Fragile Lives: Navigating the Harms of Re-entry in Austerity Britain

• In Event: Collateral Damage - The Impact of Incarceration in the Lives of Women

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data collected across an 18- month period in a UK Women’s Centre which provides post-custody residential accommodation as well as community-based services to justice involved-women; we explore the role that harm has played within the women’s lives prior to, and then as a consequence of their experiences of prison and re-entry. Using a social harm lens, the paper examines the biographies of the women detailing the inter-related and cumulative experience of harm across their lifecourse; commonly, the women recount recurrent experiences of abuse, trauma, poor mental health, substance use and social exclusion. Following the journeys of the women post prison, the paper examines the adaptive responses that the women form to mitigate these injuries and the institutional constraints that are placed on the ‘agency’ they are able to exercise in this respect. These stories play out against a backdrop of ‘austerity’ and receding public services, the resulting forms of precarity the women experience and liminal spaces they occupy, which all combine to frustrate the attempts that many of the women make to live healthier and more fulfilling lives.

Author

• Simon Pemberton, University of Birmingham