Daytime Mobility of Men on Parole

• In Event: Novel Methods for Measuring the Social Ecology of Crime

Abstract

Individuals recently released from prison suffer from compounding disadvantages, such as barriers to employment and limited social contacts. The geographic context where these individuals spend their time has an impact on reentry outcomes. "The Newark Smartphone Reentry Project" utilized an innovative data collection method — passive collection of GPS information—to capture the geographic mobility and exposure of men on parole. This study explores where these individuals spend their time and the frequency of their movements during the day. Activity anchor locations, derived from GPS collection, combined with characteristics of place, such as land use and census sociodemographics, demonstrate the dynamic context of environmental exposure. Furthermore, the GPS data reveal how the daily activity range of men on parole shift over time and with major events, such as employment. The novel analysis of the daytime mobility of men on parole utilized in this study demonstrates why future prisoner reentry scholarship should move beyond simply examining the static residential location of environmental context.

Authors

• Christopher Jay Bates, University of California, Irvine

• Naomi Sugie, University of California, Irvine

• John R Hipp, University of California, Irvine