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This chapter expresses a cautious optimism that the focus on parole and prisoner reentry is here to stay and that reentry will serve as the major conceptual framework for organizing criminal justice policy for many years to come. There are also substantial challenges ahead. Most significant in this regard are the rising crime rate and the slowing of the U.S. economy. Either or both of these factors could derail reentry progress. The discussion suggests continued advances in parole and prisoner reentry not only because it will be good for prisoners returning home, but because it will ultimately be good for their children, their neighbors, and the community at large. Given the increasing magnitude of the expected prison exodus over the next decade, focusing on prisoner reintegration may be the best hope for keeping crime rates down as nearly 700,000 inmates a year leave prison to return home.

This book assembles and analyzes the relevant information pertaining to prisoner reentry: the systems, people, programs, and prospects for implementing a more effective and just system. This chapter summarizes the data and develops major themes and policy recommendations. No one believes that the current prison and parole system is working. Recent public opinion polls show an increasing dissatisfaction with the purely punitive approach to criminal justice. Data suggest that having to earn and demonstrate readiness for release and being supervised postprison may have some deterrent or rehabilitation benefits—particularly for the most dangerous offenders. Effective programs include therapeutic communities for drug addicts and substance abuse programs with aftercare for alcoholics and drug addicts; cognitive behavioral programs for sex offenders; and adult basic education, vocational education, and prison industries for the general prison population.

This chapter focuses on the current and potential roles that victims might play in managing prisoner reentry. It discusses the legal rights of victims to be notified of a parolee's release and to testify at parole hearings. It also discusses the crucial role they might play in enhancing community safety and offender rehabilitation.

This chapter focuses on prisoner reentry and/or community supervision on parole. Besides discussing the applicability of Risk-Need-Responsivity principles to the parole context, it also draws attention to the benefits of so-called ecological models of crime reduction.

In this chapter, former prisoners’ narratives are used to explore what it means to serve time in the “total institution” of prison, the prison experience and its connection to prisoner reentry, and what it means to be a convicted felon in society. Society expects prisoners reentering society to succeed by getting a job and not returning to a life of crime, but many fail, yet scholars rarely incorporate felons’ voices into the analysis to understand why. This chapter argues that there are many contradictions embedded in the reentry process, that there is little public support and social capital, and that participants find out that reentering society is harder than they anticipated. Relying on first-person accounts, the chapter exposes why it is so hard to reenter by exploring participants’ experience of living under the oppressive penal chain attached to a felony conviction. Readers are introduced to a unique perspective on serving time in prison and reentering society as a felon.

This chapter introduces readers to the world of prisoner reentry and a felony conviction, and describes the research context. Drawing on first-person narratives, the chapter describes the lived experiences of convicted felons reacclimating to society in order to communicate the concept of social disability. A felony conviction and prisoner reentry straddle multiple disciplinary perspectives; therefore, an interdisciplinary framework is established to link history, politics, race, and public policies to convey the layered reality of a felony and its distinct socially disabling consequences. Weaving together racialized policies, such as the War on Drugs, with details about the sheer number of felons living in numerous communities across the country, this chapter lays the foundation for the book by describing who is locked up and who reenters society. Additionally, main concepts are introduced to emphasize the underlying argument that a felony conviction is a socially disabling construct that is based on punitive tough-on-crime policies.

This chapter argues that the effects of incarceration and prisoners' reentry into the greater community intersects with social work through its concentration on criminal justice. Incarceration and reentry issues are also significant for social work at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. A number of restorative justice processes used within the criminal justice and penal system are reviewed here. A case study is presented which focuses on a unique event: incarcerated men watching a live theatrical performance of a series of vignettes dramatizing victims' experiences with crime and its aftermath. The case study demonstrates the transformative nature of art, shows the necessity for preparation and debriefing for restorative processes, and provides a model for bringing together unlikely partners, such as a prison advocacy organization, victim services, and the state Department of Corrections, around the issues of accountability, repair, and dialogue.

