Falling Back: Incarceration and Transitions to Adulthood Among Urban Youth (Critical Issues in Crime and Society)

Falling Back is based on over three years of ethnographic research with black and Latino males on the cusp of adulthood and incarcerated at a rural reform school designed to address “criminal thinking errors” among juvenile drug offenders. Fader observed these young men as they transitioned back to their urban Philadelphia neighborhoods, resuming their daily lives and struggling to adopt adult masculine roles. This in-depth ethnographic approach allowed her to portray the complexities of human decision-making as these men strove to “fall back,” or avoid reoffending, and become productive adults. Her work makes a unique contribution to sociological understandings of the transitions to adulthood, urban social inequality, prisoner reentry, and desistance from offending.

Falling Back documents the transition to adulthood for young inner-city men of color who have, by the age of eighteen, already been imprisoned. It is based on over three years of ethnographic research with black and Latino males on the cusp of adulthood and incarcerated at a rural reform school. The book portrays the complexities of human decision-making as these men strove to “fall back,” or avoid reoffending and become productive adults.

JAMIE J. FADER is an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University at Albany, SUNY.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. No Love for the Brothers: Youth Incarceration and Reentry in Philadelphia

2. "Because That Is the Way You Are": Predictions of Failure and Cultural Assaults Inside Mountain Ridge Academy

3. "You Can Take Me Outta the 'Hood, But You Can't Take the 'Hood Outta Me": The Experience of "Reform" at Mountain Ridge Academy

4. "Nothing's Changed but Me": Reintegration Plans Meet the Inner City

5. "I'm Not a Mama's Boy, I'm My Own Boy": Employment, Hustling, and Adulthood

6. "I Just Wanna See a Part of Me That's Never Been Bad": Family, Fatherhood, and Further Offending

7. "I'm Finally Becoming the Person I Always Wanted to Be": Masculine Identity, Social Support, and Falling Back

8. "I Got Some Unfinished Business": Fictions of Success at Mountain Ridge Academy's Graduation Ceremony

Conclusion

Notes

Index