research on returning citizens situates them in their community environments and views them in terms of their struggles for stability of employment, family, and health; as debtors in need of financial assistance; as candidates for a return to jail or prison; or as recipients of faith-based organization or secular services (Alexander Reference Alexander2010; Guyer et al., Reference Guyer, Serafi, Bachrach and Gould2019; Harris Reference Harris2016; Morenoff and Harding, Reference Morenoff and Harding2014; Pager 2010; Reinhart and Chen, Reference Eric and Chen2020; Stevens et al., Reference Stevens, Harding, Gonzalez and Eby2019). In short, various systemic and oppressive reciprocities have led to increased visibility and more detailed considerations of mass incarceration.
Reciprocity is “a mutually contingent exchange of benefits between two or more units… [where] each party has rights and duties” to one another (Gouldner Reference Gouldner1960, pp. 164, 169). Just outcomes occur when just inputs are resources of exchange. As noted by Dan M. Kahan (Reference Kahan2002), “Reciprocity dynamics figure largely in a community’s capacity to reciprocate respectful treatment [in] cooperation with” other organizations within and outside of their community (p. 1525). Research on reentry demonstrates that these dynamics are especially important to the civic engagement of returning citizenship (Mijs Reference Mijs2016; Riggs Reference Riggs2020). Reciprocity is informed by adherence to a moral norm of balance between the units sharing in the contingent exchanges, and becomes especially important and causally complicated in an environment of power inequalities between said units. When one unit is a small, grassroots organization founded by former felons, and the other is a prison system, this moral norm of balance, strained by exchange contingencies and power differences, may lead to tensions and an abuse of power. Making a documentary can be a bridge through which these “reciprocal tension[s]” (Simmel Reference Simmel and Levine1908, p. 149) are managed. Alvin W. Gouldner (Reference Gouldner1960) notes, “Simmel remarks that social equilibrium and cohesion could not exist without ‘the reciprocity of service and return service,’ and that ‘all contacts among men rest on the schema of giving and returning the equivalence’” (p. 162; see also Chaskin Reference Chaskin2001; Simmel Reference Simmel and Wolff1950). A capacity building framework helps explain how collaborations between current and former felons at the individual level, and a grassroots returning citizens organization and a prison at the organizational and institutional levels, can further reciprocal tensions of service and transformation.
Conceptual foundations of this incarceration research have included strengths-based approaches that acknowledge connections between prison and community. Bronwyn A. Hunter and colleagues (Reference Hunter, Lanza, Lawlor, Dyson and Gordon2016) observed that strengths-based models have flourished in social work, education, psychology, and service settings. From a service provider standpoint, “strengths-based case management expects case managers to identify clients’ priorities and take an active role in helping clients achieve their goals [by] focusing on resilience, transformation, empowerment, and civic engagement” (p. 1300; see also Doleac Reference Doleac, Temple, Pritchard and Roberts2020; Drucker Reference Drucker2018). Research shows that “networks formed through participation in prison programs operated by community-based organizations were prosocial and endured into the men’s release into the community [and provided] access to and compelled activation of forms of social capital in free society” (Riggs Reference Riggs2020, p. 1; see also Owens Reference Owens2014; Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012). Critiques of these initiatives include them being problematically “top-down,” where the process engine for change and sustained effectiveness rests outside of the group to be empowered, and/or that these frames extend from values of individualism and seeing each participant as separate from their community (Eliasoph Reference Eliasoph2011; Greenberg Reference Greenberg2017).
With few exceptions (e.g., Riggs Reference Riggs2020; Stanley Reference Stanley2016), little research has prioritized returning citizens as community organizing agents of change. Even Kathryn V. Stanley’s (Reference Stanley2016) “radically inclusive,” equity-driven inclusion of the most marginalized female former felons, does not focus on how returning citizens are organizing among themselves to demonstrate their leadership as assets, enriching the assets of their families and communities. The analysis of non-profit organizations founded of, by, and for returning citizens is increasing, yet still quite rare (Doleac Reference Doleac, Temple, Pritchard and Roberts2020; Mijs Reference Mijs2016; Owens Reference Owens2014). For Michael Leo Owens (Reference Owens2014), “community organizing among citizens with felony convictions may, combined with other factors, reduce the civic degradation of custodial populations in the future” (p. 256). Owens’ conclusion is based on organizations that have been founded since 2010. An ethnographic analysis of a returning citizens organization’s documentary-making process in the early 1990s can enrich an understanding of strengths-based approaches, capacity building, and how vital these organizations are today.
THE CASE AND THE METHODS
In May 1988, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—the social justice arm of the Society of Friends (Quakers)—hosted a memorial teach-in for the three-year recognition of a curious tragedy: The May 13, 1985 bombing of the MOVE home in West Philadelphia. John Africa founded MOVE as a multiracial liberation collective. African American mayor Wilson Goode approved the dropping of a C-4 military grade bomb on the MOVE home in a residential neighborhood of row houses following several standoffs between MOVE members and city police. The bomb, police gunfire, and the block being allowed to burn without fire department assistance or any other first responders for several hours thereafter, resulted in the deaths of John Africa, five other adults, and five children; the destruction of sixty-one homes; the homelessness of more than 250 people, and an unresolved legacy of loss (Boyette and Boyette, Reference Boyette and Boyette2013). Weeks later and every year thereafter, AFSC sponsored an event to explore the tragedy. At the third AFSC memorial event in May 1988, William Goldsby, a returning citizen new to Philadelphia, was among the hundreds in attendance. There, he made a patient, passionate, call to action:
I want to speak on the word ostracize. Most of us are very shocked walking the streets when we see a young Black man. White people. They move over when they see a young Black man. A lot of people in here would do the same thing. We talk about hatred. And we say don’t harbor hatred. I’m angry. And unfortunately or fortunately, I’ve learned how to deal with my hatred. I’ve learned how to deal with my anger. But, for the most part, young Black men have not. At this point, I want to offer us a solution. I challenge the organizations here to include in your program a mechanism for young, Black men to deal with the hatred that we have. Otherwise … it will continue to resurface…[and] the bomb will be dropped again. Because we are not allowed to express that anger. So, if there are any organizations here, I will volunteer time to help…deal with those causes, and help people implement solutions on those issues. Around Black men and how we are ostracized from this society (Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012, p. xv).
William focused on how fears inform state violence. He called out fellow attendees on their personal expressions of fear to make tacit investments in state violence and focused on emotional maturity and the agency of Black men. He invited collaborative investment in solutions. Mary Norris, then an AFSC Community Relations Division committee member, approached William as he was leaving the event. A collaboration began between an organizational mission in William’s spirit and words, and the willingness of AFSC to initiate a prison reentry program in the Community Relations Division of its Mid-Atlantic Region.
