Navigating Social Relationships for Formerly Incarcerated Men and Women

• In Event: Intersectional Approaches to Reentry and Reintegration Research

Abstract

Much of our research on reentry focuses on either men or women. While there is tremendous value in this work, it also often raises questions of where and how gender is shaping people’s experiences. This paper addresses this question by adopting an intersectional lens to analyze interviews with men and women being released from the same correctional facility in Boston. The sample includes both gender (40 men, 24 women) and racial/ethnic variation (approximately half white, half people of color), allowing us to better understand how gender and race/ethnicity shape one’s experiences with reentry. In this paper, I focus primarily on their experience navigating social relationships, with family members, romantic partners, and children. There are many similarities between men and women’s experiences with these relationships, including the challenges of reuniting with children and their reliance on intense, quickly formed relationships. I will discuss the ways in which these relationships are gendered.

Author

• Andrea Leverentz, University of Massachusetts, Boston