Removing the Yard Face: The Impact of the Carceral Habitus on Reentry and Reintegration.

摘要

The dissertation is a study of the ways in which people come to embody the prison and the impact that this embodiment has on reentry and reintegration outcomes. It is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Career Development class run by an agency that serves formerly incarcerated individuals. The participants in the class were observed as they attempted to consciously alter the carceral habitus..;The research methodology is grounded in phenomenology, reflexive sociology and the extended case method. Participant observation, phenomenological interviews and content analysis were used as investigative tools.;The study establishes the presence of a carceral habitus, the embodiment of the perceptual frameworks necessary to negotiate the prison. Inmate interpersonal violence is found to contribute to the carceral habitus and significantly impact reintegration. The impact of the prison on formerly incarcerated individuals' understandings of time, agency and control is investigated as are the strategies that they use to manage time and threats to identity. Understandings of time and agency vary depending upon facility type, sentence length, and the availability of lifers to assist in socialization in the prison routine.;The study also investigates that the ways in which conceptions of race and ethnicity interact with symbolic violence in the Career Development to produce a responsibilized subject who is "willing to participate in the racialized forms of deference necessary for participation in the secondary labor market. The concept of the "hustle" and its meaning in prison, the neighborhood and reentry are also investigated. Hustling informs and shapes the carceral habitus by shaping the outlines of the field in which the formerly incarcerated person participates. Individuals who are better at hustling in the context of the neighborhood and the prison are found to have better outcomes outside of the prison.