Navigating Reentry: The Role of Reentry Organizations From the Perspective of Ex-Prisoners and Staff

• In Event: Prisoner Reentry: Structure and Practice

Abstract

This paper examines how recently released prisoners use, experience, and make meaning of re-entry organizations as they return to the community, and how front-line staff at these organizations conceptualize ex-prisoners and aim to facilitate re-entry through programs, services, and other forms of support. To date, studies on the "organizational" realities of reentry has focused on the role of reentry programming. Drawing on interview data with recently released prisoners as well as front-line staff at re-entry organizations in a north-western Canadian city, and observational data, this paper shows how reentry organizations provide a stable schedule of free meals and other basic services (e.g., free clothing, showers) throughout the day to ex-prisoners, and how recently released prisoners make use of these services as they navigate their immediate post-prison lives.

Author

• Katharina Maier, University of Toronto