| dc.description.abstract | Many formerly incarcerated individuals are experiencing nominal freedom (Lateef, 2019). They occupy a “parallel universe” where discrimination, stigma, and exclusion run rampant (Alexander, 2010, p. 94). If we wish to build a world where these individuals experience full and free lives after incarceration, we must examine the barriers and facilitators to social and economic opportunity among this population. The first paper describes the world as it is, the second paper explores the world we are building, and the third paper imagines the world as it could be for formerly incarcerated individuals.
The first paper focuses on carceral citizenship as a barrier to social and economic opportunity. Carceral citizenship refers to the legal and extralegal sanctions imposed on the formerly incarcerated, their families, and the communities where they reside (Miller & Alexander, 2016). This paper explores how the formerly incarcerated navigate carceral citizenship. The findings from this paper demonstrate that carceral citizenship has produced an alternate reality for the formerly incarcerated where they are navigating a social landscape of constrained, limited possibilities.
The second paper examines a social enterprise, prison entrepreneurship program, and reentry court committed to building a better world for formerly incarcerated individuals. Each of these organizations employ asset-based approaches to facilitate social and economic opportunity. Participants were asked to describe the skills, knowledge, and connections they cultivated in these programs. The findings from this paper demonstrate the importance of relationship building in reentry programming. The connections participants cultivated are their most valuable asset.
The third paper offers an abolitionist vision for reentry to imagine the world as it could be for formerly incarcerated individuals. Abolition aims to render prison obsolete by solving the social problems that drive mass incarceration (Davis, 2003). It is a structural and systemic intervention that can create the social and economic conditions for full and free lives after incarceration. In this paper, formerly incarcerated individuals reflected on full and free lives after incarceration and described their best possible futures. Their vision can be achieved with the social and economic transformation that abolition demands. | |