Working with a small group of committed others, William was guided by the wisdom and commitment of longtime AFSC staff members Barbara Moffett and Bill Meek, and a welfare office supervisor and co-signer of the Reconstruction, Inc. articles of incorporation, Phyllis Jones-Carter. Three years later in April 1991, this AFSC Divisional program became an incorporated nonprofit organization, Reconstruction, Inc. (http://www.reconstructioninc.org/).
During the first two years of Reconstruction’s incorporation (1991–1993), they established by-laws, meeting and organizational structures, an Advisory Board, a working Board of Directors, a decision-making protocol, and a three-pillar curriculum to guide organizational actions and solicit additional resources. In 1993, amid communal conflicts discussed below, Reconstruction, Inc. acquired a property; 1808 Tioga Street in North Philadelphia houses the organization’s headquarters to the present day. As the internal organizational development continued, outreach to secure institutional collaboration continued as well. After many efforts to do so, William met with the Deputy Director of the state’s prison system. William’s “organizationally embedded” (Riggs Reference Riggs2020, p. 1) networking extended from his earlier work with the Pennsylvania Prison Society (PPS). His prior work with PPS gave him access to all state prisons, including the State Correctional Institution at Graterford. There, he met with its superintendent, the late Donald Vaughan.
William’s relationships grew with Vaughan and other key prison administrators. Along with a small group of committed volunteers, William developed and refined the process and pedagogy of a four-year reentry curriculum of principled transformation; both institutional (in-prison student to returning citizen co-resident in community), and personal (spiritual, self-knowing). Consistent with Justice Burger’s Reference Burger1982 advocacy to “try a new approach,” the Reconstruction curriculum helped to prepare a select number of currently incarcerated men to be ready to live a principled life different from the person they were when they entered the prison years before. Central to the preparation for their return to community was a reciprocal tension between a sense of enriching one’s self as an agent of change, while also contributing to transformations of one’s family and community. These often-challenging transitions were among the reciprocal tensions Vaughan, George Stahalek (the state head of prison programs), Bessie Williams (a vital staff member as the Reconstruction-Graterford collaboration began), other staff members, and Reconstruction affiliates approved.
In 1993, Reconstruction entered Graterford. William Goldsby and a few volunteers facilitated the curriculum. After multiple setbacks of timing (When could they enter?), location (What, if any, space would be available?), institutional equity (Would cohort members be paid for their participation just like porters or kitchen workers were?), and other uncertainties, Graterford’s first Reconstruction cohort began to gain momentum. Prison staff and others quickly noted meaningful changes in these men. All were two-time violent felons, many with extensive criminal histories. All twenty-four men of this first cohort were prioritized, sought out, and participated in these personal, interpersonal, and institutional transformations.
As these reciprocal tensions of individual, organizational, and collaborative growth continued, a then twenty-two year-old African American man who lived near the Tioga neighborhood began his affiliation with Reconstruction. From the organization’s archive, Hakim Hudson stated that he was “working on video production with [Patrick] Murray, Steplight, James and two facilitators at Scribe Video” (Board meeting minutes, August 4, 1994). Then and today, Scribe Video Center teaches documentary video making to community organizations in Philadelphia through their “Community Visions” initiative (http://scribe.org/). Their goal is to advance the use of these resources “as artistic tools for progressive social change.”
While still refining its programming and gaining a foothold in both the Graterford prison and the North Philadelphia neighborhood where it is headquartered, Reconstruction partnered with Scribe Video to make an organizational documentary. Early on, the Reconstruction, Inc. documentary team received guidance from author, activist, and filmmaker Toni Cade Bambara. Her instruction and storyboard critiques provided vital input to Reconstruction affiliates (organization archive). Coupled with Scribe Video’s post-production resources to provide the viewer with an essential starting point of story, brevity, and authenticity, editing of the visual and audio materials began. Post-production included revising the storyboard and messaging sequence, cutting raw footage, assembling that footage, deciding on still images, adding music, and other related tasks. As a result of the critical assessments that occurred at each step, consideration of multiple motives and audiences, and the organizational impression management tensions (Burns et al., Reference Burns, Kwan and Walsh2020; Clark and Abrash, Reference Clark and Abrash2011) between Scribe, Reconstruction volunteers, and the institutional collaborators, the Reconstruction documentary foreshadowed organizational development trends regarding returning citizens (Mijs 2014; Riggs Reference Riggs2020). Much of the documentary footage was filmed in 1994 and 1995. Due to a variety of constraints and challenges of this labor-intensive process as a virtually all-volunteer organization, production and post-production gradually progressed from late 1994 through to completion and copyright in 1996. Reconstruction program participation depicted in the documentary includes Sacred Circle dialogues (i.e., spiritual fellowship while in the spatial equity of a circle), role playing challenging situations, classroom instruction, peer facilitation, and journaling and other introspection. As depicted in the documentary, their changes continued in their initial reentry, first in transitional housing, and then while living independently. We could find no prior documentary of, by, and for a grassroots, reentry organization of returning citizens that precedes the Reconstruction video. Though subject to local and societal period effects and other challenges, capacity building outcomes are demonstrated in the principled transformations the documentary reflects. The documentary-making process helped mediate these reciprocal tensions and demonstrated reciprocities between individual change and organizational growth in the early 1990s. The process helped establish the foundation for the reentry movement of today.
In the social sciences, audiovisual methods and analyses, particularly those of documentary film, remain a “very under-researched field” (Eraso Reference Eraso2006, p. 2; see also Burns et al., Reference Burns, Kwan and Walsh2020; Pink et al., Reference Pink, Hubbard, O’Neill and Radley2010). However, contributions from visual methods go back at least to Wesley F. Pratzner (Reference Pratzner1947) who asked, “What has happened to the documentary film?” (p. 394). Writing during the post-World War II period, Pratzner identified documentary filmmaking as a vital resource, “destined to play an even more important role in education for peace than it has already played in war” (1947, p. 401). A generation later, Howard S. Becker’s Art Worlds (1974), as a meaning-making enterprise, stressed the importance of the visual-image researcher being aware of (deductive) theory in one’s effort to make images “intellectually denser” (1974, p. 5; see also Peterson and Anand, Reference Peterson and Anand2004).
In Frame Analysis (1974), Erving Goffman presented among the first ethnographic explorations of performative context and media representation. He compared the novel, theatrical, and radio frames of image production and their possible consequences, where “the issue is frame limits concerning what can be permissibly [understood] from actual events… [whose] view must be veiled and distanced so that our presumed beliefs about the ultimate social quality of man will not be discredited” (1974, p. 56). For Goffman, social sciences analyze constructed images to understand their ultimate social qualities, and explore “emergent structures [in] a vocabulary of motives and provoke serious discussion about values and ethics” (Albrecht Reference Albrecht1985, pp. 325–326). More recent visual analyses recognize the processes of healing, public privacies of motherhood, societal implications of family photos, and prison theatrical performance (Dietrich Reference Dietrich2019; Mannay et al., Reference Mannay, Creaghan, Gallagher, Marzella, Mason, Morgan and Grant2018). Valuing the non-verbal, they recognize a process-oriented shift from a singular “objective” reality to a reflexive dialogue of standpoints between its producers and viewers (Burns et al., Reference Burns, Kwan and Walsh2020; Vannini Reference Vannini2015), enriching the reciprocal tensions on screen and in the viewer as well.
