It is notoriously difficult for social scientists to study people who have recently left prison. They move often, don’t have stable phone numbers, rarely hold steady jobs, and often end up back behind bars. Large surveys like the U.S. census are likely to overlook them for these reasons. And scholars who have attempted to follow a smaller group of former prisoners over a discrete period of time have struggled with high rates of attrition, with up to two-thirds of their subjects disappearing before a study ends.
That’s why the Boston Reentry Study, led by three leading scholars — sociologist Bruce Western of Harvard, criminologist Anthony Braga of Rutgers, and Rhiana Kohl of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections — is unique. The scale of the study is small, tracking 122 men and women who were released from state prisons to Boston neighborhoods between 2012 and 2013. But study retention over the course of 12 months, at 90 percent, was unprecedented.
To achieve this, the researchers paid former prisoners and members of their families $50 for each interview and partnered with the state corrections department, police, probation offices, community service organizations, and family members to track the participants’ whereabouts. It was challenging work. One person in the study used 15 different cell phone numbers over the course of the year.
The resulting working papers provide not only data, but an almost literary glimpse into the life histories of incarcerated people, from childhood through prison and beyond. Here’s some of what we learn about the formerly incarcerated population from the Boston Reentry Study. The project’s results will continue to be released, peer reviewed, and published over the coming months and years.
Childhood trauma is off the charts.
[For more of this story, written by Dana Goldstein, go to https://www.themarshallproject...2/meet-our-prisoners]
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