The Ex-Prisoner's Dilemma

Andrea M. Leverentz

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780813562278
• eBook ISBN: 9780813571317
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

When a woman leaves prison, she enters a world of competing messages and conflicting advice.  Staff from prison, friends, family members, workers at halfway houses and treatment programs all have something to say about who she is, who she should be, and what she should do.  The Ex-Prisoner’s Dilemma offers an in-depth, firsthand look at how the former prisoner manages messages about returning to the community.  Over the course of a year, Andrea Leverentz conducted repeated interviews with forty-nine women as they adjusted to life outside of prison and worked to construct new ideas of themselves as former prisoners and as mothers, daughters, sisters, romantic partners, friends, students, and workers.  Listening to these women, along with their family members, friends, and co-workers, Leverentz pieces together the narratives they have created to explain their past records and guide their future behavior.  She traces where these narratives came from and how they were shaped by factors such as gender, race, maternal status, age, and experiences in prison, halfway houses, and twelve-step programs—factors that in turn shaped the women’s expectations for themselves, and others’ expectations of them.  The women’s stories form a powerful picture of the complex, complicated human experience behind dry statistics and policy statements regarding prisoner reentry into society for women, how the experience is different for men and the influence society plays.With its unique view of how society’s mixed messages play out in ex-prisoners’ lived realities, The Ex-Prisoner’s Dilemma shows the complexity of these women’s experiences within the broad context of the war on drugs and mass incarceration in America. It offers invaluable lessons for helping such women successfully rejoin society.

Part I

Becoming an Ex-Offender

Chapter 1

The Mercy Home and the Discourse of Reentry and Desistance

Halfway houses provide a transition between prison and life in the community, to ease reentry challenges and to foster desistance from future offending. They also provide assistance with employment and housing, two issues at the forefront of reentry discussions. As such, halfway houses are sources of tangible support for those returning to the community. In addition, they provide one view of what reentry means and how former prisoners should understand their lives and experiences (Gubrium and Holstein 2000). This chapter describes how the women experienced their time at the Mercy Home, and so provides a context through which to read the rest of the book.1 I argue that many of their experiences and ways of talking about their experiences parallel those of a broader ex-prisoner population, but still, their understanding of their lives was clearly influenced by their experiences at the Mercy Home.

The Mercy Home was the women’s first stop out of prison and their experiences there shape the narratives with which they talk about their post-prison lives.2 The women both accept and resist the messages they receive; regardless, they learn to use the language and narrative framework to explain their lives. The halfway house, through its programming and informal interactions, provides a narrative framework in which the women understand their reentry and construct their sense of self.

The Mercy Home

The Mercy Home was opened by a religious order in the 1990s, about a decade before this study began. There is a parallel men’s facility, opened forty years earlier and serving three times as many men. The Mercy Home was created out of a recognition of the growing numbers of women being incarcerated and the need to provide services for them. The initial location was in a large building in a residential area on the South Side of Chicago. Angela, who first moved to the South Side location, described her trip there: “I remember just walking up and down the street just thinking, because nobody in the neighborhood knew where the Mercy Home was. And when I got off the bus, the bus driver said, ‘It’s over there on the corner.’ So, it had this brick wall and it was real tall, so you couldn’t see what was on the other side. I was like, okay, how do I get in there? I went on the other corner and they didn’t know where the Mercy Home was. Since they didn’t know what I was talking about, I asked one of them if I could use their phone. I called them and they said, ‘You’re right here.’”

Several years later, because of conflicts with the building owners over maintenance, the Mercy Home moved into adjoining townhouses on the West Side of the city, in a building reportedly owned previously by a major drug dealer. The building was redeveloped and transformed into a sixteen-bed halfway house. The West Side location was as discreet and low profile as the earlier location had been. A small plaque near the front door was all that marked it as a halfway house, and it blended in with the surrounding housing stock. From a distance, it looked like a private residence and the residents and staff likewise kept a low profile, rarely spending leisure time outside or in groups.

Both the old and new locations were in areas with high rates of crime and large numbers of returning prisoners (La Vigne et al. 2003). The new location was in a gentrifying area on the Near West Side. It was near both areas of high drug use, with which many of the women were intimately familiar, and new private housing developments and recreational facilities. The immediate area was quiet, though it was within a short walk or drive of areas with an active street life. Some women were wary of staying there because of its location and their connections to area drug markets, although many also appreciated the quiet and peaceful neighborhood.

A house manager or a secretary sat at a reception desk in the front lobby and buzzed residents and visitors in. Residents filled out a log with their destinations and times in and out; visitors also signed in and out. To the left of the reception area was a lounge/smoking room, where many of the women spent their free time. The room contained mismatched sofas and chairs, a TV, and videos. The women were allowed to smoke, since, according to the director, “you can’t expect them to give up everything.” Also on the first floor was a library with a small collection of books, the office of the executive director, and a meeting room in which most of the group meetings were held. The second and third floors contained staff offices and resident rooms, with a shared phone in the hallway. A kitchen was located in the basement; a staff cook prepared many of the meals and the women prepared their own meals when the cook was not working. The building was well maintained and clean, with a slightly institutional feel.