Documentary film has long been useful in the exploration of justice and processes of institutional change (Silbey Reference Silbey2007). It deals with “the real world that had some importance—that we might do something about a particular situation, [being made] aware of it” (McLane Reference McLane2012, p. xi). A documentary produced by a grassroots organization can reduce the likelihood of a disempowering objectification as members are both subject and object of the film. Early years of an organization are vital to its ability to engage affiliates and interested others in its mission, as it builds a sustainable critical mass of vested members. Richard D. Waters and Paul M. Jones (Reference Waters and Jones2011) analyzed how nonprofit organizations nurture their brand using YouTube videos for niche audience appeals. Instant uploads and “going viral” are commonplace terms for the number of views a video receives, and between whom, and how often a segment is shared. Nonprofit organizations have been using video for documentary purposes for years to “enhance their identity and help demonstrate accountability [and] help strengthen the public’s opinion of the organization” (Waters and Jones, Reference Waters and Jones2011, pp. 252, 261; see also Chattoo Reference Chattoo2020; Stover Reference Stover2013).
It is important to return to the onset of the post-incarceration reentry movement to explore how returning citizens can claim “the authority to tell [others] to move on [from, or] to look [at] (i.e., the visuality) of prisons and other carceral institutions [to] configure our ability to perceive them” (Schept Reference Schept2014, p. 200). By doing so, returning citizens can inform an empathic infrastructure by enriching “available vocabularies with which to speak of them, and the contexts in which to place them” (Schept Reference Schept2014, p. 200), and the collaborative decisions of action and service they engage in. By doing so, our analyses can assess how “the carceral state has structured our very capacities to perceive this particular coercive constellation of state power, especially in its historical and spatial contingencies” (Schept Reference Schept2014, p. 201).
In examining the Reconstruction, Inc. documentary, we use a coding technique adapted from the Multimedia Coding Tool (MCT), designed for videographic coding (Diesner et al., Reference Diesner, Kim and Pak2014; Salem et al., Reference Salem, Reid and Chen2008; Tuma Reference Tuma2011). It allows viewers to create a scheme from observations and generate reports from visual assessments. Our coding scheme was guided by four interdependent processes: 1) complete transcription of the on screen text and images; 2) specifying manifest (i.e., objectively apparent) and latent (i.e., symbolic and interpretive) imaging; 3) content coding the visual transcript, and records of the documentary-making process in the organization archive; and 4) coding in-depth interviews with those most directly involved with generating the raw footage and the pre- and post-production steps of documentary completion. The coding scheme consisted of three main categories which were further subdivided into sub-categories: 1) text/narrative (verbal, non-verbal); 2) person(s) on screen in place/location; 3) relation of person/place/image to the organization; and 4) capacity building domains of primary and emergent significance to organizational mission (i.e., the specification of symbolic and material assets of the documentary-making process, and the documentary itself). This included the most vital aspects that were beneficial to refining the mission of the organization, contributions to its affiliates, enrichment for the neighborhood and city, and for demonstrating returning citizen relationships to community throughout the United States. Possible omissions were noted and analyzed (Berg Reference Berg2007; Lofland and Lofland, Reference Lofland and Lofland1995; Pink et al., Reference Pink, Hubbard, O’Neill and Radley2010; Vannini Reference Vannini2015; Waters and Jones, Reference Waters and Jones2011). The more than 400 documents of the organization archive, the documentary, and its transcripts were independently reviewed by each co-author on at least three occasions, consistent with the MCT strategy described above. After multiple coding meetings consensus emerged, reflected in the findings presented here.
FINDINGS
Stopping the Nonsense: A Promotional Purpose and Muted Mission
In 1994, while navigating growing pains, Reconstruction Inc. began making a documentary to realize its capacity building mission. Community capacity is when human capital, organizational resources, and social capital within a given community are leveraged to solve collective problems and improve or maintain the well-being of a given community (Chaskin Reference Chaskin2001; see also Goodman et al., Reference Goodman, Speers, McLeroy, Fawcett, Kegler, Parker, Smith, Sterling and Wallerstein1998; Kretzmann and McKnight, Reference Kretzmann and McKnight1993). Creating the documentary enriched multiple capacity building actions. Together, these actions helped Reconstruction Inc. manage reciprocal tensions, while nurturing diverse assets among its affiliates, its collaborators, and neighbors, as “new spaces of understanding were developed among the documentary-making volunteers” (Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012, p. 115) during the founding years of the organization. As William recently stated about these new spaces of understanding,
To live in this world is to live in the human house. Every moment contributes to the human house which is always being constructed. The process of creating the documentary exposed people involved to new awareness, understanding, and concrete skills that contributed to their own lives personally, familialy, and communally. Hence, the human house. The substrata of the process involved connecting people of different sexual preferences to face those differences and to deal with the tension they would otherwise run from. Another substratum was demonstrating resilience when the crew would be up by 4:30 am to get to the prison by 8:30 in one of Philadelphia’s worst winters. On top of dealing with the social tension, the crew also struggled through other tensions to complete this creation.
Among the reciprocal tensions of collaboration of these new spaces were young Black men—Reconstruction affiliates—understanding themselves in new ways from working with “out” affirming lesbian volunteers. As one young man noted at the time while speaking to a peer, “They roll like that for real?! With no dude in sight? Ever? Yo, that’s some new s---, fo’ real.” Over time, judgements changed with new understanding. Other volunteers had never before been inside of a prison. The skills of generating the raw footage, extending from the media collaboration between Reconstruction Inc. and Graterford prison (e.g., camera operation, blocking a setting, formative storyboards, editing, and post-production), were completely new to all but the Scribe Video staff.
During filming, there were many local reciprocal tensions as well. All were being mediated through the organization’s formative growth. Dating back to the late 1970s and culminating in 1995, there was an ongoing federal investigation of the Philadelphia police force for White supremacist organizing, ignoring rape cases and other crimes, intensifying substance use activities in various drug market areas, and other legally-compromising activities (Boyette and Boyette, Reference Boyette and Boyette2013). News reports suggested that there were higher-than-normal turf tensions among local organized crime (Levenson Reference Levenson2001). Taken together, various spillover effects in Tioga and many other vulnerable neighborhoods of the city occurred. Many Reconstruction affiliates had family members, or knew of others, who had been subject to police actions regarding substances or interpersonal exchanges that were curious or otherwise unwarranted. This included “instances of police corruption and brutality [and] in Philadelphia the city paid $2.44 million to settle lawsuits involving thirty-eight suspects who were wrongfully arrested by corrupt officers” (Levenson Reference Levenson2001, p. 10). Overpolicing, or police-initiated compromises to public safety, repeatedly and negatively affected the life experiences of many Reconstruction affiliates. Yet the goal of honestly and accurately making more visible the lives of returning citizens remained a priority.
