From Coercion to Consent?: Governing the Formerly Incarcerated in the 21st Century United States

Author: Karen G. Williams

Dissertation School: City University of New York

Abstract:

The decades-long expansion of law and order prison policies across the United States has led to historically high rates of incarceration and has had repercussions far beyond the prison walls. With more than 600,000 inmates returning back to their home communities each year, prisoner reentry reform has recently become as an important strand of penal policy innovation intended to address the barriers that former offenders face when returning home. Consequently, community organizations and corrections have been unified in an effort to assist former inmates. In the reorganization of the relationship between community and prisons that reentry requires, housing plays a central role. The success of reentry programs hinges on the establishment of workable housing scenarios that meet the needs of former inmates and of the surrounding residents who are asked to incorporate them into their communities. My study examines this process and the challenges and opportunities that are created by new reentry dynamics, specifically the challenges posed for these new rehabilitative programs by the lack of affordable housing.

Finding shelter post-incarceration has been identified as the "lynchpin that holds the reintegration process together" (Bradley et al. 2001 : 1). Research studies have shown that the lack of availability of shelter increases recidivism rates and when bundled with other barriers, including employment, welfare, and family reunification, former inmates are more likely to become homeless or return to prison (C.F. Travis 2005). The interplay between prisoner reentry policy, housing policy, and other social services becomes a key site of investigation that impacts prisoners and their families, as well as public safety. The proposed study seeks to uncover the nexus between prisoner reentry and housing issues.

This project employs qualitative methods to explore how reentry reforms are conceived, translated, and implemented across different institutional settings. This entails focusing on shifting and permeable institutional spaces: 1) prisons, including how incarcerated people, prison personnel and reentry housing specialists understand reentry reforms and practices; 2) policymaking arenas, where government officials, policy experts, and advocates negotiate what reentry policy will be; 3) and communities, where nonprofit organizations, civic group members, realtors, and landlords play a role in managing and maintaining low-income housing in neighborhoods where former inmates are placed. Collecting the qualitative data for this case study requires ethnographic research and the use of a variety of methods including direct observation, interviews, and narrative analysis.

Much of the anthropological work on crime assumes that a key feature of crime prevention in the last four decades is the result of the replacement of rehabilitative modes of crime control and prevention with more authoritarian and coercive modes. My study understands crime control and prevention in a more nuanced way, going beyond the question of whether prisons are becoming more or less coercive. Crime control and prevention must be understood as a particular combination (or assemblage) of both coercive (prisons) and consensual (communities) apparatuses. My work turns toward community-prison partnerships and how residency is managed and maintained, through the combination of civic, philanthropic, market-based, and governmental services.

As prisons incorporate strategies to better facilitate the return of former offenders to their neighborhoods, this is a critical moment to investigate how this shift affects offender's ability to access housing. By examining reentry policy both inside and outside of prisons, my study offers a unique opportunity to extend empirically grounded analysis of how men and women in and out of penal institutions negotiate post-incarceration challenges, particularly their housing needs. The findings from this study will help to inform HUD's goals and policy priorities and build on the current findings of HUD's Returning Home Initiative.

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