Research & Career Development

Have you ever returned somewhere familiar and it suddenly didn't feel like home anymore? For many people coming home from incarceration, that's exactly what reentry feels like, and the W-Curve Theory helps explain why.

Hello and welcome. My name is Joel A., and I'm a fourth-year journalism student. In my research, I incorporate the W-Curve Theory of Cultural Adaptation as a framework to understand the emotional and psychological adjustment formerly incarcerated individuals experience when returning home. This theory is traditionally used to describe international students adjusting to a new culture and then readapting when returning home. I apply the theory to post-incarceration reentry to explain how deep personal transformations during incarceration change social environment and community expectations, resulting in us not returning to the same world we left. Using this theory helps highlight why reentry is not a simple transition, but instead a complex psychological process with predictable stages.

The W-Curve offers three phases, apprehension, reentry shock, and readaptation, that closely mirror our reentry journey. During apprehension, an individual is excited yet anxious to be released, as independence and a changing environment bring positive feelings but also uncertainties. As an individual moves into reentry shock, they may feel disoriented by rapid changes in society, stigma and alienation, and an overwhelming number of choices. When readaptation occurs with time and support, they rebuild trust, redefine relationships, and regain confidence. Rather than trying to fit back in, they learn to integrate the lessons and resilience they developed while incarcerated into a new identity.

This study used qualitative content analysis to examine academic journals and articles and personal interviews related to the reentry experiences of formerly incarcerated individuals. Each source was coded using a structured coding sheet, beginning with deductive codes aligned with the stages of the W-Curve, apprehension, reentry shock, readjustment, and supplemented with inductive codes that emerged during analysis. Data excerpts were categorized according to the stages, and themes were generated to illustrate how reentry experiences mirror the W-Curve process.

This framework is important for future research because it offers a structured method to study the emotional and cultural challenges we face as returning citizens beyond just housing, employment, or rural conditions. By exploring this phenomenon further, professionals can design better reentry programs, mental health interventions, and peer support systems that recognize the need for gradual readjustment rather than immediate reintegration. Understanding the W-Curve and reentry can eventually lead to more humane policies and stronger support networks that will reduce recidivism and promote our long-term success.

I chose this topic because the W-Curve theory reflects what many of us experience when we are released. As a currently incarcerated person, I relate deeply to the emotional ups and downs that come with the major transition. I'm preparing to go home next year, and understanding these phases isn't just academic for me, it's personal. I want to pursue a master's of social work and eventually work directly with formerly incarcerated individuals. This theory gives language to something our community feels but rarely has a chance to name. By studying it, I hope to contribute to more informed, empathetic, and effective reentry practices in the future.

Thank you.

Art as Art Therapy and Mentoring in Art is the title of my poster presentation. This project is a subjective interpretation of what I have come to understand regarding art in prison and how incarcerated artists not only define art, but how art defines the incarcerated artist. This presentation is sourced from years of observation of my life experience and from my own identification as a confined artist, incarcerated and mature in ways that can reflect in my art. I am an artist in prison. I do not create prison art simply because I am in prison.

My name is Roberto M., and I am an SDSU JMS student. My life experience of years of observation of carceral art in the state institutions totals 33 years, 8 years as a ward in the California Youth Authority and 25 years as a resident in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

My observations have motivated me to create this poster presentation and outline three phases, or groups, of informal assessments of incarcerated artists' social condition from the date their art was created.

I observed the same images reproduced time and time again. The same morphed images of prison watchtowers, and images of women with their hair connected to other objects, in collage prison art, since my time in juvenile institutions to all the prisons. The changes or additions to this jailhouse art are images that reflect, at times, adding modern technologies and luxury automobiles in place of the classic lowrider and background scenes, as newer versions of the same art.

By getting to know the artists that created this type and other prison arts and crafts of the same style or genre, I noted a consistent correlation. In my opinion, the art or craft told a lot about the artist that created it. This correlation became so common, I naturally attributed criminal mindset to the type of art as a measuring gauge to determine my association with those incarcerated artists. My willingness to teach and share my art with other incarcerated artists was based on the student artists' will to be taught. I found that the demeanor of artists who drew jailhouse art were stunted artistically, socially, and mentally, influenced by others, hyper-focused on the external factors of their conditions, and resistant to change. Some aggressively defended their techniques.

Carceral art, and what I can suggest about the artists in regards to the resident's social and personal development while incarcerated, can be assessed and categorized by phases or maturation groups that reflect social, personal perspectives of those resident artists. These range from phase one, two, and three.

Phase one consists of images depicting gang culture, prison scenes, violence, drug use. Images that glamorize life in prison, using limited medium, usually pen and paper, in a typical style called jailhouse.

Phase two is a transition, or growth phase, in which the artist matures. The growth can be seen in the development of art style and use of professional art medium. During this period, the art may teeter between art styles, mixing jailhouse style with pro-social images.

Phase three, art reflects a free, pro-social mentality, or simply art. This entails free, expressive art styles, more diverse mediums, and subject images that reflect beyond the confines of the prison parameter. Usually images that express fond memories of family members and spouse photographs.

Social and personal growth is defined as a maturing and development of pro-social views and correlating behavior away from criminal ideologies of incarceration, growth away from the artist's criminal social groups and their negative perspective on society, which includes continued criminal behavior and drug use. In identifying three categories or groups that can be classified by the style, type, medium, and subject the artists use.

Excuse me. In so much as considering the place of confinement, i.e. temporary detention housing and security housing units, that impose restrictions to access to materials that can be used for mediums. This fosters thinking outside the box, literally, to be creative.

Today, I understand, with mentoring and exposure to the vast range of art mediums, all artists can develop new, original styles and express their own thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and desires, instead of perpetuating an artistic stereotype or plagiarizing someone else's art, regardless of the artist's circumstance. In this process, artists mature and grow socially and mentally. This understanding helped me to gain patience with tutoring and mentoring residents, persuading me to promote art as therapy to anyone who is interested in learning a professional art medium or style of art that I can obtain, learn, and share.

I believe through art, the mind and spirit can be freed even while the body remains confined.