A documentary and its subject matter are always informed by the period effects at the time of its production (Burns et al., Reference Burns, Kwan and Walsh2020; Schept Reference Schept2014). In order to give “the necessary credibility and authenticity to the documentary and its subjects [many of] its meanings cannot be contained or easily expressed in words” (Kitts Reference Kitts2009, pp. 716, 719). For a returning citizen organization, the corruption of local police likely contributed to one or more Reconstruction affiliate’s prior arrests and eventual convictions. Many of the cases under investigation were in vulnerable neighborhoods susceptible to unethical police activities, and included the neighborhood in which Reconstruction Inc. has its headquarters. At the very least their activities contributed to an unsettled environment, where law “enforcers” were breaking laws they were employed to enforce. The Reconstruction documentary helped to stop the nonsense, though many aspects of the historical and local were muted. How these dynamics, while informing the documentary-making process, were to be presented on screen was guided by Scribe Video staff. They discouraged the presentation of “controversial” representations.
No run-down houses, so as not to reinforce the stereotype of them being the only thing in the ghetto. No images to conjure the federal investigation of corrupt Philadelphia police officers (who were eventually indicted for various crimes) that was ongoing at the time of the filming. No singular White people on screen, as they appear too out-of-place with the otherwise all-Black representatives of the Afrocentric organization (Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012, p. 116).
In 1995, the consequences of this advice were many, even as a liberatory resistance to it occurred, to further the “‘counter-visual’ scholarly practice” Schept (Reference Schept2014, p. 200) writes of. Distinguishing between desired and eventual on-screen authenticity, Patrick Murray, lead documentary volunteer, recently described tensions between himself and a Scribe editor regarding visual representations of Black communities.
I was trying to make the point that the ‘hood, looks the way it does not just because, ‘that’s the way Black people are. That’s the way they live. They like it’ or something stupid like that. [Rather] the ghetto was constructed very consciously by White people with an agenda: turning a profit, and keeping Black people out of their lives. And so, what you’re seeing is the result of decades, if not centuries, of that corrupt motivation. Of course the place is going to look run-down. Strangled the jobs out of the whole community. And on and on and on. Education. Political representation. Incarceration. The war on Black people that was carried out through the war on drugs and crime, and whatever else they decided to name as some proxy for the real war (Patrick Murray interview, October 2020).
According to Patrick, one of the Scribe editors “didn’t want to portray the ghetto, or the ‘hood, in any way that could be seen as feeding into any stereotypical, White assumptions about the neighborhood.” Though her concerns about how such images could reflect “poorly on Black people” were understandable, Patrick considered telling the truth necessary for effecting social change. “Point clearly to the problem, and show it” he said (October, 2020).
An old stone marking the early twentieth century date that an urban school was built made the final cut, as did images of Rodney-King-style hidden camera captures of unlawful police brutality. Multiple interviews of affiliates and neighbors were done outside. Several of these streetscape interviews include backdrops of long-abandoned, dilapidated dwellings behind the respondent’s head and clearly in frame. Segments from the interview of Brother Joe Dudek, who was central to the formative years of the organization and who is White, were also included in the final cut. With this and other content, as Patrick notes, the documentary’s purpose was multidimensional: “The documentary was promotional [and] Channel 12 [public television] bought it and aired it for about a year. [It was] for any educational setting; any activity that deals with sociological questions about halfway houses, crime, incarceration” (Patrick Murray interview, November 2007). As Reconstruction founder and longtime chair, William, notes:
[The documentary] was not a fundraiser. Scribe makes that very clear in the grant application we applied for, that these things cannot be used for fundraising. They are used to educate people in the community about the work that we do. To use a media platform to educate, raise conversation…The way that I would center my flavoring it, would be to ask a person, after they see it, ‘What did you get from it?’ I wouldn’t go so far as saying what the discussions would include. Rather, I would want to know what do people get from it, as I still do (William Goldsby interview, October 2020).
In addition to the post-production tensions between Scribe staff and Patrick, and the content tensions that resulted from them, there are understandable differences among Reconstruction leadership regarding the value on a ten-point scale of the documentary’s purpose and achievement of that purpose. Patrick stated, “On a scale of 1 to 10, in the final content and cut, we got to a 6. Maybe to a 7” (Patrick Murray interview, November 2007). When recently asked for his perspective, Lamar Rozier, the other documentary volunteer who was central to the project from its initiation to its completion, said,
I would give the documentary a 10, because one day I was in downtown Washington [DC] catchin’ the subway. They had screens in the Washington DC subway in the late 1990s. And I looked up, and our video was playin’ on the monitor…Back then, it opened up a lot of young men’s eyes. The ones that hadn’t been to prison. A lot of young men who watched the video are successful today. And it opened the eyes of a lot of people that are elderly now, especially a lot of women who had situations where their sons and grandsons were incarcerated…[It] was pretty successful. So ya, it would be a 10 (Lamar Rozier interview, December 2020).
For Lamar, there was no sense of muted mission. He views the Reconstruction documentary as having achieved its goals reflected in broadcasts of it in other cities outside of Philadelphia in a publicly accessible medium, in contributing to preventive and beneficial developmental outcomes among young, Black men, and in having contributed to the understanding of families across generations who have been affected by the incarceration of loved ones. For Lamar, an understandable pride remains.
I’m proud to have been a part of something that was a collective. [That is] one of my proud moments. To start something and to complete it. It was tough doing it. [Patrick and I would] work together all day, then to go into the studio and break down the concepts, and make them all fit together. To have family members and members of my community to participate in it…And also I had relatives that did music in it…It was pretty cool. So that’s what I’m proudest of (Lamar Rozier interview, December 2020).
When recently asked for his value, Reconstruction founder and longtime chair, William said,
My number is definitely a 10 [for] a lot of reasons. The biggest reason is that it captured such a full range of the city, the idea, the work on the inside [of Graterford prison]. And it definitely, substratally [i.e., below the surface, manifest meanings of latent presentation] speaking of the stuff that you wouldn’t see in the video, we’re talking about things that scare people. Violent offenders coming back out [into community]—it captured that without sayin’ it. These are human beings that are being incarcerated. So, I would say a 10, yeah, for those reasons (William Goldsby interview, October 2020).
Then and today, however muted its mission may have been, the Reconstruction documentary achieved its promotional purpose. It helps broaden the organization’s local footprint by prioritizing the restorative lives of former two-time violent offenders who will soon be returning to community. The Reconstruction documentary builds community capacity, and by doing so, strengthens an empathic infrastructure and inclusion of returning citizenship.
