On the Outside: Prisoner Reentry and Reintegration - Softcover

Harding, David J.; Morenoff, Jeffrey D.; Wyse, Jessica J. B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022660764X ISBN 13: 9780226607641

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

One of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Best Criminal Justice Books of 2019

America’s high incarceration rates are a well-known facet of contemporary political conversations. Mentioned far less often is what happens to the nearly 700,000 former prisoners who rejoin society each year. On the Outside examines the lives of twenty-two people—varied in race and gender but united by their time in the criminal justice system—as they pass out of the prison gates and back into the world. The book takes a clear-eyed look at the challenges faced by formerly incarcerated citizens as they try to find work, housing, and stable communities. Standing alongside these individual portraits is a quantitative study conducted by the authors that followed every state prisoner in Michigan who was released on parole in 2003 (roughly 11,000 individuals) for the next seven years, providing a comprehensive view of their postprison neighborhoods, families, employment, and contact with the parole system. On the Outside delivers a powerful combination of hard data and personal narrative that shows why our country continues to struggle with the social and economic reintegration of the formerly incarcerated.

For further information, including an instructor guide and slide deck, please visit: http://ontheoutsidebook.us/home/instructors

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David J. Harding is professor of sociology and director of D-Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as the author of Living the Drama, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Jeffrey D. Morenoff is professor of sociology and director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. Jessica J. B. Wyse is advanced fellow in health services research and development at the Portland Veterans Affairs Healthcare System and research assistant professor at the Oregon Health & Science University–Portland State University School of Public Health.

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On the Outside

Prisoner Reentry and Reintegration

By David J. Harding, Jeffrey D. Morenoff, Jessica J. B. Wyse

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2019 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-60764-1

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
CHAPTER 1. Trajectories, 
CHAPTER 2. Transitions, 
CHAPTER 3. A Place to Call Home?, 
CHAPTER 4. Families and Reintegration, 
CHAPTER 5. Navigating Neighborhoods, 
CHAPTER 6. Finding and Maintaining Employment, 
Conclusion, 
Appendix: Data and Methodology, 
Notes, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Trajectories

I'm trying to strive every day to be a better mother than I've been. ... It's like learning how to be a new person all over. I'm learning myself more and more every day, my likes and dislikes ... how to identify with my feelings, my thoughts. ... I didn't know how to do that because I stayed so intoxicated. ... I didn't give myself a chance to feel or to even think without being intoxicated. It was from the time I woke up until days and days and days until I would absolutely pass out. ... It was, I think, the only times in the last four and a half years I have clean time is if I was locked up in rehab or asleep. And that's the truth, and that's just something I have to remind myself. ... I cannot forget where I came from. I cannot forget ... them old patterns, ... and it's difficult, but it'll work out because that's what I want to do. I want to stay clean, and in the past I would get clean for ninety days or whatever, and I'd go right back out and use because I wasn't ready to stop it. ... And I can see clearly now. I can see that all the damage I've done to myself, my children, my loved ones, and I just don't want to do it anymore. I was killing myself slowly. I have a heart problem. I have liver damage now, kidney damage now. And I'm ready to move on and live now because before that wasn't living. I was killing myself. So I'm just really, really ready for change in my life, and it's well past due.

Jennifer

Jennifer is a thirty-eight-year-old white woman with a soft, round face, honey-blond hair, and a warm, open demeanor. Around her neck she wears a gold chain proclaiming "100% drug free," while her nervous smoking hints at the struggle she faces maintaining that sobriety. The youngest of six, Jennifer was born into a working-class family in Ypsilanti. Her mother worked at an auto plant, and her father was a truck driver. There were many good times in her childhood: "My parents were good to us. ... We lived like middle class. Always had food. Always had a roof over our head, clothes on our back. Other than the drinking, I'd say it was good. ... My brothers were in football, went to a lot of football games. Really, I had a real family-oriented life when I was younger, much younger. And then alcohol started ... progressing in my parents' life, and fights started." What was once weekend drinking increasingly spilled into the week, the fighting and violence escalated, and Jennifer began missing school. Her grandparents intervened and brought her into their home when she was in the fourth grade, initiating a calm period of regular school, church, and family life.

Yet, outside her grandparents' home, Jennifer continued to hang out with her siblings and other older kids from the neighborhood. She began experimenting with marijuana, alcohol, and powder cocaine, and eventually her sister introduced her to crack. Not long after moving back to her parents' house, Jennifer's yearlong, casual sexual relationship with an older boy resulted in pregnancy. She bore her first child, Jason, at thirteen. Jennifer never returned to school. She explains how early parenthood and other stressful life events were linked with her deepening addiction: "It had a lot to do with having kids and stuff at a young age, and then I lost Dawn's dad, and ... I kept spiraling down. Then I lost my grandmother and my baby's dad, then my mom, and then it just, from there. ... It was one thing after another, and it just kept going deeper and deeper and deeper into it ... for like to comfort me. And then, before I knew it, I was so addicted that it was the only thing I knew and the only thing I wanted."

By sixteen, Jennifer had borne another child, and the three were living in "a dope house." While her daughter was raised by her father, her oldest son, Jason, remained with her and became deeply involved in her criminal offending. At eleven years old, he was helping her deal drugs and guns. Just a few years later he shot and killed a man in a confrontation that escalated. She explains how her behavior was implicated in this tragedy: "He was taught — literally taught — and my sick thinking taught him that, that you sell drugs, you carry guns, you wear bulletproof vests. This is what life's about because I was so messed up. ... The kid was eleven years old, walked in and caught me with a needle out of my arm, and I'm slumped over the toilet. He thought I was dead. ... What type of mother does that?"

Yet, even after her son was arrested for manslaughter and his prison sentence began, the drug use continued through her third pregnancy, and her son Lucas was born addicted to crack. Jennifer lived with him just two years before sending him to live with other relatives. She moved in with her fiancé, Stan, thirty years her senior, and spent years largely confined to their home, using drugs and watching television: "I stayed in Stan's house just smoking my brains out, with blankets and stuff over the blinds so it'd be dark in there. And the dope man would bring the dope right to thedoor. Stan would go get my cigarettes and alcohol, I'd smoke five packs of cigarettes a day ... just in a corner in the living room on the couch doing my drugs and drinking my alcohol with the TV on mute, burning up, just running the TV ... the lamp on constantly day or night right next to me, just sitting there."

When Jennifer did leave, it was often either to buy or use drugs. Although she had "probably broken every rule there is" when it came to her addiction, her incarceration history consisted only of two short bits in jail for driving under the influence (DUI). It was her third DUI that landed her in prison this time. When she was stopped by the police driving the wrong way down a one-way street, she knew she was going to prison.

Jennifer was scared initially entering prison and remained withdrawn and on edge throughout her sentence: "You have to mind your p's and q's ... weave your way through." Nonetheless, she came to see prison as a blessing: "[Otherwise] I would've never got sober." She explains: "It helped me to find out who I am and gave me a foundation of clean time." Prior to prison she had not spent more than a few months sober in twenty-three years. In prison, with little to occupy her time during the eight months she served aside from "walking the track," she was able to reflect on what she had done with her life and where she wanted to go in the future. She recognized that her addiction had caused great suffering for her children, from Jason's imprisonment to Dawn's adoption and Lucas's learning disabilities. She made a decision to turn her life around, to become a good mother for her children.

In her first interview following release, Jennifer explained how her commitment to motherhood shaped her choices: "My kids make me very strong. ... Having to take care of them and doing the mommy thing and just being with them reminds me every day that somebody needs me. ......

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022660764X
• ISBN 13: 9780226607641
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 308
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar