People, Places, and Things: the Social Process of Reentry for Female Ex-Offenders
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The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: People, Places, and Things: The Social Process of Reentry for Female Ex-Offenders Author(s): Andrea M. Leverentz Document No.: 215178 Date Received: August 2006 Award Number: 2003-IJ-CX-1005 This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally- funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 1 People, Places, and Things: The Social Process of Reentry for Female Ex-Offenders NIJ Award: 2003-IJ-CX-1005 Summary Andrea Leverentz The University of Chicago Department of Sociology The primary goal of this study is to learn about the complex social lives of female ex-offenders and how their release from prison impacts and is impacted by their relationships. The main area of interest is how various groups impacted – offenders, their employers or potential employers, landlords, friends and family, acquaintances -- manage the process of inmate reentry. Little is known about the actual daily lives and experiences of ex-offenders or how, when, and with whom their ex-offender status is salient. Even less is known about the experience and networks of female offenders. I argue that the reintegration experience is an interactive one, between offenders and their private, parochial, and public social networks (Hunter 1985). These various relationships play varying roles in the reintegration process of ex-offenders, influencing their ability to successfully rejoin society. Many of issues related to offending and reentry, such as gender, drug use and abuse, structural disadvantages, and parenthood, appear throughout the chapters. In addition, chapters focus on methodology, origins of drug use and offending, reentry experiences with intimates (e.g., family, friends), educational and employment experiences, and housing and neighborhood context. I conclude by briefly summarizing the lives of these women, and introduce ways in which their experiences are relevant beyond the fields of criminology and criminal justice. Despite their increasing involvement in the criminal justice system, female offenders remain relatively under-studied and under-theorized within criminology This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 2 (Chesney-Lind 1989; Simpson 1989; Simpson and Elis 1995; Chesney-Lind 2006). This has been changing in recent years, with numerous studies focusing on women and girls’ offending and the role of gender for both male and female offenders, with greater nuance and complexity in their theorizing and analysis (e.g., Messerschmidt 1993; Maher and Daly 1996; Richie 1996; Steffensmeier and Allan 1996; Chesney-Lind 1997; Owen 1998; Miller 2000; Miller 2001). Current studies focus on the “doing” of gender, and how this is shaped by individuals’ positions in the social structure (West and Zimmerman 1987; Simpson and Elis 1995; West and Fenstermaker 1995; Miller 2000). Now with the emergence of a strong literature on reentry and the collateral consequences of imprisonment, the experiences of women are again marginal to the field (but see O'Brien 2001; Richie 2001; Giordano, Cernkovich and Rudolph 2002; Covington 2003). Methodology This research is based on a series of qualitative interviews with female ex- offenders and their social networks. This approach is particularly suited to studying female ex-offenders. Using an inductive and qualitative methodology allows the capture of experiences substantially different than those theorized and tested among male ex- offenders (Daly and Chesney-Lind 1988; Chesney-Lind 1989; Simpson 1989). In looking at their experiences before and after their incarcerations, I use the life course perspective (Elder 1998; Laub and Sampson 2003). Specifically, I recognize that their lives are embedded in and shaped by the historical and physical context, that the timing of life events matters, that lives are interdependent, and human agency plays a key role in constructing one’s life (Elder 1998; Laub and Sampson 2003). In addition, I draw heavily on symbolic interactionism. Specifically, I use the four premises of symbolic This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 3 interactionism, as laid out by Herbert Blumer: a) people act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them, b) the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction one has with others, c) these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters, and d) the complex interlinkages of acts are dynamic, not static (1969, p. 50). Thus, my primary focus is how the women construct and understand their lives, life experiences and relationships (Goffman 1963; Berger and Luckman 1966; McAdams 2006). While the focus is on the women’s definitions and understandings of their lives, I also highlight some of the structural constraints they face in attempting to organize their lives. Participants were recruited through their participation in a Chicago halfway house serving women coming out of prison. The halfway house is a voluntary residential program. Women typically stay for between six months to a year, and unless they violate the rules, they are allowed to stay until they have a job (or stable income) and a suitable place to live. The halfway house has sixteen beds. While the women are there, they participate in group therapy meetings and outpatient drug counseling, and receive help finding work and transitional housing. While most come straight from prison, occasionally women are referred from an inpatient drug treatment program. Almost all halfway house residents, then, are involved with the criminal justice system, either on mandatory supervised release (parole) or probation, while they are residents. The participants were recruited in two ways. I twice (in September 2003 and January 2004) went to the halfway house to invite participation of current residents (N=24). In addition, in December 2003, I mailed an introductory letter and an informed This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 4 consent form to all former residents for whom the halfway house staff has current addresses. I prepared the mailing inviting them to participate, and dropped them off at the halfway house, where staff added address labels. Out of approximately the 300 former residents since the time halfway house opened in 1995, they had what they believed to be current addresses for 85. Of these, I interviewed 25 women, for a total of 49 ex-offender respondents. All respondents were given $20 in cash for each interview, as compensation for their time. At the time I began interviewing them, then, the women had been out of prison for between a few weeks to nine years and were both current and former halfway house residents. Including former residents meant that I met women in vastly different parts of their reentry process. The research design called for each woman to be interviewed four times over the course of a year. The purpose of this was threefold: tracking changes in the women’s lives, establishing greater rapport, and inductively identifying topics of interest and relevance to the women. In addition, I asked the women to identify people in their lives who they were willing to let me interview. This led to two interviews each with 26 “network members,” including parents, siblings, adult children, romantic partners, friends, and co-workers. Primary Findings The women in this study all had similarities in terms of demographics (e.g., largely African American, with children) and offending (primarily drug related) backgrounds. Yet in talking to them about their childhoods and the origins of their offending, much more diversity was revealed. Some women began using drugs casually, often for years, before it became a problem. Sometimes they can pinpoint an event that served as a turning point for them, often a traumatic event, and other times, they slipped This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 5 into addiction without realizing when. Other women experienced abuse and victimization as a child or adolescent, and leading to drug use as a coping mechanism (Agnew 1992; Baskin and Sommers 1998). Nearly all of them were raised and were living in an environment in which drug use was commonplace (Sutherland 1947; Reiss 1986; Boardman, Finch, Ellison, Williams and Jackson 2001).