Inclusion: A New Home Within
In the Board of Directors meeting minutes of May 20, 1993, a brief note explains that, “Ms. Emma Ward agreed to donate her apartment building at 1808 Tioga to Reconstruction. It has six units, and all but one of them is currently occupied…We will arrange a meeting to transfer [title]. Mr. John Wilkens is advising us to get the building appraised and to have a city building inspector look at the property” (Meeting notes, organization archive). Having lived in the neighborhood nearly all her life, Emma Ward donated her building after hearing about Reconstruction’s mission and search for a property appropriate for the residential reentry phase of its returning citizens program. The building was on Tioga Street, named for a First Nation ethnic group. By “knocking the rust off of the chain of friendship” (Ganter Reference Ganter2007, p. 570), the Tioga people prioritized the enrichment of alliances between First Nation peoples. Ms. Ward’s choice was “very much in keeping with those historical legacies and Ancestral expressions” (Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012, p. 109) consistent with the street’s name. The building donation aftermath is a critical part of the documentary. As William stated recently,
1808 became an anchoring location since it was the home of our residential components. Local residents began to protest against Reconstruction as words about our mission to assist violent offenders circulated throughout Philadelphia and North Philly. The “Not in my Backyard!” sentiment came home strongly…Advisors began to support and protect Reconstruction’s mission [and] this developed more as we visited many of the churches in the area.
Consistent with enriching social ties between different groups, which the Tioga Nation was known for, the collective to which Lamar Rozier refers above included faith leaders, political activists, local politicians, and economic development leaders. William said,
[We worked with] a community economic development group and its [property] directly across the street from 1808 [and] slowly began to build a base of supporters among a group of reasonable neighbors. These events, meetings, and places spilled into [Philadelphia] City Hall, where Tioga’s city councilperson appointed a mediator. [The mediation process] validated Reconstruction’s mission (William Goldsby interview, October 2020).
These were among the reciprocal tensions of faith and mission. In the year that followed, organizational stresses of resources, collaboration, and critical mass continued. The process of organizational acquisition of the property occurred, and fundraising for furniture, securing code assessments, proper repair to bring the units to code, and establishing staffing for property management and security were among the many activities that followed.
“Reconstruction has helped me tremendously. It has stopped the nonsense.” These words, beginning the Reconstruction documentary, are said by Eduardo Bentacort. The first image in the film is an affiliate recounting the reciprocity between himself and his return to a “homeplace.” Homeplace is “the construction of a safe space [to] affirm one another and by doing so heal many…wounds” (hooks Reference hooks1990, p. 42; see also Bellah et al., Reference Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler and Tipton1985). Given the range of experiences and uncertainties of reentry, homeplace can be very different from the healing space described here that the Reconstruction building provided. Eduardo Bentacort’s statement reflects the recognition of a safe space for his return to community to heal the wounds of incarceration and family that remain. After a visit with his family, he stated that he
[…] didn’t really want to go home because (pause), it would be the same thing. And I went home to visit a couple weeks ago. [My] brother was gettin’ high the whole weekend I was there (long, somber pause). I knew right then and there that I didn’t want to go back there to live. (Looks up, speaks with enthusiasm) Reconstruction has helped me tremendously. It has stopped the nonsense.
By nurturing a strong sense of personal identification with the organization, its curriculum and mission, affiliates revise their tolerance of, and relation to, the behaviors of others. Because of his brother’s actions and Eduardo’s desire to live differently, Reconstruction’s transitional housing was more of a homeplace than his actual home.
In addition to the actions of others, the documentary shows that homeplace is also demonstrated through sound. Its soundtrack includes an eclectic mix of music that enriches homeplace as text and texture. Hip Hop provides the backdrop to multiple montages including African American children playing caringly in the streets, to open doors and the cargo of men exiting a county sheriff’s van. From abandoned buildings of Philadelphia’s urban core, to dogs barking through a chain link fence, Hip Hop is there. True to diversities of inclusion in the organization and its mission, other genres are also presented. African drums speak, as does old school Supremes (“Set me free, why don’t you…”), along with silences mixed with the music of a stand-up bass. Together, they demonstrate the organization’s intergenerational inclusions.
Images from around the neighborhood and city reflect symbolic and material exchanges of where returning-citizen transitions of person and place combine with artistic, space-claiming “tags” on building walls. Moving from tags to everyday exchange, two young Black men stand at the side of a building as they discard forty-ounce malt liquor bottles. They appear to then engage in a drug transaction. Their exchange is interspersed with building murals of chattel slavery of African American Ancestors in chains, followed with a mural of others on the Underground Railroad. As reflected in the sentiments of William and Patrick above, among the intended contributions of the documentary was showing how Reconstruction, Inc. affiliation can be freedom from a different bondage, and the possibilities of living beyond it.
In addition to the choices of a returning citizen’s brother Eduardo Bentacort describes above, musical diversities, and the everyday exchanges of a neighborhood’s drug marketplace, tensions of inclusion are also reflected in women standing on the streets near the Reconstruction building. As neighbors speak in a living room on screen, a radio news report provides a voiceover, stating that neighbors are becoming aware of a reentry residence for former violent offenders “having opened without their knowledge, consult, or approval” just around the corner from their homes. Blue Ramon, a returning citizen Reconstruction affiliate, is then on screen saying, “Everybody deserves a chance. Especially if the person is putting forth the effort to help theyself.” Blue’s view is followed by a mother on the street where her young children frequently play. She is visibly angry. “Well, I understand that people deserve a second chance. But not around children. [“EXACTLY!” says another woman’s voice out-of-frame] Especially mine!” Tensions of homeplace are shared across reentry differences of role and risk in the crosstalk between a returning citizen and a mother who are now neighbors. Fears are not held by one group alone. Blue continues, “When I first came out [of prison], I was real withdrawn. Because I was used to livin’ in jail. And being out here was an experience that I had to learn how to [do]. And I was real scared about that.” A reciprocity of vulnerability between returning citizens and neighborhood mothers is a capacity building equity reflected in the documentary. Inclusion is an unsteady yet present reciprocal tension the Reconstruction mission bridges.
Collaborative Tensions
The first on screen caption introduces “William Goldsby, Executive Director, Reconstruction, Inc.” William introduces the organization as images move between him in his office setting, and the first interior prison classroom image, showing William in a squared circle of tables speaking with the Graterford cohort. From his office chair, William says “Reconstruction is a 4-year program that works with second-time [violent] offenders; men who have been convicted at least twice for violent offenses. The 4-year program is real necessary to maintain continuity, in what they’re trying to do in meeting their goals.”
The message of these words is mission-driven: life beyond the prison is an investment. The sustained demands of a principled returning citizenship take time. Adhering to a program of change prior to release can help ground a redefined motive for return to community. Reinforced by the program’s length, William seems to anticipate a viewer saying, “Four YEARS?!” with surprise. As William recently noted, “The participants were, for the first time, examining their personal lives, their families, and the world they were preparing to return to. This required, by all of us who were coordinating Reconstruction’s program, to give ourselves as well as the participants the necessary time to grow into this process.” Through collaborative commitment to self- and societal examination, and to one’s own goals in fellowship with the Reconstruction mission, such transformations take time.
