The Power of Personal Narratives in Crime Prevention and Reentry: Process Evaluation of the Seattle Police Department’s IF Project

ABSTRACT

With thousands of ex-offenders entering communities every week, reentry is at the forefront of agendas for legislators and correctional administrators. The IF Project, founded in 2008 in Washington State, seeks to foster crime prevention and successful reentry through the use of offender narratives. This paper reports results from an evaluation of the IF Project comprised of process and outcome elements including: 1) Development of an IF Project “tool-kit” describing program structure, components and content; and 2) Pilot of a pre/post survey instrument to understand how the program is perceived by participants. Results from analyses of surveys and observation of the IF Project workshops including 68 adult participants is presented. Future steps in evaluating the IF Project are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Offender reentry
• offender programming
• adult reentry
• IF Project
• narrative criminology

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Seattle Police Detective Kim Bogucki for her inspiration, work, and support, Sarah Garber (formerly Sarah Robinson) who worked as a research assistant on the project, IF Project staff and participants who participated in the study, and the agencies and staff at the Washington Corrections Center for Women and the Washington State Reformatory where the research was conducted. Special thanks to Jennifer Sumner, California State University, Dominguez Hills for her assistance with aspects of the research design, data collection, and analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Seattle University College of Arts and Sciences.