Exploring Radical Hope and Reentry for Young Black Men Returning from Incarceration

Emerging adult Black men (EABM; ages 18–25) are disproportionately impacted by incarceration and face persistent structural barriers during reentry, contributing to significant mental health inequities and impacting their overall well-being. Evidence has shown that Black men are incarcerated at younger ages and for longer sentences, increasing their risk for continued contact with the criminal legal system and disrupting their early adulthood development. Existing research has largely emphasized risk and recidivism, with limited attention to strengths-based frameworks that center resilience, liberation, and transformation. Radical hope, rooted in traditions of resistance among marginalized communities, offers a critical lens for understanding how EABM navigate reentry. This study examines how radical hope is defined, cultivated, and enacted among EABM and explores its role in shaping desistance and mental wellness during reentry.

Methods:
This qualitative study draws on 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Black men who were released from incarceration within emerging adulthood. Participants were recruited using purposeful convenience sampling through personal networks, community-based organizations, and professional networks. Interviews, lasting approximately 60–90 minutes, explored participants’ reentry experiences, conceptualizations of hope, identity development, and navigation of structural barriers. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological and narrative-informed analytic approach, integrating inductive (InVivo) and deductive coding strategies informed by radical hope and desistance frameworks. Analytic rigor was supported through memoing, audit trails, and iterative thematic development.

Results:
Findings identify three interrelated dimensions of radical hope. Relational hope emphasizes the role of communal and relational hope through supportive relationships and community accountability in sustaining motivation and belonging by envisioning possibilities. Agentic hope reflects participants’ engagement in future-oriented identity reconstruction and intentional decision-making aligned with desistance through meaning-making. Resistant hope captures how participants navigate and challenge structural barriers, including employment discrimination, housing instability, and surveillance by systems. Participants described radical hope as an active, evolving, and collective process rather than an individual or static mindset.

Conclusions and Implications:
Radical hope functions as a critical mechanism through which EABM make meaning of reentry, support identity transformation, and sustain desistance in the context of structural constraints. Findings extend desistance literature by centering culturally grounded, strengths-based narratives of Black men’s resilience. Implications highlight the need for hope-centered, relational, and structurally responsive interventions within reentry programming, as well as policies that address systemic inequities while supporting mental wellness and long-term reintegration. Future research should further examine radical hope as both an analytic framework and an intervention target across diverse reentry contexts.