In addition to long-term affiliation among returning citizens, the interview with Brother Joe Dudek, Director and owner of the Hospitality House “halfway back” facility and longtime Reconstruction board member, exhibits a shared mission of faith, resilience, and redemption. Words from the late Father Paul Washington, then Rector of the Church of the Advocate, end the documentary. And an interview segment with Graterford Superintendent, the late Donald Vaughan, is presented. Together, these on-screen interviews demonstrate interpersonal, organizational, and systemic collaboration. Vaughan is the only person in the documentary wearing a suit and tie. He is the only corrections system employee in the footage. He speaks of his appreciation of Reconstruction and its curriculum and contribution to the first cohort and to many other men incarcerated at Graterford. The many aspects of this collaboration exemplify the shared respect between a prison superintendent and an organization of returning citizens. Vaughan states,
When William came to us, he explained to us that they wanted to have a program to help get the inmates to see themselves in a better light, and return to society. I was impressed with him. And my other staff who I had with me were kind of apprehensive because he was talking about things that we are supposed to be doing with the whole 4,000 population [of the prison]. And I said, ‘Well, we need help, no matter which way we look at it. And why not give him a chance? It’s not going to cost us anything.’ So we gave it some thought as we said, ‘Well, let’s do it.’ And I think, over the years, the inmate population has sort of ‘adopted’ [William] and his program. Because they see the sincerity of him trying to help them. You don’t see that much.
As Superintendent Vaughan speaks of institutional accountability through Reconstruction collaboration, cutaways of other collaborative tensions are shown. As the viewer hears Vaughan’s voice, two Graterford affiliates role play at the center of a circle, faces just inches apart. As their dialogue ends, they shake their heads yes. They stand, share a dap, a handshake, and a hug. One of the pair in the center of the circle then turns to face the circle of Graterford peers to begin the debrief of what they witnessed. All in the room applaud the men. From the equity of a circle, a centered dialogue of shared respect, and a reciprocity of fellowship in learning and praise add to the viewers’ investment in the value of collaborative tensions. The voiceover of a prison superintendent is heard during the peaceful collaboration between men sentenced to the prison he supervises. These are among the means by which the documentary demonstrates how Reconstruction affirms the legacies of the Tioga people, knocking the rust off of friendship between prison affiliates of very different positions and social standing.
Prison is often understood as an “end point” tension of criminal justice system collaborators; other earlier-stage processing tensions (e.g., neighborhood police patrolling inequities, sentencing differences, etc.) did not make it into the film. As Patrick recently noted,
Another thing I wanted to put in [the documentary] was a statement by the head of the F.O.P. [Fellowship of Police] here in Philadelphia. He made some really outrageous statements in reference to Mumia [Abu Jamal]. And I wanted to put that in [because] it captured their agenda and the whole trial so clearly. She [Scribe staff member] was afraid of offending people in power, thinking [the FOP quote] would reflect badly on Scribe, and they were gonna punish us for expressing such ‘radical’ views (Patrick interview, October 2020).
Mumia Abu Jamal was convicted of a police officer homicide in 1982, despite substantial evidence to the contrary, as “a number of serious irregularities in the trial contributed to the jury’s verdict” (Lego Reference Lego1995, p. 171). This Scribe insistence to not include the FOP leadership quote in the Reconstruction documentary could be understood as consistent with Schept’s (Reference Schept2014) suggestion that our ability to value challenges to justice system outcomes and other acts of state power has been compromised. Only representing allied criminal justice leadership (Superintendent Vaughan) left tensions of the Reconstruction Inc.–criminal justice system collaboration untold.
In addition to the demands of long-term affiliation by the returning citizens, and the organizational relationship with Graterford prison, another demonstration of beneficial collaborative tensions associated with a return to community is when a neighboring African American elder is interviewed in William’s living room. When asked what is to be done with those returning from prison, she says:
[How I feel] is according to the kind of record they have…Let me tell you the truth…I would never want anybody [like them] to come live where I am, around me, ‘cause I’da never feel safe around ‘em. If they get out, and got a police record, I feel there should be somebody to go in there [a halfway house] and be around these people. And have three shifts there, okay? Which is 24 hours. They’re on record for 24 hours, to stay there all the time with these people.
Having changed her stance from never to “only with constant monitoring,” the elder is asked about distance. When given the reference of “five, six blocks from you. Would it make a difference?” she states flatly, raising her voice, “I don’t want them near me. PERIOD!” This exchange suggests a potential for change, however slight, for her, and perhaps for other neighbors also. For her, “near” demands an absolute stance, as a half mile is not enough for her geography of personal safety in the tensions of neighboring returning citizenship.
To further neighborly collaborations bridged across generations, voices and visions of youth are presented. A group of young African American men sit on the front steps of 1808 Tioga, Reconstruction’s residential building, as one in his early twenties shares his understanding of the organization and its mission: “They gon’ learn in this thing called Reconstruction before they even come out…how to cope with the violence. And how to be a man, and come out here and help your family. Because…these [former felons] come in here to be humble.” Manhood. Family commitment. Strengthened humility. Consistent with a prison superintendent they never met, and two men of faith they also did not know, this young man spoke of personal characteristics and collaborative skills useful to the likelihood of returning citizen success.
Restoration
The third capacity building domain of the documentary-making process and on-screen content is restoration, because to be restored in mind, body, and spirit is the holistic focus of Reconstruction Inc. And restorative justice, repairing the harm between victim and offender in a community of healing (Bazemore and Maruna, Reference Bazemore and Maruna2009), is consistent with the organization’s political mission of “Changing ourselves to change the world, uniting the many to defeat the few.” This occurred throughout the documentary-making process, and is reflected on screen as well. As one example, a portion of a classroom discussion among the first Graterford cohort about peer pressure helps demonstrate the restorative utility of critical awareness. Peer pressure is defined and critiqued to show how it is understood, and how it relates to consumer culture, media, and marketing. Its relationship to potential law-breaking behaviors and the decision to not engage in them includes the reciprocal tensions of a “fast money” mentality and rational risk management consequences of a “third strike” felony conviction.
Affiliate 1: Now, all we gotta do is implement what we’ve learned in all this time [in Phase 1 of the Reconstruction program]. Now, it’s going to be our decision whether we’re going to go that fast money [illegal] way, or that nice, honest way. The slow way.
Affiliate 2: I have to learn to be humble that way. Otherwise I keep windin’ up in here [and] the thing I fear most about getting’ back into the [drug] game, is that I ain’t got no more chances. If I come back in here, I’m comin’ back in here for the rest of my life.
Through this exchange, the restorative utility of critical awareness is reflected in risk assessment and the patience in beneficial discipline. Individual decision-making and behavior are informed by multiple supports for change central to a community of healing.
