The System Is Not Broken, It Is Intentional: The Prisoner Reentry Industry as Deliberate Structural Violence

Date01 September 2019
DOI10.1177/0032885519852090
AuthorJennifer M. Ortiz,Hayley Jackey
Published date01 September 2019
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-17LMu2JYtXgIoz/input 852090TPJXXX10.1177/0032885519852090The Prison JournalOrtiz and Jackey
research-article2019
Article
The Prison Journal
2019, Vol. 99(4) 484 –503
The System Is Not
© 2019 SAGE Publications
Article reuse guidelines:
Broken, It Is Intentional:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885519852090
DOI: 10.1177/0032885519852090
journals.sagepub.com/home/tpj
The Prisoner Reentry
Industry as Deliberate
Structural Violence
Jennifer M. Ortiz1 and Hayley Jackey2
Abstract
The prisoner reentry industry (PRI) emerged as a by-product of mass
incarceration, with the stated purpose of helping the formerly incarcerated
reenter society and achieve a new “law-abiding” status. Traditional
criminological studies point to high recidivism rates in the United States as
proof that U.S. reentry fails to rehabilitate offenders. Utilizing data from 57
in-depth semistructured interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals
and 10 interviews with reentry service providers across five states, we posit
that although the PRI purports to rehabilitate offenders, it operates using
mechanisms including parole conditions and fee-based reentry services that
ensure the formerly incarcerated remain trapped in a cycle of failure. Hence,
the PRI is not a broken system. Rather, it is an intentional form of structural
violence perpetuated by the state to ensure the continued oppression of the
most marginalized groups in our society.
Keywords
critical race theory, prisoner reentry industry, reentry, structural violence
1Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN, USA
2Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jennifer M. Ortiz, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Indiana University Southeast, Crestview
Hall 018C, 4201 Grant Line Rd., New Albany, IN 47150, USA.
Email: jmortiz@ius.edu

Ortiz and Jackey
485
Introduction
Beginning in the 1970s, the United States waged a war on drugs which lead
to mass incarceration. Significantly, mass incarceration shifted the prison
demographic profile—from over 70% White in 1950 to nearly 70% Black
and Latino by 1989 (Wacquant, 2001). The “Blackening” of prisons (Miller,
2014) coincided with a shift away from rehabilitation and toward a ware-
housing model of incarceration (Simon, 2010). Prompted by the 1970s tough-
on-crime American ideology, correctional systems abandoned the use of
rehabilitative prison programming. The tough-on-crime ideology was cou-
pled with a shift away from the welfare state (Miller, 2014). Furthermore, the
United States abandoned attempts to address the root causes of crime, opting
instead to use incarceration as a means of regulating or punishing poverty
(Wacquant, 2009). The prison system became a mechanism for erasing those
individuals deemed social problems (Davis, 1998). Abandoning rehabilita-
tion and root causes of crime created a revolving door that ensured our pris-
ons remained at or above capacity levels. The expansion of mass incarceration
in this neoliberal era allowed the government to justify the construction of
more prisons (Ross, 2010).
In the midst of mass incarceration and the shift away from the welfare state,
the United States ushered in the corporatization of punishment (Davis, 1998).
Unable to continue funding their ballooning correctional budgets, states “auc-
tioned” off criminal justice functions to the highest corporate bidder.
Subsequently, the presence of privatized prisons increased exponentially, a trend
that continues today (The Sentencing Project, 2018a). In many states, politicians
came to view privatization as the solution to swelling state budgets and, by
extension, the best means for continuing to manage “disreputable” people.
Today, there are 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States
(Wagner & Sawyer, 2018). More than 95% of these individuals are eventu-
ally released, thereby ensuring a steady flow of people exiting correctional
facilities. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 10,000
individuals are released from U.S. prisons or jails weekly, with an estimated
626,000 individuals released annually (Carson, 2018). This ongoing influx of
“returning citizens” makes reintegrating the formerly incarcerated “one of
the most profound challenges facing American society” (Petersilia, 2003,
p. 1). In response to these large numbers of “returning citizens,” the penal
apparatus has extended its reach through the development of reentry institu-
tions, non-profits, and criminal justice agencies that have become known as
the “Prisoner Reentry Industry” (PRI) (Thompkins, 2010).
In 2007, Congress passed the Second Chance Act (SCA), a bill aimed at
improving prisoner reentry programming by issuing federal reentry grants.

