Incarceration represents an important change in the life course that can affect individuals'health and well- being, that of their families, and that of their communities. Over the last two decades, the number of individuals incarcerated in prisons and jails in the United States has risen dramatically. The large number of individuals exiting prison every year represents an important demographic phenomenon that has received relatively little attention from researchers, despite renewed interest among policy makers in integrating former prisoners back into society. Many of these ex-prisoners are returning to very disadvantaged neighborhood environments. Neighborhoods with high unemployment, poverty and crime rates are likely to have fewer resources that address the health and economic needs of returning prisoners, exert lower levels of social control over former prisoners, and present former prisoners with greater opportunities to return to substance use. Still, very little is known about where people live when they leave prison, how often they move, or which former prisoners experience """"""""upward"""""""" residential mobility. Securing stable housing is one of the most important challenges for returning prisoners, yet no prior study has examined the residential mobility or living arrangements of released prisoners. The proposed research involves assembling administrative data through a unique arrangement with the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) and prospectively analyzing the neighborhood contexts and living arrangements of returning parolees. This research would fill an important gap in the literatures on residential mobility, neighborhood context, and prisoner reentry, which have largely ignored the neighborhood contexts of the returning prisoner population.
The specific aims are as follows: (1) To assemble, clean, geocode, and merge data from three sources on a one-third sample of parolees released from Michigan prisons in 2003: (a) prospective, spatially-referenced MDOC administrative records, (b) tract-level contextual data from both MDOC administrative records and the U.S. Census, and (c) Michigan Unemployment Insurance records. (2) To understand the social and institutional processes that sort returning parolees into different (a) neighborhood environments and (b) living arrangements (e.g., living alone, with a spouse, with other family, in a drug treatment center, or in a homeless shelter) upon their release from prison. (3) To understand the social and institutional processes that shape the residential mobility trajectories of returning parolees. The proposed project is exploratory in that it is the first to assemble and analyze a rich set of administrative records on individual parolees and to link these records with data on neighborhood context, a complex task that requires the time and expertise to code and verify information reported in parole agent case notes. It is also developmental in that it represents the first step in a larger trajectory of research examining the social conditions that affect the health and well-being of returning prisoners, a particularly vulnerable population.
Incarceration represents an important change in the life course that can affect individuals'health and well- being, that of their families, and that of their communities. Very little is known about the population of returning prisoners, where they live, how often they move, or how their neighborhoods shape their social and economic outcomes. The proposed project will examine the role of criminal justice contexts and demographic background factors in shaping the neighborhood environments and residential mobility of a sample of returning parolees. The data we would assemble would also allow us to develop a future proposal analyzing the health outcomes and mortality of returning parolees.
| Lee, Keunbok; Harding, David J; Morenoff, Jeffrey D (2017) Trajectories of neighborhood attainment after prison. Soc Sci Res 66:211-233 |
| Harding, David J; Siegel, Jonah A; Morenoff, Jeffrey D (2017) Custodial Parole Sanctions and Earnings after Release from Prison. Soc Forces 96:909-934 |
| Herbert, Claire W; Morenoff, Jeffrey D; Harding, David J (2015) Homelessness and Housing Insecurity Among Former Prisoners. RSF 1:44-79 |
| Harding, David J; Morenoff, Jeffrey D; Herbert, Claire W (2013) Home is Hard to Find: Neighborhoods, Institutions, and the Residential Trajectories of Returning Prisoners. Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci 647:214-236 |
