Home-Grown Social Capital: How Higher Education for Formerly Incarcerated Women Facilitates Family and Community Transformation

This study from the Aspen Institute explores how justice-involved women experience family relationships. The researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with women enrolled in College and Community Fellowship, a program that helps justice-involved women successfully complete their college education. These interviews showed the pivotal role that social capital, in the form of family support, plays in enabling these women to complete college. Furthermore, as justice-involved women complete education, they become important sources of social capital within their communities. The authors pose several recommendations to help cultivate social capital among women with convictions.