486
The Prison Journal 99(4)
Scholars note, however, that the SCA was symbolic because it did not receive
substantive funding and merely helped the state extend its presence in urban
and poor communities (Miller, 2014). Because law enforcement and other
criminal justice interventions are focused on poor communities, most incar-
cerated individuals come from disadvantaged backgrounds (Wacquant,
2010). Consequently, reentry services are concentrated in disadvantaged
neighborhoods, allowing the state to monitor and control marginalized popu-
lations (Miller, 2014; Wacquant, 2009). Although the PRI purports to focus
on rehabilitation and helping individuals reintegrate into society, it operates
using mechanisms that perpetuate concentrated poverty and disadvantage.
The evolution of our criminal justice system—including the emergence of the
PRI as a form of intentional state violence—can best be understood using a
critical race theory lens.
Theoretical Framework
Critical race theory “challenges the ways in which race and racial power are
constructed and represented in American legal culture, and more generally in
society as a whole” (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995, p. xiiv).
The theory asserts that racism is the natural order of life in the United States
(Asch, 2001). Although the United States’ Constitution claims to provide
equal protection under the law for all citizens, that is not the lived reality for
people of color, especially the Black population. Historically, politicians and
criminal justice officials used the justice system to marginalize and oppress
the Black population. Wacquant (2001) argues that throughout history, the
United States developed various peculiar institutions to manage and control
Black populations. These institutions included slavery, Jim Crow laws, the
ghetto, and prisons. People of color, particularly Black men, have historically
been the targets of these institutions (Alexander, 2011). Each time one pecu-
liar institution failed to control the Black population, the United States devel-
oped a new institution to replace the previous one (Wacquant, 2000). Shifts
in our justice system result from the failure of these peculiar institutions to
control people of color. The abolition of slavery and brief Reconstruction Era
lead to the enactment of Jim Crow laws. When various Supreme Court cases
deemed Jim Crow laws unconstitutional, redlining created Black Belts, which
would become our modern day ghettos. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned
housing discrimination based on race and unintentionally gave rise to the War
on Crime, War on Drugs, and mass incarceration (Wacquant, 2000). These
wars consigned Blacks to a “new” underclass in society: the formerly incar-
cerated. Because the system promotes White supremacy via the subordina-
tion of people of color, we should view the criminal justice system as an

Ortiz and Jackey
487
“instrument for preserving the status quo” (Bell, 1995, p. 302). This article
situates the role of race in reentry within Wacquant’s (2001) historical assess-
ment of social institutions in the United States.
Forever branded as criminals (Foucault, 1979), the formerly incarcerated
are subjected to the countless collateral consequences of a criminal record
that ensure they are relegated to a second-class citizenry (Lerman & Weaver,
2014). Racist laws and policies, particularly drug laws, concentrate law
enforcment in poor communities of color, ensuring racial disparities in incar-
ceration (Clear, 2009). Black men today are six to eight times more likely to
be in prison when compared with their White counterparts (The Sentencing
Project, 2018b). Black boys born in the United States have a 33% chance of
entering a correctional facility in their lifetime, nearly four times the proba-
bility for a White boy (The Sentencing Project, 2018b). These racial dispari-
ties in incarceration ensure that Blacks are disproportionately impacted by
collateral consequences. Pager (2003) found that White men with criminal
records were three times more likely to receive employment offers than their
Black counterparts. Research also indicates that formerly incarcerated Black
men earn lower hourly wages (Johnson & Johnson, 2012) and have lower
lifetime earnings (Taylor, 2016) than White and Latino men. Collateral con-
sequences serve to perpetuate the economic subjugation of an already mar-
ginalized Black population.
In the wake of expanded correctional budgets today, there is a deincarcera-
tion movement in the United States. In 2016, the U.S. prison population
reached its lowest level since 1997 (Carson, 2018). Miller (2014) argues that
the United States is currently in a “carceral devolution,” a process of shifting
carceral authority to the local level....

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT