ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of current literature on prisoner re-entry in the United States with a particular focus on ethnographic studies. The first section explores how former prisoners navigate conditions of severe poverty following incarceration. During the period following release, former prisoners struggle to establish employment and independent housing, and mostly rely on family, friends, and public assistance agencies to meet their basic material needs. This daily grind of poverty survival has a devastating effect on their physical and emotional well-being and ultimately undermines successful reintegration. The next section explores prisoner re-entry as a political project. It begins with an overview of current efforts to get ‘smart on crime’, particularly efforts to reduce corrections costs by rehabilitating offenders in less costly community settings. The chapter then journeys into various community settings to explore how front-line service providers in parole offices, residential treatment facilities, and workforce development programs attempt to rehabilitate offenders. The chapter concludes with an analysis and critique of current efforts to reform the criminal justice system. While current efforts to get ‘smart on crime’ represent a welcome departure from ‘tough-on-crime’ politics of the past, these reforms do not go nearly far enough to challenge the political roots of mass incarceration.