As noted above in collaborative tensions, Brother Joe Dudek then discusses the prison industrial complex. He is filmed doing so three years before the phrase gained visibility and momentum from the 1997 speech of Angela Davis and four years prior to Davis furthering that visibility when she guest edited the Fall 1998 issue of Color Lines magazine. Speaking in 1994, Brother Dudek notes that the penal system “has become an industry now driven by economic factors” beyond any restorative intent. For him, consistent with its economic priority is an absence of the voices of crime victims:
The whole concept of victims and the feeling that victims are overlooked [and] cut out of the loop, and that [Reconstruction is] coddling criminals. This is very real stuff. A lot of people out there are wounded [and] hurting. And some of that may be so deep that you could do nothing to ever convince them that anyone who falls into this class or category is of any value at all, or has any hope, or should ever be given a break. [But the prison industrial complex] involves a vast number, thousands of people who are not horrible and who have not done horrible things. They have broken the law. They have basically abused themselves, through drug addiction and alcohol. They have made bad choices.
Here and throughout the documentary, reciprocal tensions of restorative decision making acknowledge the challenges of a victim-centered restoration. Brother Dudek then summarizes restorative sentiments, and how victims have voice in dialogue with Reconstruction’s mission. More than a decade before Gordon Bazemore and Shadd Maruna (Reference Bazemore and Maruna2009) noted that, “restorative justice processes in the United States have been woefully underutilized,” (p. 379) victims’ voices, returning citizen critical awareness, and diverse forms of faith are expressions of a restorative portion of the Reconstruction documentary. In it, faith is reflected in the restorative sense of trust, hope, and belief in the goodness, trustworthiness, or reliability (Some Reference Some1993) of returning citizenship as a process, and of individual Reconstruction affiliates within that process.
While Reconstruction is not a religious organization, it is spiritually-grounded and faith-affirming, with many affiliates of various faith traditions enriching the restorative sense of Some (Reference Some1993) and others. While no restorative mediation is formally demonstrated in the documentary, an ecumenical dialogue between faith differences is reflected on screen. Symbolically modeling this faith-affirming dialogue, in addition to the two faith leaders from different religious traditions speaking on screen, Muslims in the first Graterford cohort are wearing their kufis while participating in Reconstruction “sacred circles” of instruction (Walker and Kobayashi, Reference Walker and Kobayashi2014). These and other spiritually-grounded aspects of progress extend from the ecumenical alliance central to the neighborhood support that was shared as the organization’s residential housing unit opened.
Innovation: New Ways of Principled Transformation
Diverse innovations are the fourth capacity building domain of the Reconstruction documentary-making process and are linked to each of the previous three domains. A critical, pre-documentary innovation directly relevant to the documentary was the Reconstruction-Graterford prison collaboration to include the Internal Advisory Committee (IAC). Having emerged as consensus among William Goldsby and the Graterford leadership, the IAC was “a leadership collective of respected, current inmates to establish an internal legitimacy and to reach out to others by framing Reconstruction’s formative program in a proactive, inmate-centered light” (Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012, p. 63; see also Riggs Reference Riggs2020). It was unprecedented for prisoner leadership to collaborate equitably with Reconstruction and independent of Graterford prison staff, to establish and implement a vetting protocol to move from a pool of nearly 200 prospective participants to a selected cohort of twenty-four. The shared investment in fewer participants increased the likelihood for a concentrated environment of support to be more effectively sustained. This process of consensus building for nontraditional decision-making equity, and maintenance of a focused environment of support, sustained by the collaboration of currently incarcerated and returning citizens were interdependent, beneficial innovations.
In addition to the IAC, in 1994 as Patrick, Lamar Rozier, Hakeem Hudson and nine other volunteers began the documentary, Reconstruction’s curriculum centered the first Graterford cohort in their own health history. As one of the three pillars of the initial curriculum, they explored the wellness challenges and causes of death for immediate family members dating back to at least their grandparents on both sides of their family. Doing so was consistent with the request of two AFSC mentors for William to “start off with an initial exploration of the spirituality of persons who were to participate in this program-under-construction” (Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012, p. 50; see also Bazemore and Maruna, Reference Bazemore and Maruna2009). This demanded communication and assisted searching in various family and other institutional sources, and was often preceded by some forms of emotional, spiritual, or material reconciliations. They understood their own health in relation to the health of other family members in their own and other generations, allowing for a detailed consideration of the social determinants of their health (Albertson et al., Reference Albertson, Scannell, Ashtari and Barnert2020; Massoglia and Pridemore, Reference Massoglia and Pridemore2015). While these are not detailed on screen due to confidentiality, from socioeconomic challenges, to physical environments, to systemic constraints and other contextual stressors, many social determinants of returning citizenship are featured throughout.
Also, the critical awareness of Eduardo Bentacort, Blue Ramon, and Sam Smith, and the questions and facilitations of William in fellowship with largely women neighbors, demonstrated what these various subgroups can and cannot include with their new understanding of self in relation to the homeplace of returning citizenship. The reciprocities of homeplace were among the ways in which the person-place relationship was being processed through and with reciprocal tensions among the Graterford cohort, the advisors, organization volunteers, and many other community members. Taken together, though often uncomfortable, they were vital to the lived meanings of the organization’s political line, living the how of change of self and the world. The innovation of these reciprocal tensions demonstrates decision-making equity unprecedented prior to the documentary and relationships between a prison and a grassroots organization. What had begun as a challenge to those attending a MOVE tragedy memorial, became a Quaker collaboration that grew into a nonprofit in(ter)dependence and formal relationship with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. From the first words of Eduardo, each of these were created and sustained in the time of a growing credibility of “three strikes” to a life sentence legislation in Pennsylvania (Beres and Griffith, Reference Beres and Griffith1998). This period effect resistance toward instigating a countermovement makes these collaborations especially innovative.
Another largely implicit, yet central innovation, is how the documentary-making process and the documentary itself reflect Reconstruction’s nuanced engagement with rage. Rage is recognized to be a potentially toxic force increasing the possibility of negative outcomes.
However, it is also valued as a resource for transformation. More than a generation before analyses of “the promise of Black Lives Matter,” the Reconstruction documentary “examined rage that is a legitimate, righteous response to persistent, systematic social inequalities in order to grapple with the positive functions and outcomes offered by rage and the force connections between emotion and social structure” (Cohan Reference Cohan, Weissinger, Mack and Watson2017, p. 38; see also Price-Spratlen and Goldsby, Reference Price-Spratlen and Goldsby2012; Wenning Reference Wenning2009). A perceived injustice is recognized as often being at the root of much rage. The documentary repeatedly demonstrates the innovative value of beginning with two-time violent felons as the core Reconstruction membership. Through sustained affiliation beginning prior to their release, and continuing through their reentry into a form of therapeutic community of residential stability, principled transformations in their attitudes, decisions, and actions gradually occur (Miller Reference Miller2014; Riggs Reference Riggs2020). The documentary presents these transformations through role plays, peer facilitations, and narrative displays of strength as vulnerability, as they nurture their own growth and the growth of others. Today the documentary is frequently viewed by a generation born years after its completion, copyright, and initial fundraising displays. As one Introductory Sociology undergraduate viewer noted as their main takeaway in 2018:
Once offenders are released they too often fall into the category of impoverished persons [and] justice is best served when there is a balanced response to the needs of citizens, offenders, and victims. [In the documentary] Earned redemption was displayed as a necessary expression of Reconstruction affiliation. It is big because it allows offenders to earn trust and earn their way back into the community.
