A Life History Perspective on Social Integration after Prison

每年，有超过70万的男女从监狱中释放出来，大部分被释放到贫穷的市中心社区。该提案描述了在波士顿重返研究（BRS）主持下进行的创新分析；这是一项对122名刚被释放到波士顿地区的马萨诸塞州囚犯的纵向调查。该项目将使用BRS访谈——对从监狱释放的男女及其家庭成员进行近700次访谈——来制作小传记，记录BRS调查中每个受访者的生活史。将监禁后一年的住房、就业和家庭关系的定量调查措施与定性生活史叙述相结合，可以对个人传记如何塑造从监狱到社区的过渡进行独特的分析。本研究将探讨社区回归的过程如何与个人的家庭关系、制度化历史及其物质和社会支持来源相关联。尽管这个话题很重要，但对前被监禁者的研究对于传统的定量和定性方法来说是具有挑战性的。基于调查的研究发现，很难从难以接触到的人群中取样，也很难衡量从监狱到社区的过渡过程。定性的实地研究发现，充分反映前监禁人口的巨大异质性是具有挑战性的。该项目将使用近700次访谈的分析转录，为123名BRS受访者中的每一位提供可搜索的叙述性生活史。与之前的定量研究不同，目前的方法将产生更详细的信息，特别是关于早期生活经历和重大生活事件的顺序。与人种学研究不同的是，相对较大的样本量代表了出狱人员的真正多样性，从涉及毒品交易和严重暴力的年轻人，到与毒瘾和精神疾病抗争一生的老年男女。此外，通过将生活史追溯至儿童早期，该项目超越了最近关于囚犯重返社会的许多“定量和定性”工作，将发展经历与从监狱到社区的成人过渡联系起来。该项目有望产生三个更广泛的影响。首先，这项研究将为难以接触到的人群的研究人员提供有用的方法，传统方法可能不太适合这些人群。目前的研究综合了定量和定性方法，提供了大规模的数据收集，有助于理解那些处于社会和经济生活极端边缘的人的生活史和整合过程。第二，犯人重返社会的问题现在也是一个具有关键政策意义的问题。最近几项重大的刑事司法改革努力的重点是前囚犯和社区监督的条件。因此，目前的研究将更广泛地为政策进程和刑事司法改革提供信息。最后，拟议的研究，就像BRS项目一般，是由一个紧密结合的研究团队进行的，主要由学生和其他年轻研究人员组成。该项目的实验室环境提供了一个独特的培训机会，研究人员积极参与研究设计，数据收集和分析的各个阶段。

SES-1424089Bruce WesternHarvard UniversityEach year, over 700,000 men and women are released from prison, mostly to poor inner-city communities. This proposal describes an innovative analysis conducted under the auspices of the Boston Reentry Study (BRS); a longitudinal survey of 122 Massachusetts state prisoners newly-released to the Boston area. The project will use BRS interviews -- nearly 700 interviews with men and women released from prison and members of their family' to produce small biographies recording the life histories of each of the BRS survey respondents. Combining quantitative survey measures of housing, employment, and family relationships in the year after incarceration with qualitative life history narratives allows a unique analysis of how individual biographies shape the transition from prison to community. The research will explore how the process of community return is associated with individuals' histories of family relationships, institutionalization, and their sources of material and social support.Despite the importance of the topic, research on the formerly-incarcerated is challenging for conventional quantitative and qualitative approaches. Survey-based studies find it difficult to sample from a hard-to-reach population and measure the process of transition from prison to community. Qualitative field studies find it challenging to fully reflect the great heterogeneity of the formerly-incarcerated population. The project will use analytical transcription of nearly 700 interviews to produce searchable narrative life histories for each of the 123 BRS respondents. Unlike prior quantitative research, the current approach will yield far more detailed information, particularly about early life experiences and the sequencing of major life events. And unlike ethnographic research, the relatively large sample size represents the real diversity of those leaving prison, from the young men involved in drug dealing and serious violence, to the older men and women who have struggled over a lifetime with drug addiction and mental illness. In addition, by tracing life histories to early childhood, the project goes beyond much of the recent work on prisoner reentry "quantitative and qualitative" by linking developmental experiences to adult transitions from prison to community.The project promises three broader impacts. First, the research will provide methods that can be useful to researchers of hard-to-reach populations for which traditional methods may be poorly suited. The current study synthesizes quantitative and qualitative methods providing data collection at scale that facilitates understanding of the life history and processes of integration for those at the extreme margins of social and economic life. Second, the problem of prisoner reentry is also now a question of key policy significance. Several recent and significant criminal justice reform efforts have focused on former prisoners and the conditions of community supervision. The current research will thus inform the policy process and criminal justice reform more generally. Finally, the proposed research, like the BRS project more generally, is conducted by a closely-knit research team comprised largely of students and other young researchers. The laboratory environment of the project provides a unique training opportunity where researchers are actively involved in all phases of the study design, data collection and analysis.