Prison is not a healthy place. Many who wind up there aren’t in good health to begin with, and their sentences can exacerbate underlying issues. Solitary confinement destroys already fragile minds. Incarceration robs men and women of their youth, beatings and abuse at the hands of officers lead to injury and even death, and violence between inmates is common enough to pass as normal, reports The Atlantic. The underlying reasons for the vulnerabilities of the incarcerated are poorly addressed by policymakers, and there is little understanding of what that vulnerability means in the society that incarcerates more people than any other. Harvard University researcher Bruce Western’s new book, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison could add significantly to that understanding, illuminating the role prisons play for the poor and highlighting the aspects of infirmity that mark the lives of incarcerated people, from birth to death.
A review calls Homeward “a gripping study of the totality of the lives of people reentering society [that] also uncovers the role of the carceral system in breaking bodies and minds.” At the heart of the book is the Boston Reentry Study, a longitudinal survey of 122 people released from Massachusetts prisons near Boston between 2012 and 2014. Western and his colleagues followed people over their first year of reentry, maintaining contact with a notoriously difficult population of people to track. They tracked the cohort through homeless shelters, joblessness, and shifting addresses; through psychiatric hospitals; and, for some participants, through downward spirals into drugs, violence, and additional stints in prison. The book aims to “bear witness to the lives of those held captive in America’s experiment with mass incarceration,” Western writes. In the six months after release, most of the Boston Reentry Study participants were in poverty, leaning on government benefits and family support to survive.