Contentious, Generative and Re/integrative Sites: A Case Study of ASAPA

• In Event: Supporting desistance in community sanctions and measures

Abstract

Despite a recent rise in interest about life after prison in academic, policy and research circles all around the globe, people often face acute, compounded and permanent adversities on release. Thus, it is now more important than ever to study and learn from already existing re/integrative sites: i.e., communities that accept, welcome, support and give releasees the chance to contribute. Bearing this in mind, the purpose of the research on which this paper relies was to identify, explore, evaluate and reimagine an already-existent re/integrative site. After I identified ASAPA (an extinguished third sector organisation who did not only directly support releasees but also aimed to directly shape the structure and the context through contentious collective action) as a rich research site, the ASAPA’s 30th Anniversary Project was designed in collaboration with ASAPA's former core members. The purpose of this paper is to share some initial findings of ASAPA’s 30th Anniversary Project, a collaborative study which is combining document analysis, inquiry group method and collaborative interviews in order to understand what and how ASAPA was like, to interrogate it, and to reimagine it in the past and the present. In this paper, I will argue that ASAPA that in order to understand ASAPA and its contentious, re/integrative and generative character, it is key to explore ASAPA as a space with four main interrelated characteristics: communitarian, legal-political, social and in coordination.

Author

• Alejandro Rubio Arnal, SEPE