Research findings indicate that persisters and desisters from crime differ in how they view themselves (i.e., social identity) and in their optimism in the ability to “go straight.” This chapter examines formerly incarcerated persons’ level of agreement with the statement “I am a typical former prisoner.” The sample consists of 228 formerly incarcerated persons involved as clients at agencies providing reintegration-related services. The relationship between thinking of oneself as a typical former prisoner and a variety of variables previously found to be related to desistance from crime and/or successful reintegration (e.g., age, sex, criminal history, criminal attitude, social bonds, perceptions of stigma, psychological well-being, and forecasts of re-arrest) are examined using correlation analysis and regression analysis. Implications of the findings for desistance from crime and prisoner reentry research, policy, and practice are discussed.

This chapter summarizes current knowledge about desistance, the study of which has moved from event to process analyses based on a combination of social and cognitive factors. It argues that future research needs to integrate better several criminal career parameters, including desistance in frequency, seriousness, and versatility, and involve multiple outcomes such as improvements in mental and physical health and substance use. It also favors a better integration of desistance research with prisoner reentry programs and resiliency research.

Every year, approximately 750,000 adults are released from prison; prisoner reentry involves returning to the community and reintegrating successfully, but many former prisoners return to impoverished and disorganized urban neighborhoods, and face a number of challenges. The difficulties are compounded by advances in technology, integrated database management systems, and politicians passing laws outside of the criminal justice system that deny felons access to housing, jobs, education, and social welfare programs; thus, an increased number of adults are captured in an ever growing set of net-widening laws. Drawing from participant-observations and in-depth interviews, this chapter explores what it means to be a convicted felon and how the word felon becomes a permanent fixture of a person’s identity. Participants’ narratives demonstrate that the denial of rights through the use of automated criminal background checks, established by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 (Brady Act), and administrative roboprocesses reinforce racial and economic stratification. The net-widening effects are tough on criminals, but such laws simultaneously make it difficult for anyone convicted of a felony to lead a crime free life after completing their entire criminal sentence. Consequently, a convicted felon is unable to become a non-felon and reintegrate successfully.

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to analyze why criminal recidivism rates remain persistently high and to reorient the search for solutions to recidivism by focusing on the importance of place of residence. This chapter situates the study by describing the facts about mass incarceration and prisoner reentry in the United States, including the fact that half of exiting prisoners are reincarcerated within three years of prison release. Many social critics have claimed that “nothing works” to rehabilitate prisoners. However, this book argues that residential change is an overlooked solution to chronic recidivism. This chapter introduces Hurricane Katrina as a natural experiment for examining the question of whether residential relocation away from an old neighborhood can lead to desistance from crime. Katrina provided an alternate reality for examining the relationship between where people live and their behavior.

The chapter describes the devastation to New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf Coast inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. In Orleans Parish, 71.5 percent of housing units suffered some damage following Hurricane Katrina, with 42 percent severely damaged. The extent of housing destruction was similar in adjacent parishes of the wider New Orleans metropolitan area. Consequently, many prisoners released soon after Katrina could not go back to their old neighborhoods, as they normally would have done. Typically, 75 percent of individuals released from prison return to their former parish of residence. In the first six months after Katrina, just 50 percent returned to their home parish. Thus, this chapter shows that Hurricane Katrina fundamentally altered prevailing geographic patterns of prisoner reentry in Louisiana, affecting residential change and residential mobility for this population.

This chapter looks at how carceral affiliations come to connect the prison and high-incarceration neighborhoods. For incarcerated residents, affiliations serve as important ties to home and as sources of support in unpredictable settings. When these community members return home with little formal or material reentry support, many hold on to these identities—both because they may supply the only help that parolees do find and because these residents can never be certain that they will not be locked up again. At the same time, local youth learn about these affiliations from previously or currently imprisoned friends, relatives, and neighbors, informing how they imagine they will need to survive their own potential experiences with incarceration. This not only proliferates carceral affiliations in local spaces but also contributes to an understanding of poor black and Latina/o neighborhoods as pathological that many young residents internalize.