The Credible Messenger Mentoring Intervention’s Approach to the Problem of Stigmatized Identity

• In Event: Love, Healing and Empowerment: Lessons from a Credible Messenger Intervention

Abstract

The institutional directive to reconstruct social identity in a psychotherapeutic context within a correctional facility or within a probation or parole system is problematic, even if everything proceeds smoothly. This directive necessarily brackets the fact that, post-release, whether rehabilitated or not, the individual remains burdened by institutional stigma—specifically, as the ‘ex’ offender, the ‘ex’ inmate, or the ‘ex’ parolee. That stigma is reinforced through the social distancing of respectable society from individuals with a tarnished identity. Ironically, the same stigma is compounded by the acknowledgment that conventional rehabilitation logic and mandates can be more degrading and harder to escape than the type of carceral sentence where inmates are left alone. The problem, therefore, is two-fold: there is a reason not to trust any institutional claims about rehabilitation (especially given high rates of reoffending among supposedly rehabilitated populations), and there is a reason not to trust individuals whose identity has been successfully altered within a correctional facility or parole system. CMMI addresses this problem by engaging with the community's struggles, including regarding its young people's (re)assimilation. The following paper examines this aspect of CMMI.

Author

• Louis Kontos, John Jay College of Criminal Justice