“By bringing together two strands of social science research that are usually treated separately—those on youth transitions to adulthood and incarceration—and by providing careful new data analysis, David J. Harding and Heather M. Harris make an important contribution to our understanding of incarceration, race and poverty in America. Their nuanced portrait of the long-term outcomes observed among incarcerated youth is insightful, and generates major implicationsfor both research and policy.”
—HARRY J. HOLZER, John LaFarge Jr. SJ Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University

The incarceration rate in the United States is the highest of any developed nation, with a prison population of approximately 2.3 million in 2016. Over 700,000 prisoners are released each year, and most face significant educational, economic, and social disadvantages. In After Prison, sociologist David Harding and criminologist Heather Harris provide a comprehensive account of young men’s experiences of reentry and reintegration in the era of mass incarceration. They focus on the unique challenges faced by 1,300 black and white youth aged 18 to 25 who were released from Michigan prisons in 2003, investigating the lives of those who achieved some measure of success after leaving prison as well as those who struggled with the challenges of creating new lives for themselves.

The transition to young adulthood typically includes school completion, full-time employment, leaving the childhood home, marriage, and childbearing, events that are disrupted by incarceration. While one quarter of the young men who participated in the study successfully transitioned into adulthood—achieving employment and residential independence and avoiding arrest and incarceration—the same number of young men remained deeply involved with the criminal justice system, spending on average four out of the seven years after their initial release re-incarcerated. Not surprisingly, whites are more likely to experience success after prison. The authors attribute this racial disparity to the increased stigma of criminal records for blacks, racial discrimination, and differing levels of social network support that connect whites to higher quality jobs. Black men earn less than white men, are more concentrated in industries characterized by low wages and job insecurity, and are less likely to remain employed once they have a job.

The authors demonstrate that families, social networks, neighborhoods, and labor market, educational, and criminal justice institutions can have a profound impact on young people’s lives. Their research indicates that residential stability is key to the transition to adulthood. Harding and Harris make the case for helping families, municipalities, and non-profit organizations provide formerly incarcerated young people access to long-term supportive housing and public housing. A remarkably large number of men in this study eventually enrolled in college, reflecting the growing recognition of college as a gateway to living wage work. But the young men in the study spent only brief spells in college, and the majority failed to earn degrees. They were most likely to enroll in community colleges, trade schools, and for-profit institutions, suggesting that interventions focused on these kinds of schools are more likely to be effective. The authors suggest that, in addition to helping students find employment, educational institutions can aid reentry efforts for the formerly incarcerated by providing supports like childcare and paid apprenticeships.

After Prison offers a set of targeted policy interventions to improve these young people’s chances: lifting restrictions on federal financial aid for education, encouraging criminal record sealing and expungement, and reducing the use of incarceration in response to technical parole violations. This book will be an important contribution to the fields of scholarly work on the criminal justice system and disconnected youth.

DAVID J. HARDING  is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

HEATHER M. HARRIS is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

The sixth biennial issue of reports on the status of organized activities in social work and in related fields, including 83 signed articles prepared by authorities on the topics discussed as well as a directory of national and state agencies, both governmental and voluntary, related to social work.

Presented at the Fifty-Second Congress of the American Prison Association in Detroit, October, 1922, this pamphlet presents a selection of noteworthy plans and illustrations, with special reference to unusual or improved features. The plans selected include state prisons in New York and Alabama and tentative plans for a state prison and a state reformatory, plans for single buildings at two reformatories for women, plans for cottages at two reformatories for boys, and tentative plans for a metropolitan jail designed by the writer with special reference to the needs of Chicago.

HASTINGS H. HART was director of the Department of Child-Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation.

A survey by the Department of Surveys and Exhibits, Russell Sage Foundation, examining the correctional system of Springfield, Illinois, including adult offenders, juvenile delinquents, and the organization of the police department.

ZENAS L. POTTER, Department of Surveys and Exhibits, Russell Sage Foundation

President's address at the Fifty-Second Annual Congress of the American Prison Association, Detroit, Michigan, October 12, 1922.

HASTINGS H. HART was director of the Department of Child-Helping at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Winner of the 2019 Outstanding Book Award from the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section of the American Sociological Association

2018 Choice Outstanding Academic Title 

“Bruce Western, our foremost authority on mass incarceration, has filled in a yawning gap in the research on one of the great banes of our era. Homeward is a thorough and deeply illuminating study on the end-point of mass incarceration—the effort to reintegrate ex-offenders into our society. The challenges outlined in the book should not simply inform our reentry efforts, but should also make us question the American policy of handing down sentences, which, in some profound way, never really end.”

—Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent, The Atlantic

“In Homeward, Bruce Western probes in rich detail the lives of ex-prisoners in their first year of life back on the streets of Boston. He looks unflinchingly at the correlated web of adversities that men and women face in the transition out of prison, especially how violence, drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, and family chaos exacerbate the stigma of a prison record in the reentry to society.  Beautifully written and deeply researched, this book provides an important framework on social and criminal justice.  The implications for policy are profound.”

—Robert J.  Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University

In the era of mass incarceration, over 600,000 people are released from federal or state prison each year, with many returning to chaotic living environments rife with violence. In these circumstances, how do former prisoners navigate reentering society? In Homeward, sociologist Bruce Western examines the tumultuous first year after release from prison. Drawing from in-depth interviews with over one hundred individuals, he describes the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrates how poverty, racial inequality, and failures of social support trap many in a cycle of vulnerability despite their efforts to rejoin society.

Western and his research team conducted comprehensive interviews with men and women released from the Massachusetts state prison system who returned to neighborhoods around Boston. Western finds that for most, leaving prison is associated with acute material hardship. In the first year after prison, most respondents could not afford their own housing and relied on family support and government programs, with half living in deep poverty. Many struggled with chronic pain, mental illnesses, or addiction—the most important predictor of recidivism. Most respondents were also unemployed. Some older white men found union jobs in the construction industry through their social networks, but many others, particularly those who were black or Latino, were unable to obtain full-time work due to few social connections to good jobs, discrimination, and lack of credentials. Violence was common in their lives, and often preceded their incarceration. In contrast to the stereotype of tough criminals preying upon helpless citizens, Western shows that many former prisoners were themselves subject to lifetimes of violence and abuse and encountered more violence after leaving prison, blurring the line between victims and perpetrators.

Western concludes that boosting the social integration of former prisoners is key to both ameliorating deep disadvantage and strengthening public safety. He advocates policies that increase assistance to those in their first year after prison, including guaranteed housing and health care, drug treatment, and transitional employment. By foregrounding the stories of people struggling against the odds to exit the criminal justice system, Homeward shows how overhauling the process of prisoner reentry and rethinking the foundations of justice policy could address the harms of mass incarceration.

BRUCE WESTERN is the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy and Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, and Co-Director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University.

A paper presented at the fifty-first congress of the American Prison Association in 1921, surveying the conditions of 30 of the 52 county jails in Florida at the time.

BERT C. RILEY was director of the General Extension Division of the University of Florida.

Reprinted from the Independent of August 20, 1908, this paper, written by the originator of the whole juvenile court system of the United States, calls for the establishment of playgrounds and juvenile courts around the country in order to combat the increase in crime among youth at the time.

BEN B. LINDSEY presided over the Juvenile Court of Denver, Col.

Published in 1917 in the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, this article presents the legal work and legislation being made to combat usury in the state of Illinois at the time. It includes provisions for a proposed law for meeting the loan shark situation.

EARLE EDWARD EUBANK was professor of sociology, Young Men’s Christian Association College, Chicago.