Getting to the Mercy Home

About three hundred women stayed at the Mercy Home during its first decade in existence. Almost all of them had a history of substance use; most also had extensive criminal histories. The program was voluntary; women must choose to come there on their own and it was never a condition of probation, parole, or supervised release. Most first heard of the Mercy Home when in prison, either through inmates who were former residents or through prison program staff. Others knew of it because family members had stayed there. The women had to apply, and the program director interviewed prospective residents, looking for signs they were sincere about wanting to change. Beyond their knowledge of the Mercy Home and their ability to demonstrate to the program director that they wanted to change, their acceptance was contingent on timing—a bed had to be available at the time the woman was being released from the penitentiary.

While there were few formal criteria for entry, the Mercy Home typically excluded women with histories of arson, extensive records of behavioral problems in prison, records of child abuse, or extreme cases of mental illness. These issues were of concern because of the group nature of the house and the possible impact on the safety of the residents and staff. Children were not allowed to stay at the Mercy Home; however, most of the women did have children, who could visit. Women who engaged in drug use, criminal activity, or excessive violations of house rules may be asked to leave.

Their first milestone—tied to the emphasis on women choosing to stay there—was arriving at the halfway house of their own accord when expected, immediately after their prison release. Gertrude, a resident in the late 1990s, described this process:

Gertrude: [The program director] wasn’t really hard core or any of that. She just had rules that worked. But she suggested that after leaving prison, on your day out, they give us fifty dollars and to use that fifty dollars to get on the train, to get a cab outside the Amtrak station and come straight to the Mercy Home with it. Don’t go to McDonald’s. Don’t go to Payless. Don’t go shopping. Don’t go to your boyfriend’s. None of that. She knew what time we were leaving, the girls that were coming in. She knew what time we were leaving the prison, what time the train left, and what time it arrived in Chicago. The information that she gathered was important because she needed to know about the commitment we were making and whether we were serious enough to do what the rules were. We got there and for the first week there was no contact with people. Our family and friends couldn’t come see us.

After passing the milestones of arriving and being in the house for a week, they began acquiring privileges.

In my interviews with the women, many mentioned a desire for a new way of life. Many of the women described themselves as physically and emotionally tired and old, regardless of their current chronological age. Heidi, who at twenty-eight was the youngest participant, described herself as “getting old,” and said that she changed “because I got tired of being who I was. I was selfish. You know, I didn’t care. I was coldhearted when I was out there because I just used and I didn’t care about people.” Similarly, Sugar said that this time was different because “this time I’m thirty years old and I have absolutely nothing, as far as material things. I don’t have a place to stay. I have hardly any relationships. It’s been like that my whole life, though. I’ve never had any real roots or any real lasting relationships. Just the lifestyle that I led, I was tired of it.” Sheila described her reasons for coming to the Mercy Home: “What made me decide to come here is my cousin [Adena] told me about the place. I knew I wasn’t going to go back to prison. I was going to give myself a chance. I’ve been incarcerated three times and I’m in the age in my life where I need to change. You know, because I’m not getting younger; I’m getting older. I need to get things together before it’s too late. So I decided to give myself a chance and work this program.” Sheila felt, at age forty-eight, that she was too old to continue living the life she had been.

Many of the women cited the opportunity for a change in environment as a benefit and a motivation. Sweetness decided while incarcerated that “I didn’t want to, uh, go back to live the lifestyle I was living, that I wanted to change my life for the better and do something different altogether this time. I wanted to be in a different environment, period.” Typically, they framed their desire to change as connected to their families, but ultimately self-driven. They wanted to do right by their parents, siblings, and children, prove they could change, and strengthen relationships. Usually, this was not driven by an ultimatum, though occasionally they were pressured by family or loved ones to make a change. For example, Danielle came to the halfway house after her fourth attempt at drug treatment. This time was different, she said, because “part of it was because my family had told me, ‘It’s on.’” That they made this choice signaled to family members that “this time is different” and that the women were serious about changing their lives.

The women stayed for an average of eight months. This length of stay was in constant negotiation with funding agencies. Funders wanted to serve as many people as possible, pushing the halfway house to have women move on after four months, while the administrators wanted women to stay until they believed they were ready to live on their own. At a minimum, women were allowed to stay, barring behavioral problems or drug relapse, until they had alternative stable housing (often single-room-occupancy buildings and other supportive housing programs) and a source of income. According to an internal evaluation, they had a 50 percent completion rate, meaning that half the women who stayed there remained until they had housing and a source of income. Approximately 17 to 20 percent of the women eventually returned to state prison.3

Fostering Social Mobility

The Mercy Home helps meet the immediate needs of women exiting prison. Two of the most immediate and talked about needs are employment and housing (see, for example, Travis 2005), and the halfway house helps with both. Residents live there, rent-free, until they secure stable and affordable housing elsewhere. The women often later moved into other subsidized housing programs, most often paying a third of their income in rent, and most residents were employed before leaving the halfway house. The Mercy Home provides computers to create and update resumes, job search guidance, longstanding relationships with employers willing to hire those with a criminal record, and contacts at education and employment programs. They provide more resources than many other programs, which many of the residents had experienced firsthand. Shelly detailed the differences between the Mercy Home and other halfway and recovery homes:

AL: What appealed to you about it [the Mercy Home]? What made you want to come here?

