The Gendered Consequences of Prison Expansion: Care-Work in Parolee Support Networks

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. RGC and Crime

Abstract

Given the shift in the parole system from a focus on rehabilitation to punitive surveillance, how do parolees utilize their support networks during re-entry? In this paper, I draw on in-depth interviews with former parolees and their female kin to examine how parolees meet their basic survival needs in an era when rehabilitative state support has been relegated to the private sphere. The interviews suggest that family composition, not interpersonal gender role expectations, determine how parolees navigate their support networks. However, despite the constraints of family composition, two other factors play an important role in how rehabilitative care-work is handled. First, the interviews suggest that policies prohibiting interaction between parolees shape the gender composition of support networks by making it difficult for men to rely on each other for support. Second, race and class shape how female kin perform care-work labor, with more educated women working through the parole system by cultivating relationships with parole agents. This analysis invites further research by highlighting the ways in which gender, race, and class filter the collateral consequences that diffuse into offender kinship ties.

Author

• Michaela Christy Simmons, University of California-Berkeley