Prisoner Reentry and the Welfare State: Poverty Governance and Poverty Survival in New York City

• In Event: 478 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Paper Session. Criminal Justice Contact and Inequality

Abstract

As the result of the historically unprecedented scale of U.S. incarceration rates, more inmates are leaving prison and returning home to disadvantaged urban communities than ever before. Unemployment and child support debt represent significant risk factors for recidivism among the population returning home. In response, a burgeoning network of community-based “workforce development” and “responsible fatherhood” programs have emerged to address these issues. While a wide body of literature has documented how criminal justice institutions control and circumscribe the daily lives of formerly incarcerated men, we know far less about how welfare institutions like these govern the work and family lives of this population, and how the subjects of this control make sense of these interventions. To address this gap, I conducted a comparative ethnographic study of two community-based social service agencies in New York City. Over three years of ethnographic fieldwork in “workforce development” and “responsible fatherhood” programs, I worked alongside program staff as they negotiated the daily dilemmas of service provision, and followed formerly incarcerated men as they underwent the process of “aging out” of crime; negotiated the daily hardships of poverty survival; and navigated a complex web of criminal justice and welfare bureaucracies. This research offers unique insights into how governing authorities manage the “collateral consequences” of mass imprisonment, and how former prisoners experience these interventions in their everyday lives. In doing so, this project complicates contemporary theories of poverty governance and poverty survival in the era of mass imprisonment.

Author

• John Michael Halushka, New York University