Shelly: Well, number one, it’s a place for women coming home from the penitentiary back out into society, that are starting all over again. This is my third time coming home from the penitentiary. I have experienced other recovery homes that they have and what appealed to me was that you are able to stay here and save your money. They help you with housing, they have different, more, resources than the other places have for women that was incarcerated. The other places that I’ve been to it’s like after the state gets through paying for you to be there they want you to get out and find a job and pay like three hundred, four hundred dollars a month for rent. For rent, which, you’re not going to stay there for the rest of your life so you need to save money so you can get out there on your own. Most of the jobs were minimum wage so I didn’t see how that was helping women starting out all over again. It kind of like puts you in a bind.

In addition to benefitting from the support of transitional housing, the women are taught to take a long view of their reentry. Much of their time is spent in structured activities, first predominantly in the home and increasingly in community-based programs and jobs. This includes not only drug treatment, self-help groups, and individual counseling but also time in an alternative high school, job training programs, and employment. The connections they develop at the Mercy Home serve as “hooks for change” and social capital that also may be useful in fostering future opportunities (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph 2002). These aspects of the program are frequently mentioned as strengths of the house. Sheila, for example, described what she liked best about her experience at the Mercy Home: “Oh, the meetings and stuff that they have. You know, it’s a drug program but we have life skills. But it’s a lot more things. You can get your education down here. I’ve got my high school diploma but that’s been thirty years ago. I need to go back. I want to be going back to school.” Many of the women enrolled in a GED or alternative high school program and then college. Education was encouraged by the staff and highly valued by many of the women. The halfway house staff and volunteers also helped the women negotiate educational institutions, through their connections with GED programs and alternative high schools, their familiarity with financial aid and application forms, and computer access to complete the forms. Several of the women had defaulted student loans from previous attempts to go to college, and staff helped negotiate these barriers.

Many women enjoyed the pursuit of education, both because of the challenge and because they felt they were working toward a more successful and stable future. The opportunities available to the women at the Mercy Home were primarily targeted to women with low levels of prior education and work experience. For the small number of women who had achieved higher levels of either prior to their incarceration, there was little available, and these women were often dissatisfied with the available services and programs. Carolyn, for example, had a master’s degree and a long professional career before she went to prison. She felt that job-training services and the entry-level jobs that were available to the women were unhelpful for someone with her background.

Carolyn: Prison is after. You know, so, you don’t even know. It’s after you get out is where the struggle is, because you can’t just pick up. See, the work I do is certified and licensed, and that’s cut off. . . . I’m angry. It’s [prohibited jobs] like a list, two pages. I was going to get a Ph.D. in social work. And I thought F-you. I can’t work in a health care facility. There’s so many places you can’t work. So, come on. If there are, how can you get in? You get in by somebody knowing you, not by the education you got. I got enough paper [credentials]. Why is it that I have to get more paper? You know, I got enough paper. I got enough life experiences but the people that write the laws, they just closed it off. I didn’t realize, I didn’t have any idea of what was coming after [prison]. . . . So it’s designed to hurt you forever.

The administrators recognized the struggles of people like Carolyn. They believed that one group who tended not to succeed were those with higher education, who had a job and an apartment before, because these women were unwilling to accept their current circumstances and “don’t want to take responsibility for what happened to them.” An alternative explanation is that they are more acutely aware of the structural constraints they face and more quickly reached a ceiling to the opportunities available to them. Carolyn had long since achieved many of the firsts—degrees and jobs or careers—that the other women were working toward. While many of the barriers Carolyn faced apply to all of the women, she was one of the few to frame her experiences in terms of structural constraints and barriers. In part, this may reflect her pre-incarceration educational and professional accomplishments, which were unusually high among Mercy Home residents and among incarcerated populations. At the same time, the women at the Mercy Home are taught to take an individual view of their problems, a framework I turn to later in this chapter.

Daily Life at the Mercy Home

In the Mercy Home, life is “hectic” as the women participate in numerous groups and activities. They are in structured activities for most of their days and into the evenings. In the early days of their stay, they spend most of their time in home-based activities, groups, and classes and in off-site outpatient drug treatment. Shorty D described the classes and programs as helping her become more responsible, “giving me a stable foundation, you know, to be able to stay sober and focus on society and life terms.” Marie credited the structure with making her a better person. She said that she changed because of “the structure. The different programming: self-esteem, employment. Just a lot of programming. The women’s issues, individual counseling. Just a lot of different things and the programming that they had.” These are common explanations the women give of the benefits of the Mercy Home: the Mercy Home exposes them to hooks for change and to different perspectives on their lives and choices.

Over time, they gain increasing freedom of movement and individualized activities. Once they finish outpatient drug treatment, the women seek employment. Most women do find work, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. Becoming an Ex-Offender
• Part II. The Social Context of Reentry
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Respondent Characteristics
• Appendix B: Research Methods
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author
• Read More in the Series