Abstract
Despite decades of critical reframings, policy and practice on prisoner (re)entry often remains situated within a framework of individual responsibility that fails to acknowledge the structural drivers of criminalization. Attending to individual symptoms rather than root social, political and economic causes, such approaches may ultimately reinforce the inequalities and injustices that fuel imprisonment. This article presents a case study of an alternative approach. It examines A New Way of Life Reentry Project, a nonprofit organization in South Los Angeles, California, that offers housing and support to women coming home from prison through a critical and holistic framework—one that attends simultaneously to the physical, mental and social contexts that shape lived experiences before, during and after prison. Drawing from 7 years of observation and participation, supplemented by ten in-depth interviews, I argue that a critical, holistic approach can have a significant positive impact for people returning home from prison.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A political organization with a mission to end the use of prisons, police and surveillance as a response to social, economic and political problems.
Ban the Box is a policy reform initiative that seeks to remove the question about conviction history from initial applications for public employment, with the goal to reduce criminal record-based discrimination for job seekers.
References
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: [Jackson, Tenn.]: New Press.
Aresti, A., & Darke, S. (2016). Practicing convict criminology: Lessons learned from british academic activism. Critical Criminology,. doi:10.1007/s10612-016-9327-6.
Beckett, K., & Murakawa, N. (2012). Mapping the shadow carceral state: Toward an institutionally capacious approach to punishment. Theoretical Criminology, 16(2), 221–244.
Belknap, J. (2016). Response essay to the special edition of critical criminology. Critical Criminology,. doi:10.1007/s10612-016-9335-6.
Bobo, L., Oliver, M. L., Johnson, J. H., Jr., & Valenzuela, A. (Eds.). (2002). Prismatic metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles. New York: Russell Sage Foundatio.
Bushway, S. D. (2006). The problem of prisoner (re)entry. Contemporary Sociology, 35(6), 562–565.
Carlen, P. (Ed.) (2002). Women and punishment. Cullompton, Devon, UK; Portland: Willan.
Carlton, B., & Segrave, M. (2016). Rethinking women’s post-release reintegration and “success”. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 49(2), 281–299.
Casey, K. (1991). Each day a new beginning: Daily meditations for women. Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing.
Davis, M. (1990). City of quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles. London: Verso.
Davis, A. Y. (2003). Are prisons obsolete?. New York: Seven Stories Press.
Eaton, M. (1992). Women after prison. Buckingham; Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Grigsby, R. S. (2012). Convict criminology and social justice advocacy: Toward radical change. Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 21(1 & 2), 80–89.
Haney, L. A. (2010). Offending women: Power, punishment, and the regulation of desire. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hannah-Moffat, K. (2009). Gridlock or mutability: Reconsidering “gender” and risk assessment. Criminology & Public Policy, 8(1), 209–219.
Harris, P. M., & Keller, K. S. (2005). Ex-offenders need not apply: The criminal background check in hiring decisions. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 21(1), 6–30.
Hartman, S. V. (1997). Scenes of subjection: Terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century America. USA: Oxford University Press.
Jones, R. S., Ross, J. I., Richards, S. C., & Murphy, D. S. (2009). The first dime a decade of convict criminology. The Prison Journal, 89(2), 151–171.
Kellett, N. C., & Willging, C. E. (2011). Pedagogy of individual choice and female inmate reentry in the U.S. Southwest. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 34(4), 256–263.
Larsen, M., & Justin, P. (2012). A challenge from and a challenge to critical criminology, 21(1 & 2):199–202.
Lassiter, L. (2005). The Chicago guide to collaborative ethnography. Chicago, IL.; London: University Of Chicago Press.
Maidment, M. R. (2006). Doing time on the outside: Deconstructing the benevolent community. Toronto; Boston: University of Toronto Press.
Martin, L. (2013). Reentry within the carceral: Foucault, race and prisoner reentry. Critical Criminology, 21(4), 493–508.
Mauer, M., & Chesney-Lind, M. (Eds.) (2002). Invisible punishment: The collateral consequences of mass imprisonment. New York: New Press. Distributed by W.W. Norton.
Nixon, V., Clough, P. T., Staples, D., Peterkin, Y. J., Zimmerman, P., Voight, C., et al. (2008). Life capacity beyond reentry: A critical examination of racism and prisoner reentry reform in the U.S. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, 2(1), 21–43.
