Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century

Critical Perspectives of Returning Home

Keesha M. Middlemass, CalvinJohn Smiley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351138222
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

This groundbreaking edited volume evaluates prisoner reentry using a critical approach to demonstrate how the many issues surrounding reentry do not merely intersect but are in fact reinforcing and interdependent. The number of former incarcerated persons with a felony conviction living in the United States has grown significantly in the last decade, reaching into the millions. When men and women are released from prison, their journey encompasses a range of challenges that are unique to each individual, including physical and mental illnesses, substance abuse, gender identity, complicated family dynamics, the denial of rights, and the inability to voice their experiences about returning home.

Although scholars focus on the obstacles former prisoners encounter and how to reduce recidivism rates, the main challenge of prisoner reentry is how multiple interdependent issues overlap in complex ways. By examining prisoner reentry from various critical perspectives, this volume depicts how the carceral continuum, from incarceration to reentry, negatively impacts individuals, families, and communities; how the criminal justice system extends different forms of social control that break social networks; and how the shifting nature of prisoner reentry has created new and complicated obstacles to those affected by the criminal justice system. This volume explores these realities with respect to a range of social, community, political, and policy issues that former incarcerated persons must navigate to successfully reenter society.

A springboard for future critical research and policy discussions, this book will be of interest to U.S. and international researchers and practitioners interested in the topic of prisoner reentry, as well as graduate and upper-level undergraduate students concerned with contemporary issues in corrections, community-based corrections, critical issues in criminal justice, criminal justice policies, and reentry.

Section IV

Access, Rights, and Reentry

One of the biggest controversies within reentry discourse is the ability of returning citizens to access services and rights. Persons who are justice-affected often lose some aspect of formal, as well as informal, rights and privileges. The loss of rights and privileges highlights the notion of perpetual punishment post-imprisonment; state legislators add a number of statutory restrictions directed at former prisoners, who are continually reprimanded beyond their original legal criminal sentence by “secret sentences” (Chin & Holmes, 2002) and civil disabilities that are collectively known as the collateral consequences of a felony conviction (Love, 2011; Travis, 2005). The loss of access to rights and privileges makes reentry harder than it needs to be (Middlemass, 2017). Having a felony conviction that is accessible via public records undermines various legal, political, economic, and social rights.

In many states, individuals are banned from various aspects of society, such as receiving social welfare benefits and Pell grants, and denied access to housing and employment opportunities (Middlemass, 2017). These sanctions are designed on the principle that returning citizens are morally corrupt and consequently are not worthy of social benefits. This section offers a variety of perspectives about different groups of returning citizens and their experiences accessing rights as they reenter society. These groups include individuals convicted of sexual crimes, returning citizens attending university, voting rights – the politics of voting rights for former prisoners and how the 2018 restoration process of voting rights in Florida unfolded – and one man’s journey to become free after serving time. The following chapters take a critical approach in order to unpack the costs of losing one’s rights during the reentry process.

David Booth, in his chapter, “ ‘ … Except Sex Offenders:’ Registering Sexual Harm in the Age of #MeToo,” tackles a taboo aspect within reentry by exploring the various restraints and restrictions for individuals who have been convicted of sex crimes. Booth elucidates how this population, in addition to the “normal” collateral consequences of a felony conviction, faces “extra” restrictions related to their specific crime, such as having to adhere to sex offender registration and notification (SORN) requirements, and individuals convicted of sex crimes are often excluded from reentry programs and services offered by nonprofit organizations. As a result of the “extra” restrictions and community notification rules, sex offenders must announce their crimes through various government channels and are not able to access resources that could address sexual harm.

Booth’s chapter may make some readers uncomfortable, but if society is going to start to take reentry challenges and criminal justice reform seriously, in all its various forms of ugliness, then it is necessary to address those things that make us uncomfortable. Although the majority of people incarcerated in state prisons are considered perpetrators of a violent crime, and the system incarcerates a lot of people society considers “bad,” in reality, to create a more just system, it is necessary to hear from all voices to start a critical conversation about what should be done and what can be done. Booth raises complex questions about who should be able to access treatment programs, who should be restricted from treatment programs, and why, and what should society do with certain groups of returning citizens. Policies create different classes of returning citizens, and sexual offenders, as current policies are configured, are at the bottom of the criminal caste system.