Inclusion, collaborative tensions, restoration, and innovation are all reflected in this student’s reaction. These four capacity building domains were developed as the documentary-making process took place, and they are continuing to be conveyed in the takeaways of students and other viewers, now a generation later. The Reconstruction documentary continues “stopping the nonsense” through its innovative reciprocity of tensions (Simmel Reference Simmel and Wolff1950) of critical awareness and change. In process and presentation, the documentary demonstrates capacity building through equity and insight, pedagogy, and possibility, to show the innovative environments of shared respect of a returning citizens organization.
DISCUSSION
The urgency and alarm in 1982 that led U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger to advocate for a new approach and the need to change our thinking about incarceration led many to act to make things worse. The decade that followed saw the Reagan administration weaponize incarceration, magnified further by the Clinton Crime Bill of 1994. Still, as mass incarceration intensified, local area countermovements were also underway. A grassroots organization founded of, by, and for returning citizens, their families, and interested others, was making a documentary that respected the sentiments of Supreme Court Justice Burger, and helped contribute to changes in our thinking about incarceration. Documenting the challenges and triumphs of an organization in its nonprofit infancy, with a small critical mass of volunteers on a donation budget close to zero, and during a period of local police corruption and criminal justice uncertainties, was daunting. For a well-produced documentary to have been created that thoughtfully examines how to stop the nonsense was even more unlikely.
This analysis has explored the Reconstruction documentary of returning citizen-led collaborations during mass incarceration’s early to mid-1990s expansion. It enriches our understanding of how a former-felon-led organization helped lay the foundation for the attention now being given to returning citizenship. Though less so among returning citizens, reciprocity-affirming, strengths-based research has a strong foundation. Kenneth I. Maton (Reference Maton2000) suggests that a multidisciplinary and multilevel framework for social transformation should encompass capacity building, group empowerment, organizational and institutional collaborations, and multiple means of challenging our culture. Capacity building furthers diverse transformations in a system of care for improved public health, institutional reforms for improved educational outcomes, or multinational collaborations of global equity (Chaskin Reference Chaskin2001; Zimmerman et al., Reference Zimmerman, Stewart, Morrel-Samuels, Franzen and Reischl2011). Despite various period effect challenges, an organization’s collaborative capacity building managed reciprocal tensions of mass incarceration, and strengthened its political line.
We have analyzed a recent historical expression of the Simmel tenet that “social equilibrium and cohesion could not exist without ‘the reciprocity of service and return to service’” (Gouldner Reference Gouldner1960, p. 162; see also Mijs Reference Mijs2016). That reciprocity of service and the reciprocal tensions associated with it, are reflected in returning citizen capacity building. During the 2000s, two videos on prison reentry garnered widespread attention: A Hard Straight (2004) with its national perspective, and Hard Road Home (2007) which features the Exodus Transitional Community (ETC) in East Harlem, New York. These documentaries were released eight and eleven years after Reconstruction’s documentary. Ahead of its time, it demonstrates mission and movement and foreshadowed the social justice participation, media representation, and interdisciplinary criminological research which followed. Reconstruction used the making of a documentary to build the capacity of individual affiliates, the organization, and its collaborators during its formative years. These reciprocal tensions of the documentary-making process and the documentary itself enriched vivid recollections of events and relationships to strengthen our understanding of the more and less principled transformations of individual, organizational, and institutional relationships of returning citizenship over time. Too little is known about how capacity building organizations have used the making of an organizational documentary, especially regarding returning citizenship and the contexts in which the organization operates.
The capacity building mission of Reconstruction began in William’s initial call to action at the third annual MOVE Memorial. His call to action led to a collaboration with a Quaker organization willing to share resources and respect with a returning citizen to establish a prison reentry initiative at their world headquarters in 1988. Beyond these more and less formal institutional practices, capacity building as faith is also reflected in the documentary in the: 1) commitment to a four year program, while emphasizing a mature humility throughout; 2) valuing tensions of inclusion and collaboration without rage; and, 3) realizing one’s self as an agent of change to make the most of one’s daily principled decisions and actions. These were a part of a collective good and foundations for the Reconstruction political line that came ten years after the documentary’s completion: “Changing ourselves to change the world, by uniting with the many to defeat the few.” They are among the ways that a capacity building of restoration was valued, that strengthened the foundation for the reentry movement today.
Through its documentary making and beyond, Reconstruction helps revise one’s sense of self and the behaviors associated with that new self-understanding by shapeshifting values, encouraging self-assessment, and placing value in a reciprocity between humility and one’s participation in civic engagement and social justice. The Reconstruction documentary shows how affiliation helps stop the nonsense of one’s previously self-defeating relationship to the active addiction of a loved one, and of an adversarial relationship between returning citizens and the final year of incarceration. It shows the necessities of unexpected collaborations. Then and now, it helps stop the nonsense of collateral consequences, the many penalties beyond the end of one’s prison sentence, and of the prison industrial complex. Analyzing how the genesis of an organization can be a time to document, evaluate, and create a period piece on mass incarceration and a testimony on returning citizenship shows the Reconstruction documentary to be as relevant today as it was a generation ago when it was completed.
The many collateral consequences which remain, and in many locations are expanding, are a part of the nonsense to be stopped. In the legislative and political arena, examples such as George W. Bush’s Second Chance Act, President Obama as a sitting president visiting a federal prison and the commutations that followed, and the bipartisan 2016 First Step Act, suggest that despite current stagnation, some amount of momentum toward devolving the carceral state remains (Miller Reference Miller2014). Returning to the local level, and moving from policy back to grassroots organizing, Reconstruction, Inc. has experienced many changes and challenges during its history, through hopeful and uncertain times, including now. The larger project of the documentary and of the organization remains one of nurturing the mission as best the collective will, slender resources, and small, skilled critical mass will allow. By doing so, the value and analyses of an empathic infrastructure in improving returning citizenship, and beneficial collaborations at the local level have been enriched. In the documentary and today, Reconstruction Inc. and other similar organizations continue nurturing returning citizens’ homeplace, as our society continues grappling with devolving mass incarceration toward achieving a broader justice.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank the Criminal Justice Research Center (CJRC), while under the leadership of now Professor Emeritus Ruth D. Peterson, for the CJRC Seed Grant that funded the original project from which this paper began. We also thank Muge Galin, the anonymous reviewers, and the copyeditor for their thoughtful feedback and suggested revisions. We especially thank the many affiliates and collaborators of Reconstruction, Inc. whose principled actions and insights informed this article.
