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Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century: Critical Perspectives on Returning Home

Feb 24, 2021 | 5:00 pm

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(From left) Kiesha M. Middlemass, Calvin John Smiley and Joanne Belknap

Roosevelt House is pleased to present a live Zoom discussion of Prisoner Reentry in the 21^st Century: Critical Perspectives of Returning Home, co-edited by Dr. CalvinJohn Smileyand Dr. Keesha M. Middlemass. In this groundbreaking volume, leading scholars, activists, and justice-affected individuals contribute to an exhaustive evaluation of each aspect of the return home for the formerly incarcerated. In doing so, they demonstrate that the various issues impacting reentry are not merely related, but interdependent, and reinforce one another. The co-editors will be in conservation with Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Dr. Joanne Belknap.

Urgent and essential, Prisoner Reentry in the 21^st Century: Critical Perspectives of Returning Home explores the social, communal, political, and policy matters that determine the success of reentry. When individuals are released from prison, their journeys encompass a range of unique challenges, including physical and mental illness, substance abuse, gender identity, complicated family dynamics, the denial of rights, and the inability to voice their experiences. Each of these is considered through the lens of the surging number—now reaching into the millions over the last decade—of formerly incarcerated persons with felony convictions living in the United States.

CalvinJohn Smiley, Ph.D., is a faculty member of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Program and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, where he teaches courses on the sociology of law, race and ethnic relations, and criminal justice policy. With research that spans law enforcement, social justice, social media, popular culture, inequality, and race, his scholarship has appeared in peer-reviewed book chapters and academic journals including The Prison Journal, Race Ethnicity and Education, Punishment & Society, Deviant Behavior, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, and Contemporary Justice Review. He is now writing a book that extends his reentry research and explores the ways men and women navigate the reentry process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas.

Keesha Middlemass, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University and the author of the award-winning Convicted & Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry. With a focus that includes the lived experience of reentry, policy analysis, food insecurity, and the psychological impact of incarceration, her research has appeared in Journal of Economic Development & Social Justice, International Journal of Eating Disorders, Criminal Justice & Behavior, Aggressive Behavior, Clinical Psychological Science, Public Health Nutrition, The Prison Journal, and Punishment & Society. She is now at work on a book examining reentry through a comparative gendered lens.

Joanne Belknap, Ph.D., is a Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado and an intersectional and activist criminologist. The recipient of numerous research, teaching, and service awards, and a former president of the American Society of Criminology, she is the author of The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime, and Justice.