Doctoral Dissertation Research: Recidivism and Cycles of Incarceration

通常使用大规模的定量研究来研究监禁周期，以确定预测数千人一次再次犯罪的变量。累犯研究表明，监禁、失业和滥用毒品的历史都是重返监狱的强烈预测因素。这项研究将调查推动这些统计模式的过程。研究认为，监狱化(社会化为监狱行为)、经济排斥和吸毒共同创造了累犯的社会逻辑。经济排斥既增加了毒品交易的经济吸引力，也增加了吸毒的心理回报。许多在贫穷的城市社区使用和交易非法毒品的人发现自己被监禁了。与此同时，监禁可能涉及学习技能和知识，为进入毒品交易提供便利，这是街头资本的积累，承诺在街头文化中获得地位和收入。我希望看到前囚犯复制在监狱里学到的习惯和惯例，找到进入劳动力市场的重大障碍，并与增加使用和销售毒品逻辑的限制和机会作斗争。这个项目使用居住在中途之家的人种学研究和对前囚犯的采访来调查人们为什么骑自行车进出监狱。它侧重于这些循环的三个驱动因素：监禁、经济排斥以及吸毒和上瘾。利用通过以前住在房子里的田野工作建立的与前囚犯的现有联系网络，它涉及到在该地点进行进一步的人种学浸入，对以前的参与者进行后续访谈，以及审查经济排斥和吸毒成瘾的过程的专题访谈。通过与重新适应监狱外世界的人一起生活，我能够近距离看到影响前囚犯的一系列偶发事件，并通过对日常巡视和日常活动的详细检查，揭示监禁周期背后的过程。在降低累犯率是社会核心利益的时候，调查人们进出监狱的原因将为正在进行的流行和以政策为导向的讨论提供信息。基于生活在中途之家的民族志研究--许多潜在读者直觉上很感兴趣--可以为将研究结果传播给更广泛的受众，并将有条不紊地进行的社会科学研究注入公共辩论提供一个“钩子”。

Cycles of incarceration are typically investigated using large-scale, quantitative studies to identify variables that predict reoffending across thousands of people at a time. Recidivism research shows that histories of imprisonment, unemployment and drug abuse are all strong predictors of return to prison. This research will investigate the processes driving these statistical patterns. The research contends that prisonization (being socialized into prison-oriented behaviors), economic exclusion and drug use together create the social logic of recidivism. Economic exclusion increases both the financial draw of the drugs trade and the psychological rewards of drug use. Many people using and trading illicit drugs in poor urban neighborhoods find themselves imprisoned. At the same time, prisonization can involve learning skills and knowledge that facilitate entry to the drugs trade, an accumulation of street capital that promises status and income within street culture. I expect to see former prisoners reproducing habits and routines learned in prison, finding significant barriers to entering the labor market, and struggling with constraints and opportunities that increase the logic of using and selling drugs. This project uses ethnographic research living at a halfway house and interviews with former prisoners to investigate why people cycle in and out of prison. It focuses on three drivers of these cycles: prisonization, economic exclusion and drug use and addiction. Leveraging an existing network of connections with former prisoners developed through previous fieldwork living at the house, it involves a further phase of ethnographic immersion in the site, follow-up interviews with previous participants, and thematic interviews examining processes of economic exclusion and drug use and addiction. By living alongside people as they readjust to the world outside prison, I am able to see up close the set of contingencies that play upon former prisoners, and uncover processes underlying cycles of incarceration through detailed examination of daily rounds and routine activities. Investigating why people cycle in and out of prison will inform ongoing popular and policy-oriented discussions, at a time when lowering recidivism is a central social interest. Ethnographic research based on living at a halfway house - intuitively interesting to many potential readers - can provide a "hook" for spreading the research findings to a broader audience, and injecting methodically conducted social science research into public debate.