Cycles of Debt and Punishment: A Symposium on Prisons of Debt: The Afterlives of Incarcerated Fathers

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00328855231200630
• Author: Jason M. Williams,Lynne Haney,Maretta McDonald,Michael B. Mitchell
• Date: 01 November 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Cycles of Debt and

Punishment: A

Symposium on Prisons

of Debt: The Afterlives

of Incarcerated Fathers

Jason M. Williams

1

, Lynne Haney

2

,

Maretta McDonald

3

,and

Michael B. Mitchell

4

Abstract

In the contemporary United States, millions of fathers cycle through the

criminal justice and child support systems—cycles that create new forms

of debt and disadvantage. This symposium discusses those cycles and their

effects on fathers and their families. Through comments on Lynne Haney’s

book, Prisons of Debt: The Afterlives of Incarcerated Fathers, the authors analyze

the criminalization of child support and the ways it complicates reentry after

prison. They engage Haney’s arguments about the causes and consequences

of prisons of debt and her empirical material on men’s struggles as indebted

fathers—or, as Michael Mitchell put it, the book’s insistence on “getting

proximate to human suffering.”

Keywords

reentry, child support debt, incarcerated fathers, race, class, gender

1

Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA

2

New York University, New York, NY, USA

3

University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

4

The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jason M. Williams, Montclair State University Department of Justice Studies, Dickson Hall 326,

1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA.

Email: williamsjas@montclair.edu

Article

The Prison Journal

2023, Vol. 103(5) 567–585

© 2023 SAGE Publications

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00328855231200630

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Introduction

Jason M. Williams

This symposium is the product of a robust and profoundly compelling Author

Meets Critic panel at the March 2023 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences

Annual Conference. The discussion was centered on Lynne Haney’s

acclaimed and award-winning book, Prisons of Debt: The Afterlives of

Incarcerated Fathers. Haney’s masterful study of the daily lives and misfor-

tunes of system-impacted Black men presents a paradigmatic change to how

we conceptualize processes of racialization within the administration of

justice.

Contemporary reentry literature has shown a promising move toward

unearthing what is often hidden by pervasive mechanisms within the admin-

istration of justice that bestow more harm than justice. Some of the earlier

canonical works in this genre do a great job of creating a baseline for why

reentry is crucial to study and include within the criminological enterprise.

Rose and Clear (1998) created a pathway with their highly cited article in

Criminology, creating a new framework to make sense of reentry. They

underscored the role of social capital when analyzing mechanisms of social

control for the formerly incarcerated. In doing so, they examined how

social networks are formed and impacted by one’s status as an ex-offender

f‌inding some credence for social disorganization theory. While this article

does not exclusively unpack the racial implications of reentry and social

control writ large, it underscores some factors tied to race and the prevalence

of racism in the processes of resocialization for returning citizens.

Travis and Visher (2005) published an edited volume that encapsulated all

facets of reentry. This text served as a centerpiece for our understanding of

reentry as a viable academic subject. Before this volume, reentry was

largely foreseen as a subgenre of penology, not popular enough for serious

engagement within the discipline. Travis (2005) would also publish his crit-

ically acclaimed treatise, But They All Come Back Facing the Challenges of

Prisoner Reentry. This work provided a comprehensive outlook on the scope

of issues relating to reentry while also providing tangible solutions to the

myriad of problems reviewed in the book. This was one such text that did

underscore some of the racial elements within reentry. Travis pays some

attention to race by homing in on some of the direct impacts of formerly incar-

cerated people. For instance, he combines the quantitative off‌icial data with

the everyday realities of people who have had to cycle through the system.

Travis paints a vivid picture by touching on employment, public health,

housing, civic identity, and the community. These categories necessitate an

568 The Prison Journal 103(5)