Summary, “A Mixed Bag Of Tricks”: Desistance and Social Care During the Pandemic
*This is a shortened version of a long-term undergraduate research paper, to see the full version and works cited, please visit the following link on my personal website, or email me for a PDF version.
During the course of my life, studies, and this research specifically, I have found that desistance and the journey to desistance, or pursuit of a crime-free life after a pattern of criminal behavior, is muddled with barriers that encourage reoffending, specifically for Black and Latinx individuals. In my work and studies, I was able to observe the struggle for post-incarceration success in one’s rehabilitation, the most influential success being financial stability, which thwarted the “nothing to lose” mentality towards reoffending. Upon the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I went to a protest and during a speech that voiced the fears of the “nothing to lose” mentality and I thought back to that experience and considered the general opportunity cost of desistance during a pandemic when “nothing to lose” might turn into “nothing at all”. My studies have taught me that the United States punitive justice system is one strongly rooted in racism, and the punishment of incarceration is not over when time has been served.
I found myself eager to know more about how the unique circumstances of the pandemic and how the economic relief policies may have institutionally played a role in desistance and where it had gaps. The CARES Act and housing moratorium had provided some of the most universally eligible relief packages that would be, theoretically, the most likely to support formerly incarcerated individuals. However, it would be naive to believe that this policy was made with the formerly incarcerated in mind, but the potential support would be an unintentional benefit. There were ways that a disproportionately large sum of formerly incarcerated were disqualified but being formerly incarcerated wasn’t a disqualifying factor itself. In my full paper I pose the following question: How has the social care policy afforded during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, impacted formerly incarcerated individuals in their journey to desistance and where were its gaps?
I argue that cash assistance and other social care policies during the pandemic aided desistance in the immediate term but failed to address gaps caused by the displacement of criminal incarceration. The information my interviewee, a facilitator at a reentry program, provided explained the policy primarily as a “mixed bag of tricks” when she discussed the role it played for her clients. She emphasized the policy was a necessity for most if not all of her clients, like with many people, but lacked longevity because it demonstrated the lack of financial education caused by displacement from incarceration (see Chart 2 to understand the effects of displacement on the formerly incarcerated).
Over the past couple of months I was able to collect data from a reentry organization. The Storytelling Organization invited me to a graduation ceremony for their first virtual session in addition to allowing me to interview a facilitator with their reentry program, which provided me with a strong understanding of the unique financial burdens that present themselves in the reentry process. My research and observations have demonstrated the ways that people’s lived experience reinforced theory. Laurel provided examples of economic status factors in conjunction with personal identity factors that establishes desistance, which reaffirms the literature that emphasized the importance of these factors interacting with one another. She dissected the economic status factors and how they affect her clients, and by doing so she illustrated the theory about barriers to reentry that prevent financial success. Based on how the clientele of this organization faced their employment and financial needs, Laurel demonstrated how the pandemic may influence the decision making process. She presented the needs that should be addressed for the formerly incarcerated that is backed by theory. In my interview and at the graduation ceremony, I observed how the post-pandemic policies were successful in addressing the immediate needs of the formerly incarcerated. The shortcoming of the policies were the many severe gaps identified as the policy failed to address the long-term needs or the barriers to financial stability that exist among formerly incarcerated individuals.
In several points during my interview with Laurel, she painted me a picture of how the reentry process looks for her clients. She was expressing the reentry process that she had observed countless times from a perspective that most often centered her clients. Her observations illuminated the shortcoming of policy and institutions to care for formerly incarcerated individuals before and during a global pandemic. Before the global pandemic, her clients were incredibly vulnerable to economic oppression, and the pandemic exacerbated aspects of this vulnerability, and policy gaps emphasized the specific burden that displacement by incarceration has on financial skills and maturation. Overall the relief packages were aimed to aid economic recovery to all citizens, but without considering the effect of displacement due to criminal incarceration on financial maturation, policy will not be able to provide this demographic their relief.
The role of this research is not to provide a singular method to increase desistance. Desistance is a multi-causal phenomenon and providing economic benefits will not fully restore justice for formerly incarcerated individuals during their reentry process. The information that I have provided in my analysis is particularly useful in terms of addressing the punitive justice system’s gaps and seeing what can be done now to better serve this population as a supplement to the punitive justice system. With that being said a supplement to the punitive justice system is still punitive justice. The data I am analyzing leads me to ask which policy or action could be taken immediately to best provide justice to the subjects of this research. In the long-term, actions towards abolition and the transition to a restorative justice system should be researched as to how those systems effect desistance, account for peace and justice, and address historical and systemic injustices against Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
