Social Ties During Incarceration and Community Reentry: A Network Approach to Prison Life, Reentry Preparation, and the Return Home
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Whichard, Corey Logan
- Graduate Program:
- Criminology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 09, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Derek Allen Kreager, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Derek Allen Kreager, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
D. W. Osgood, Committee Member
Richard B Felson, Committee Member
Susan Marie Mchale, Outside Member
Sara Wakefield, Special Member - Keywords:
- Incarceration
Reentry
Social Networks
Prison - Abstract:
- This dissertation focuses on gaining a deeper understand of the role of social relationships in structuring the experiences of male prisoners during incarceration and community reentry. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to explore the extent to which inmate social ties may serve as a means of linking in-prison and post-release experiences. The first chapter provides an overview of past research on the social dynamics of prison life and the salience of interpersonal relationships for reintegration and desistance following prison release. The purpose of the introduction chapter is to situate the dissertation within the literature on incarcertion and reentry, while simultaneously motivating the specific research questions that are addressed in the empirical chapters. The second chapter describes the study design and data sources used to investigate the research questions. Data for this dissertation come from a combination of social network surveys, official prison records, and qualitative interviews. The analyses rely on information from a baseline sample of 137 male prisoners housed in two state correctional facilities within Pennsylvania, as well as a post-release sample of 64 respondents who were successfully reinterviewed during the first few months of community reentry. Because this dissertation relies heavily on social network analysis, the second chapter provides a simple description of the strengths of this method for understanding relational phenomena. The third chapter examines whether respondents’ in-prison relationships to other inmates are associated with their out-of-prison ties to people in the community. I operationalize in-prison ties using a combination of inmate social network measures and survey items, and out-of-prison ties using a variety of measures based on official visitation data. Bivariate analysis indicates that in-prison ties have a significant, negative correlation with out-of-prison ties. To explore potential mechanisms that may account for this correlation, I draw on narrative excerpts from four “ideal type” respondents. The fourth chapter investigates respondent expectations for future relationships measured while they are preparing to leave prison. The goal of this analysis is to understand how soon-to-be-released prisoners anchor their expectations for strong social ties to particular kinds of people as they are readying for reentry, as social capital research shows that strong ties are most likely to be called upon for emotional and material assistance during times of need. Using egocentric network data on each respondent’s “expected” future network, I apply techniques from multi-level modeling to analyze variation in two dimensions of expected relationship strength. Overall, the results indicate that respondents were optimistic about their future social dynamics. The average respondent expected that community reentry would be characterized by warm relationships and a return to family life. Moreover, the regression analyses revealed that respondents expected to have particularly strong ties based on the nature of their relationship with the prospective alter, whether the alter visited them in prison, and the extent to which they viewed the alter as a network kinkeeper. The fifth chapter focuses on what actually transpires during the first few months after respondents leave prison. The purpose of this chapter is to statistically assess the correlates of expected tie actualization, and then supplement these quantitative results using qualitative data wherein respondents themselves describe why they were able to successfully connect with some alters, while other expected relationships failed to manifest. Results showed that about half of the expected relationships were successfully actualized during reentry. Longitudinal analysis indicated that respondents were significantly more likely to successfully reconnect with certain kinds of alters (e.g., mothers, fathers, children), alters who visited them in prison, alters they regarded as network kinkeepers, and alters with whom they expected to have particularly strong ties. Narrative excerpts revealed that respondents were surprised and dissapointed by the interpersonal dynamics of reentry, with many respondents emphasizing that they did not realize how unprepared they were for the reality of social life following prison release. At the end of the chapter, I summarize key themes that emerged during discussions with respondents regarding why they were unable to successfully actualize expected ties.