Intersecting Lives

How Place Shapes Reentry

Andrea M. Leverentz

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780520976733
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kriminologie

Few would disagree that neighborhood and place are important dimensions of reentry from prison, but we have a less clear sense of why or how they matter—and we rarely get a view of the lived social-interactional dynamics between people returning from incarceration and receiving communities. Intersecting Lives focuses on the processes by which neighborhood and place influence reentry experiences and how these shape community life. Through interviews and ethnographic observations, Andrea M. Leverentz brings readers into three very different Boston communities. These places and the interactions they foster shape reentry outcomes, including reoffending, surveillance, relationship formation, and access to opportunities. This book sheds crucial new light on the processes of reentry and desistance, tying them intimately to space and community, including dynamics around race, gender, gentrification, homelessness, and transportation.

ONE

Criminalizing Disadvantage

RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND REENTRY IN BOSTON

My first option is to stay with my father and his step-wife, but to be honest, he’s dealing with a lot of alcohol issues. So, I’m thinking more like a dry shelter, out on Long Island.

PABLO, Black man in his 50s

She let me stay the week, but it’s like, it wasn’t long enough. It was bad timing, because here it is. I’m right back to the same. I’m right back down to square one again.

BRUCE, Black man in his 30s

THE MEN AND WOMEN we met shortly before their release from the House of Correction were highly marginalized because of a lifetime of experiences with the criminal legal system and other institutions. While most were well intentioned and hopeful about their release, they were also worried about their ability to succeed at staying out of prison. Their reentry plans were often loose and unraveled quickly. Few had access to adequate support, and many made difficult and constrained choices. In this chapter, I provide some examples of how their earlier experiences with the House of Correction and the criminal legal system shaped their plans as they were being released.

RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER IN CRIME AND PLACE

People’s experiences returning from prison—and living in neighborhoods—is shaped not only by place, but also by who they are and how they connect to place. Intersectionality provides a framework through which we can understand how race, gender, class, and other factors shape one’s experiences, in general, and particularly here in terms of experiences with incarceration, reentry, and neighborhood life. Intersectionality emphasizes that all people have intersecting socially constructed identities that are ordered into social strata and organized within a “matrix of power” (Crenshaw 1991). Theories of intersectionality emphasize the importance of analyzing the interconnected identities of individuals, and how these identities are perceived and responded to by others (Potter 2015).¹

Young Black and Latino men adopt behaviors to minimize their risks and to navigate through space safely (Cobbina et al. 2008; Harding 2010; Fader 2021). For many young men, managing safety often means not leaving one’s neighborhood, as they perceive their own neighborhoods as safe and others as potentially a site of retaliatory violence (Cobbina et al. 2008). For young Black men, the mere act of being in a public space might mark them as potentially delinquent or criminal and therefore at risk of both retaliation and police surveillance (Cobbina et al. 2008; Fader 2021). Boys in the Moving to Opportunity study who moved to new neighborhoods felt they were less accepted in their new neighborhoods and possibly more targeted by police surveillance. The boys who stayed in their neighborhoods and so were more familiar with them also developed navigational strategies to avoid trouble (Clampet-Lundquist et al. 2011). These boys knew what places to avoid, and when, to avoid trouble.

In contrast, girls in the Moving to Opportunity study were more likely to hang out in destination places, like malls or downtown shopping districts, rather than in the neighborhood (Clampet-Lundquist et al. 2011). They also were more likely to hang out in places with adult supervision. Jody Miller (2008) found that young African American women used strategies like staying close to home and avoiding public spaces in their neighborhoods as ways to stay safe (see also Cobbina et al. 2008). These strategies can help African American girls avoid situations that will require them to fight, and thereby allow them to behave in ways that others perceive as “good” while remaining safe (Jones 2010). Some girls may embrace a tough “ghetto chick” identity to give themselves freedom and mobility in an unsafe world (Jones 2010).

Women who are involved, directly or indirectly, with prisons experience gendered and raced responses in the criminal legal system (Haney 2010; McCorkel 2013; Wyse 2013).² Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw argues that Black women are “subject to the twin dimensions of hypervisibility and substantive erasure” (Crenshaw 2013: 31). They are a part of the stereotypical at-risk Black family, headed by a single mother, and yet absent from much programming directed at “saving” Black boys and families. In addition, there is growing awareness and attention to the problems of the criminalblackman stereotype (Russell-Brown 1998), and yet less attention to how raced and gendered stereotypes shape the experiences of Black women. Crenshaw writes, “Longstanding rhetorics that framed men as uniquely damaged by racism have primed Black communities to endorse neoliberal accounts of social life that subtly shift the focus from historically constituted relations of power to the failures of family formation and gender conformity” (Crenshaw 2013: 32). This framing both blames Black women, as inadequate mothers, wives, and girlfriends, for the criminal involvement and incarceration of Black men, and ignores their own disproportionate rates of incarceration. Women who engage in offending are often looked upon as “doubly deviant,” violating both gender and legal norms (Owen 1998; Heimer and De Coster 1999). Black women face an additional layer of stigma. Women’s responses to the messages they receive are also shaped by their own positionally—for example, as mothers, as community members, as Black women—and competing social messages about who they are and what they should aspire to (Leverentz 2014).

