“Getting Back Out There”: Navigating Relationships with Women Post Incarceration-Perspectives of Formerly Incarcerated Men

• In Event: Conduct Disorders, Romantic Disorders, and Familial Disorders Among Men and Women Inmates

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a study designed to uncover how formerly incarcerated men seek to initiate and/or maintain relationships with various females (e.g., mothers of their children, female partners who supported them while incarcerated, and women that they have interacted with or sought to interact with romantically following a period of incarceration). The goal of this study was to identify the strategies that men, who as a result of criminal conviction and incarceration, manifest a diminished capacity to present themselves as desirable romantic partners, seek to overcome this perception as they transition from prison to the community.

Author

• William Oliver, Indiana University