Incarceration and inmates’ self perceptions about returning home
Introduction
In a recent review of the evidence concerning the impact of imprisonment on reoffending and desistance, Nagin, Cullen, and Jonson (2009) conclude that incarceration has a null or mildly criminogenic effect on future criminal behavior. Yet they acknowledge serious gaps in the accumulated evidence and have called for a research program in specific areas to illuminate our understanding of how prison experiences affect future behavior. Most importantly, and as a contrast to much of the extant research on the impact of imprisonment, research is sorely needed on the ‘black box’ of imprisonment, including inmate's perceptions of reoffending risk and how they perceive their life chances upon reentry.
Nagin's call for a greater understanding of the impact of the prison experience coincides with a flurry of attention in the past decade to the conceptualization of criminal desistance (Paternoster and Bushway, 2009, Giordano et al., 2007, Giordano et al., 2002, LeBel et al., 2008, Maruna, 2001, Laub and Sampson, 2001, Laub and Sampson, 2003). Emerging from the debate over desistance paradigms is a general recognition that individuals’ self-perceptions are an important component of the desistance process, albeit ones that have often been ignored or marginalized in theories of desistance. Unfortunately, most of the recent desistance theorists have not examined the self-perceptions of incarcerated men and women as they embark on the transition from prison to the community. An exception is a British study of recidivism that introduced the concept of hope and optimism among inmates preparing to leave prison (Burnett, 1992, Burnett, 1994, Burnett, 2004). The importance of this pre-release subjective state in the process of desistance was later demonstrated (see Burnett and Maruna, 2004, LeBel et al., 2008), and as will be discussed in the next section, is similar to concepts of identity and self-perception among desisting offenders introduced more recently.
A greater understanding of continuity and change in offending patterns, including the role of prison experiences, necessarily requires attention to the perceptions and lived experiences of individuals. In one sense, people in prison may not be much different than people in the general population. For example, individuals who perceive opportunities for advancement in their careers may take advantage of special training that will improve the quality of their work and lead to greater success. Similarly, how individuals feel and act while incarcerated may affect their attitudes and behavior after release.
There is also a need to identify the specific mechanisms that influence the impact of incarceration. Much of the research reviewed by Nagin and colleagues (2009) takes a ‘black box’ approach to understanding the impact of imprisonment on reoffending with few studies actually focusing on the underlying, individual-level mechanisms involved. These mechanisms may be quite diverse including personal characteristics, the nature of the environment, connections with the outside world, and daily activities such as engaging in rehabilitative programming. Older research on the process of adjusting to prison life (e.g., Adams, 1992, Toch, 1977) has studied mechanisms that contribute to inmate adjustment, including attributes of individuals and their environments. For example, a central point in Adams’ review is that individuals who are cut off from family support have more difficulty adjusting to prison life. Following Adams and other recent research on the role of family support, we explore the impact of family relationships on individuals’ self-perceptions as they prepare to leave prison and return to the community.
Finally, the data necessary to investigate these questions is inevitably different than that used in empirical models estimating the impact on reoffending of receiving a prison sentence or the length of sentence among those incarcerated. Not only are the methodological issues associated with these regression-based approaches substantial (Nagin et al., 2009), but Shadd Maruna argues that, “the fundamental humanity of the individual offender [has been] overlooked” in this research (Polizzi & Maruna, 2010: 184). Thus, it is not surprising that research on offenders’ self-perceptions is nascent and our understanding of continuity and change in criminal behavior remains embryonic. Paternoster and Bushway (2009) suggest intensive interviews with offenders as a way to understand the role of subjective perceptions in patterns of criminality, including desistance. This paper brings such data to bear on this important research question.
This paper expands the emerging literature on offenders’ self-perceptions by exploring prisoners’ self-perceptions as they are preparing to leave prison and return to the community. Following LeBel and his colleagues, we examine self-reported thoughts surrounding this key transition including perceptions of difficulty in establishing a prosocial identity and lifestyle in the community after release, and extend LeBel's results by identifying individual and social factors related to optimism and hope about their return to the community. The following section reviews the pertinent research on offender self-perceptions, much of which has occurred in the context of theories of desistance. This study then utilizes survey data from a representative sample of individuals exiting prison in three states. Findings that describe the relationship between individual and social characteristics and pre-release attitudes are presented. Finally, the importance of considering pre-release self-perceptions in our understanding of successful reintegration will be discussed.
Section snippets
Literature Review
Nagin and his colleague's review of research on the impact of imprisonment on reoffending and proposed research agenda on possible individual-level mechanisms provided the impetus for the current study. Prison may be criminogenic or even beneficial in some instances, but what is missing from the research is an understanding of what mechanisms are involved in the prison experience that contributed to the outcome. In addition, a parallel literature on desistance offers insight into the role of
Participants and Procedures
The data for this analysis were collected as part of a larger longitudinal study of exiting prisoners in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas conducted by the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. The study targeted prisoners serving at least one year in state prison and returning to the city and county areas of Chicago, Cleveland, and Houston within 30–60 days. Potential respondents were identified either through compulsory pre-release programs where prisoners were already convened (Illinois and Texas) or
Discussion and Policy Implications
This study explored the individual, family, and situational factors that may be important in affecting a person's perception about how difficult life would be upon release from prison -- what we and other researchers (Burnett, 1994, LeBel et al., 2008) have called optimism. Based on theoretical suggestions that an individual's ability to change his or her behavior is partially dependent upon self-perceptions (Giordano et al., 2007, Paternoster and Bushway, 2009), and that these perceptions are
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