Exploring Reentry Survivorship

• In Event: Qualitative Research in Punishment and Reentry

Abstract

To date, reentry research has thoroughly explored the desistance process, the immense barriers and hardships to reintegration, and the increased risk of persistent harm that formerly incarcerated individuals experience once back in the community. This presentation diverges from these foci to explore the concept of reentry survivorship—defined both in the literal terms of surviving the high risks of early death that system-impacted populations face, and in terms of surviving the many challenges to reentry and reintegration. Through in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals, I present preliminary findings on how formerly incarcerated individuals perceive and make sense of their ability to survive and succeed within structures (including but extending beyond the criminal legal system) that often create cycles of harm. Drawing on theories of survivorship, I use these findings to extend understandings of reentry by centering how formerly incarcerated individuals understand, on their own terms, notions of “success”, “survival” and “failure” in reentry.

Author

• Arden Richards-Karamarkovich, George Mason University