Academic literature on the topic 'Disenfranchisement of formerly incarcerated people/returning citizens'

Choral singing in prisons can help incarcerated individuals identify as returning citizens instead of felons. Shadd Maruna argues that while many legal and penal rituals exist to convince individuals to identify as “offenders,” few such rituals are in place to reconnect formerly incarcerated people to identify as community members outside of prisons. Maruna describes successful reintegration rituals as symbolic and emotive, repetitive, community-based, and infused with a dynamic of challenge and achievement; they give form to political and social processes that enable successful reentry. I maintain that choral singing models positive reintegration rituals that promote prosocial connections between returning citizens and the societies to which they are restored.

As a nation that has always touted its democratic principles, the United States of America restricts citizens’ right to vote. Voter disenfranchisement laws particularly silence the voices of formerly incarcerated individuals. These laws often restrict or make it harder for formerly incarcerated Americans to vote in federal and state elections. Individuals who have fully completed their sentence continue to face voting obstacles beyond prison that non-incarcerated Americans do not encounter. These laws hamper individuals who have completed their sentences and discriminate against the rights of formerly incarcerated people. This article questions why formerly incarcerated individuals are not eligible to enjoy the same voting rights as their fellow Americans. To combat this unjust treatment, this article proposes an original super-statute: The Voting Rights Restoration Act. This novel proposal ensures that formerly incarcerated individuals will be respected under the law as equal citizens of the United States.

Formerly incarcerated people, who I will hereafter refer to as “returning citizens”, struggle when reentering society as their criminal record follows them around. In the age of big data and algorithms, finding information about someone’s criminal past is often as simple as typing their name into a google search. Yet there has been little focus on understanding the consequences of big data and algorithmic decisions for everyday people, and how they live with and make sense of these systems. Drawing upon in-depth interviews, I ask: In what ways does the visibility of information about returning citizens’ criminal record as it appears on search engines impact their lives? What strategies (if any) do they use to manage their criminal record in search? Findings explore the difficulties that returning citizens' face in reentering a technologically-driven world that they do not necessarily know how to navigate, which has various consequences in their lives. Yet at the same time, returning citizens find ways of adapting and resisting these systems, with varying degrees of success. Ultimately, these findings add to critiques about the prison-industrial complex and how our reliance on big data and algorithmic systems can perpetuate unequal and colonial power dynamics.

AbstractThis study examines how the re‐entry process is related to structural barriers in the community and to motives for engaging in illegal behavior—two key risk factors for recidivism. We analyzed survey data collected on perceptions of community re‐entry, employment opportunities, neighborhood violence, and illegal behavior motives from 379 formerly incarcerated and street‐identified Black‐American community members residing in Wilmington, Delaware (Mage = 32.3/8.9 years old; 77.0% men; 100% Black) by employing Street Participatory Action Research (Street PAR) methodology. We found that negative perceptions of re‐entry correlated positively with (i) hardship caused by structural barriers in the community, specifically blocked employment opportunities and neighborhood violence, and (ii) motives for engaging in illegal behavior. Notably, the link between negative perceptions of re‐entry and motives for illegal behavior became significantly weaker when the influence of structural barriers on these individual‐level factors was included in a multivariate model. Results suggest negative views of the re‐entry process reflect the resource‐scarce and stressful environments people are living in, and structural barriers can account for the relationship between negative re‐entry experiences and why individuals are motivated to engage in illegal behavior. Findings underscore the importance of improving the economic conditions of communities with high numbers of returning citizens.