In their chapter, “Reentry in the Inland Empire,” Anderson, Jones, and McAllister examine an educational program entitled Project Rebound. The three authors are all affiliated with California State University, San Bernardino, and implement and support Project Rebound in a variety of ways. Project Rebound is specifically designed to assist formerly incarcerated individuals apply for and access higher educational programs at CSU-San Bernardino. Education is considered a beneficial tool for returning citizens that assists in successful reentry. Project Rebound assists returning citizens in accessing four-year university programs at CSU-San Bernardino, including providing referrals for on- and off-campus resources, educational materials, psychosocial support, and career development, to name a few. Anderson, Jones, and McAllister describe the various ways that Project Rebound seeks to make justice-affected students feel included within the college environment and provides different forms of help to ensure academic completion by Project Rebound participants.

The following two chapters explore different aspects of voter disenfranchisement; unlike previous work on voting rights and returning citizens, these authors look beyond disenfranchisement in several ways. In “The Politics of Restoring Voting Rights After Incarceration,” Means and Hatch focus on the politics of restoring voting rights post-incarceration in Iowa and Virginia to highlight the onerous process to have one’s voting rights restored. Taking a comparative approach, they highlight the different methods used to deter returning citizens from pursuing their right to restore their voting rights. Today, because of the grueling administrative requirements to restore one’s voting rights, felon disenfranchisement laws have become the de facto form of banning voters, a large percentage of whom are Black. Voting rights are not critical to reentry like safe and secure housing and employment are; however, voting is an important key to gaining one’s citizenship rights to participate in the democratic process and becoming part of civil society.

In Grant’s chapter, “Restoration of Voting Rights: Returning Citizens and the Florida Electorate,” she examines the restoration of voting rights in the state of Florida. Florida has become a flashpoint in electoral politics since the 2000 presidential election, when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States by the Supreme Court after the court ruled in favor of Bush in the famous case known as Bush v. Gore. In sum, there was a political dispute surrounding Florida’s ballot design and how certain ballots were counted. The recount created a new lexicon for elections, such as hanging chads, voter purges, and felon disenfranchisement. A latent consequence of this controversial election was Florida’s use of voter purges based on a felony conviction, barring felons from voting. Historically, voting in the United States has racial implications as voting rights were a staple point of contention in the post-Civil War era in preventing Blacks from voting. Grant reaffirms that the racial impact continues into the 21st century; through her analysis, she demonstrates that individuals who are disenfranchised in Florida are overwhelmingly people of color, disadvantaged economically, and most likely to vote for the Democratic Party. As a result, Florida election results are skewed because of the sheer number of individuals with a felony conviction who were disenfranchised from voting.

In 2018, through the efforts of activists and their support of a citizens’ initiative, known as Amendment 4, Florida has re-enfranchised its returning citizens. Grant, through an in-depth case study, describes how voting rights were restored and provides an analysis of the potential political ramifications of Amendment 4 in future elections, theoretically indicating that felon disenfranchisement influences and undermines the democratic process (see Uggen, Manza, & Thompson, 2006). Grant concludes her chapter by offering suggestions on how Amendment 4 should be implemented to ensure equity and parity, but to also ensure people with a criminal record understand that they can now access their voting rights without going through an arduous administrative review process.

Although voting is only one example where formerly incarcerated individuals are barred, Michelle Alexander argues in her seminal book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, that the United States has essentially created a new caste system of people who were incarcerated and can no longer participate fully in society. In “Perpetual Punishment: One Man’s Journey Post-Incarceration,” Montalvo and Ortiz provide a detailed account of one man’s journey reentering society. Montalvo, as a returning citizen, provides a first-person account of the substantial obstacles he faced while trying to reintegrate and despite his best efforts, he discusses how the system impeded his efforts, including reconnecting with his children, child support, and the courts.

Montalvo and Ortiz provide a fantastic per...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Critical Reentry in the 21st Century
• Section I Institutions, Community, and Reentry
• Section II Health, Embodiment, and Reentry
• Section III Gender, Criminality, and Reentry
• Section IV Access, Rights, and Reentry
• Section V Voices, Agency, and Reentry
• Section VI Activism, Liberation, and Reentry
• Index