Employing Your Mission: Building Cultural Competence in Reentry Service Agencies through the Hiring of Individuals Who Are Formerly Incarcerated and/or in Recovery
Employing Your Mission: Building Cultural Competence in Reentry Service Agencies through the Hiring of Individuals Who Are Formerly Incarcerated and/or in RecoveryFunded by the United States Department of Justice and developed in collaboration with The Fortune Society, this toolkit addresses several interrelated issues regarding the successful reentry into society of formerly incarcerated men and women. First, there is a reentry crisis of unparalleled proportion currently facing communities in the United States. Because incarceration both profoundly impacts those who experience it and disproportionately affects low-income people of color, the response to it needs to be culturally competent across a spectrum of issues. Second, there is an important employment component to individuals’ reentry experiences. While stable employment is critical to the successful reintegration into society of those returning home, the formerly incarcerated nonetheless confront significant barriers to employment, including discrimination based on their conviction records. Finally – and this is the core of this toolkit – one way to address both of these issues is to build “cultural competence” within reentry services by hiring formerly incarcerated men and women to reflect the experiences and realities of the reentry population and provide services more effectively.