Janet Garcia-Hallett

Provides a concise, accessible, and applied how-to guide for people interested in conducting community-engaged research. Defines specific community-engaged research approaches, and then presents a variety of strategies, resources, and tips throughout the book in the context of social justice and ethics.

Outlines an effort to enhance research literacy and build capacity for community-engaged research among incarcerated persons and staff in a Midwest prison.

Shares in-depth case studies of mother–child experiences to comparatively explore how each group views their role and takes part in it during and after maternal incarceration.

Examines how surveillance cameras function within a medium-security prison, focusing on their role in investigations from both staff and incarcerated residents’ perspectives. Finds that while cameras are seen as useful for promoting accountability, their benefits are undermined by issues such as selective enforcement against residents and the perceived misuse of footage for disciplining staff.

Asserts that social practitioners, especially social workers, should advocate for anticarceral efforts and engage in community-based practices that reduce harm, remove stigma, and replace perceived criminality with dignity.

Bases her interviews with African American, Latina, and West Indian mothers throughout New York City about their experiences navigating motherhood after incarceration.

Finds that mentors’ enactment of family roles, through language and behaviors of fictive kinship, helped formerly incarcerated women build a support network. Characterizes the women’s fictive kinships was not void of some mentor-mentee separation for their mutual self-interests.

Demonstrates how motherhood and maternal identities held more significance in some social circumstances, contributing to women’s involvement in the criminal legal system and presenting a variety of challenges in some women’s pathways out of crime.