Opsal, T. D. (2011). Women disrupting a marginalized identity: Subverting the parolee identity through narrative. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 40(2), 135–167.
Oyama, R. (2009). Do not (re)enter: The rise of criminal background tenant screening as a violation of the fair housing act. Michigan Journal of Race & Law, 15, 181.
Pager, D. (2007). Marked: Race, crime, and finding work in an era of mass incarceration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Parenti, C. (2008). Lockdown America: Police and prisons in the age of crisis. New Edition. New York, NY: Verso.
Petersilia, J. (2004). What works in prisoner reentry—Reviewing and questioning the evidence. Federal Probation, 68, 4.
Reisig, M. D., Bales, W. D., Hay, C., & Wang, X. (2007). Effect of racial inequality on black male recidivism. The Justice Quarterly, 24, 408.
Richards, S. C., Ian, R. J., Newbold, G., et al. (2012). Convict criminology, prisoner reentry and public policy recommendations. Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 21(1 & 2), 16–29.
Richie, B. (1996). Compelled to crime: The gender entrapment of battered. Black Women: Routledge.
Richie, B. E. (2012). Arrested justice: Black women, violence, and America’s prison nation. New York: NYU Press.
Rodgers, B. L., & Cowles, K. V. (1993). The qualitative research audit trail: A complex collection of documentation. Research in Nursing & Health, 16, 219–226.
Ross, J. I., Jones, R. S., Lenza, M., & Richards, S. C. (2016). Convict criminology and the struggle for inclusion. Critical Criminology,. doi:10.1007/s10612-016-9332-9.
Ross, J. I., & Richards, S. C. (2002). Convict criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Segrave, M., & Carlton, B. (2010). Women, trauma, criminalisation and imprisonment. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 22(2), 287–305.
Shaylor, C. (2009). Neither kind nor gentle. In J. McCulloch & P. Scraton (Eds.), The violence of incarceration (pp. 145–163). New York: Routledge.
Shaylor, C., & Meiners, E. (2013). Resisting gendered carceral landscapes. In M. Segrave & C. Bree (Eds.), Women exiting prison: Critical essays on gender, post-release support and survival. London; New York: Routledge.
Shigematsu, S., Director. (2015). Visions of abolition: From critical resistance to a new way of life. Kanopy Streaming.
Shigematsu, S., D’Arcangelis, G., & Burch, M. (2010). Prison abolition in practice: The LEAD project, the politics of healing, and a new way of life. In Interrupted life: Experiences of incarcerated women in the United States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Sudbury, J. (2005). Global lockdown: Race, gender, and the prison-industrial complex 2005. New York, N.Y: Routledge.
Travis, J. (2005). But they all come back: Facing the challenges of prisoner reentry. Washington, D.C: Urban Institute Press.
Trimbur, L. (2009). ‘Me and the law is not friends’: How former prisoners make sense of reentry. Qualitative Sociology, 32(3), 259–277.
Vargas, J. H. C. (2006). Catching hell in the city of angels: Life and meanings of blackness in south central Los Angeles. Critical American studies series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Werth, R. (2012). I do what I’m told, sort of: reformed subjects, unruly citizens, and parole. Theoretical Criminology, 16(3), 329–346.
Wilderson, F. B., III. (2010). Red, white & black: Cinema and the structure of U.S. antagonisms. Durham: Duke University Press Books.
Wilderson, F. B., & III., (2011). The vengeance of vertigo: Aphasia and abjection in the political trials of black insurgents. In Tensions Journal, 5(Fall/Winter), 1–14.
Williams, K. (2016). From coercion to consent?: Governing the formerly incarcerated in the 21st century United States. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, City University of New York (publication forthcoming).
Acknowledgments
This study was partially funded by the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Community Engagement-Social Justice Institute; Summer Research Grant 2012.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The author declares she has no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Throughout this article, I use (re)entry and (re)integration to draw attention to the reality that many returning prisoners were not fully integrated members of society prior to their imprisonment.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Burch, M. (Re)entry from the Bottom Up: Case Study of a Critical Approach to Assisting Women Coming Home from Prison. Crit Crim 25, 357–374 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-016-9346-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-016-9346-3