In her presidential address to the American Society of Criminology, Candace Kruttschnitt (2016) reminded us that the salience of gender varies by context and is shaped by other forms of stratification, including race, class, and sexuality. Rather than just asking “does gender matter?” we should be looking at situations and relational processes in which gender is foregrounded, or not. For example, the process of redemption may work similarly for men and women, but the specific hooks for change may differ across gender and be shaped by racialized gender ideologies (Giordano et al. 2002; Jones 2018). Black men who are trying to break free from the criminal legal system are encouraged to give up the “code of the street,” while still being expected to be providers and protectors to their families (Anderson 1999; Jones 2018). The ways in which Black gender ideologies play out for Black men are consequential not only for these men, but also for women and girls because of how they reinforce gender-based hierarchies (Jones 2018). For Black women who are themselves being released from prison, racialized gender ideologies might mean resuming caregiving roles within families and communities, even when those same relationships might have been abusive and indirectly, at least, related to offending and/or drug use (Leverentz 2014). Jones argues that the solution, then, is “a framework for understanding how, for example, structural violence and interpersonal violence, police violence, and street harassment are interconnected” (2018: 168, emphasis in original).

STIGMA AND REPUTATION

People returning from incarceration face stigma because of these interlocking systems of oppression, each of which affects their lives. All experience the stigma of a criminal record. Young Black and Latino men also face racial stigma and profiling that identify them as likely suspects, even before their records are known. People who have been incarcerated and have a history of drug addiction are often alienated from family and extremely socially and economically marginalized.³ Those who are well known in their communities are easily identified as likely offenders because of their known histories, regardless of their demographics. Particularly in an individualistic context like the United States, people often experience these dynamics as individual failures. Sociologists Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk (2014: 160) conclude “each person is led to believe that one’s misery is one’s alone, a stance that militates against the formation of group, race, or class-consciousness, and inhibits the desire and ability to work collectively to change the system.” The women they followed most often believed in personal responsibility as well, blaming themselves for their “failures” and blaming line staff in organizations rather than political leaders and policy makers that created the policies that limited them and trapped them in an “institutional circuit.” Historian Lawrence Vale, writing about stigma attached to public housing, made a similar point about the consequences of stigma, “The most devastating consequence of stigma, as [Erving] Goffman makes clear, is that its marks become internalized; stigma is more than a measure of societal distrust, it is a deeply destructive cause of self-doubt” (Vale 2002: 14).

Erving Goffman emphasizes that stigma is about relationships, not individual attributes (Goffman 1963). An attribute that can be stigmatizing is not inherently so and is not creditable or discreditable in itself. And yet the stigma is very real in its consequences. “By definition, of course, we believe the person with the stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances” (Goffman 1963: 5). This happens at the individual level toward those with a criminal record through the punishment itself, including all its formal collateral consequences (e.g., Travis 2005; Pager 2007) and informal judgments that follow. These judgments may be directed to individuals who have been incarcerated, along with their families and communities (Clear 2007; Comfort 2008). We see it in the narrative around criminals and “high-crime” neighborhoods (Leverentz 2012). We also see it in responses to Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality that ask, “why don’t they care about Black-on-Black crime?” that ignores extensive community activism in these neighborhoods and the systemic failures that foster differential rates of violence across neighborhoods (Peterson and Krivo 2010; Boyles 2019).

Feeling stigmatized impacts how people approach help seeking. Sarah Brayne (2014) found that those with any level of criminal legal system contact (from a police stop to incarceration) are less likely than those without to interact with “surveilling institutions,” including financial, medical, labor market, and educational institutions. “Going on the run” from court dates, probation, or parole also may reflect frustration over their treatment in those systems (Goffman 2014; Leverentz 2018). In her ethnography of women who use drugs in Massachusetts, Kimberly Sue (2019) relayed the story of Serenity, a woman with a history of both incarceration and drug use. When hospitalized with an eye infection, Serenity left after one night against medical advice because she felt like she was being treated like a prisoner, rather than as a person or as a patient. Serenity responded to the stigma she felt as an intravenous drug user, resulting in a reluctance and resistance to getting help from hospitals or social services. It also contributed to her drug use. Serenity was quoted, “The defense mechanism for that is to be that. OK, that’s how you want to label me, that’s what I’m going to be. I’m going to be the best goddamn junkie I can be. . . . It’s easier to put up that front than it is to deal with those looks and things that people say about you” (Sue 2019: 18). This narrative parallels that of the “persistent offenders” Shadd Maruna (2001) interviewed in his influential study of desistance. The men and women who felt trapped by their circumstances had a harder time desisting from offending than those who could maintain a belief in their inherent goodness and their ability to change their lives. Others in similar circumstances may consciously try to “blend in” to their surroundings to avoid being stigmatized as an addict or homeless or a former prisoner, or they choose where to go and not go to avoid such judgments (Parker 2019; Pittman 2020).

