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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-016-9346-3