Neighborhood Change and the Suburbanization of Returning Prisoners

• In Event: Neighborhood Change, Crime, and Prisoner Reentry

Abstract

More than 600,000 prisoners are released from incarceration each year in the United States. Until recently, prisoner reentry was largely an urban phenomenon with most exiting prisoners concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods. Increasingly, however, returning prisoners are suburbanizing. For instance, whereas in 2000 roughly 50 percent of individuals released from prison in Illinois returned to neighborhoods in the city of Chicago, current data reveal that the percentage is now below 40 percent. This study aims to uncover the roots of this geographic shift in prisoner reentry, with a focus on the role of urban housing markets. In particular I ask: (1) in what ways has the geographic distribution of returning prisoners in Illinois shifted over the past two decades; and (2) has the gentrification of urban neighborhoods led to the suburbanization of returning prisoners? To answer these questions, I draw upon longitudinal data from the Illinois Department of Corrections on the geographic distribution of prison releases as well as data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey on temporal changes in neighborhood characteristics.

Author

• David Kirk, University of Oxford