Places also have reputations, both stigmatizing and not, which can shape responses to the residents of and visitors to those places. Historian Lawrence Vale wrote about the stigmatizing nature of contemporary public housing (Vale 2002: 13). High rates of crime or incarceration, racial composition, residential income, housing stock, and land uses can all shape neighborhood reputation (Sampson and Raudenbush 2004; Quillian and Pager 2010; Drakulich 2013; Wallace and Louton 2018). Towns and neighborhoods often fight against the placement of locally undesirable land uses (LULU’s) to avoid being stigmatized by those institutions. Elites’ place-based narratives have material effects on places and can shape a place’s ability to resist these locally undesirable land uses (Gans 1982; Alkon and Traugot 2008). Towns or neighborhood leaders also may engage in strategic self-presentation or public acknowledgment to try to diffuse stigma attached to places (Eason 2017). For example, the town of Ossining, New York, changed its name from Sing Sing to distance itself from the infamous prison located there (Conover 2010). In contrast, John Eason (2017) detailed the ways in which town leaders in Forrest City, Arkansas, lobbied for a prison placement in their town to try to improve the town’s image. This demonstrates the fluidity of stigmatized identities and the power of narratives to shift impressions.

Looking at incarceration and incarcerated populations is not the same as looking at offending or any category of illegal behavior. Incarceration is not a straightforward measure of the behavior of the people incarcerated; rather, it also reflects differential enforcement and different levels of vulnerability to arrest, both because of individual characteristics and behaviors and because of characteristics of places in which they are located. Thus, both individual and place relationships matter in these definitions and shape the likelihood of arrest and incarceration.

CRIMINAL LEGAL SYSTEM EXPERIENCES

Most of the people we interviewed as part of the House of Correction release population had been incarcerated before, across a range of facilities, and had extensive experience in the criminal legal system. For many of the people in this study, incarceration was not their first involvement with government institutions. Many have histories that include social service and foster care involvement (including their experience both as children and as parents). These experiences both make them more vulnerable to future arrest and have taught them to be wary of public institutions (see Brayne 2014). Bruce, a Black man in his 30s, lived with his grandmother, until he was taken out of her house and put into residential placement when he was 7. He said, “I know that I was in it. I know that it was negative. I know that I’ve seen a lot of shit. A lot. I’ve seen a lot of trauma go on in those places. A lot.” Some of this shaped their behavior at the time. As Charles, a Black man in his 20s said, “I was just bad. I didn’t care. I didn’t have my mother, I didn’t have my real mother. I didn’t even have one of my own siblings with me. I’m not respecting nobody. Screw this. I was just going off. Didn’t care, don’t give a shit anyways. . . . It’s just a whole lot of shit.” For men like Bruce and Charles, their anger over this early trauma continued to affect how they related to institutions and the world more broadly. Whether their traumas manifested externally (in anger or violence) or internally (in drug use), it often led to circumstances and behaviors that resulted in involvement with the criminal legal system.

Many of the people we interviewed had lengthy histories of court involvement. For this population, decisions about whether to plead guilty rarely correspond in any simple way to “guilt” or “innocence” (see Leverentz 2018). People satisfied their short-term desire to get out of jail or the House of Correction but were still left with the long-term consequences of having a (growing) criminal record. Their decisions reflected a vulnerability within the criminal legal system. They pled guilty when they were, or when they were not “100 percent innocent.” It also, however, reflected a short-term desire to get out of jail, knowing that the charges were minor, and they were unlikely to win the case in court. In the longer term, this contributed to their legal vulnerability, as they acquired more charges and more convictions, and so became a “likely suspect,” particularly when this was combined with being in certain places that triggered heightened surveillance or suspicion. Context matters, in addition to behaviors and people’s positions in various systems of oppression (Irwin 1985; Beckett and Herbert 2009; Crenshaw 2013; Stuart 2016). For people who were homeless or unstably housed or were experiencing drug problems, they were a visible and “offensive” group that could be managed through frequent arrests, probation violations, charges, and short sentences. These criminal histories made it more difficult to break out of the cycle of arrest and incarceration, as they looked more and more guilty with growing records. These experiences, over time, bred cynicism and distrust of the law. Both their decision-making and the outcomes reinforced their position.

Once a person is involved in the criminal legal system, it can be hard to break out of it. Jackie, a white woman in her early 30s, was serving time for the first time, though she had charges going back to her teen years. She said,

I commit a lot of crimes and I trust and believe and I’m grateful that I haven’t got caught for them, because I’d really be doing a lot of time and this ain’t for me. . . . Once you get caught in the system, it seems like you get stuck in the system. So that’s why I’m glad I don’t have nothing here, over my head yet. I’ve a couple of guilties that I didn’t have before because my whole record is continued without a finding, but I took a guilty on the possession of E and possession of C, just so I don’t have to deal with no probation or in and out of jails. This is too depressing and overwhelming.

Many others’ experiences illustrate Jackie’s fear of getting stuck. James, a white man in h...