Book review: David J Harding, Jeffrey D Morenoff and Jessica JB Wyse, On the Outside: Prisoner Reentry and Reintegration
| Author | Ashleigh LaCourse |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619887882 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews 715
Instead he observes only that many western states either purport to be liberal or that they
demonstrate the general features associated with a liberal polity; he then notes that the
problem is those states do not live up to expectations. Yet, for some readers, Hunt’s book
may point in the opposite direction, illustrating why liberalism may not be the best philo-
sophical approach to police reform, or to contemporary political life generally. Indeed, if
a modestly reprised framework of Lockean prerogative is the path to retrieving liberal-
ism in policing, it also demonstrates the limits of liberalism that render it a framework
that is ill-fitted to those exigent circumstances that are the very stuff of policing.
Nonetheless, Hunt’s approach is valuable and novel. Indeed, where many focus on the
transgressions of police power relative to some scheme of government, Hunt instead
centers his analysis on a conception of the policed and, in doing so, reminds us that ideas
about personhood are at stake in conversations about police reform. As a result, The
Retrieval of Liberalism in Policing lends itself to two disparate interest groups. On one
hand, for readers of an analytical bent or sympathetic to the project of political liberal-
ism, Hunt’s book offers a thorough account of how a return to first principles might alter
the practice of policing. On the other, for readers of a critical persuasion, Hunt’s book
may serve as an instructive starting point for deconstructing the promises and pitfalls of
liberalism for police reform.
References
Dworkin R (1977) Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Friedman B (2017) Unwarranted: Policing without Permission. New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux.
Fuller L (1969) The Morality of Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Locke J (1988 [1689]) Two Treatise of Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rawls J (1999) The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Raz J (1979) The Authority of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
David J Harding, Jeffrey D Morenoff and Jessica JB Wyse, On the Outside: Prisoner Reentry and
Reintegration, The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 2019; 304 pp.: 9780226607641,
$30.00 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Ashleigh LaCourse, Michigan State University, USA
The era of mass incarceration has brought about not only unprecedented numbers of
individuals being incarcerated in United States’ jails and prisons, but also unprecedented
numbers of individuals being released from these institutions each year. This process has
led to a large influx of released individuals to largely resource-poor communities, where
what little reentry resources exist are already highly taxed. In their book, On the Outside:
Prisoner Reentry and Reintegration, David Harding, Jeffrey Morenoff, and Jessica Wyse
explore the complicated process of reintegration into society post-prison and the difficul-
ties individuals face when returning to particularly resource-scarce communities. Their
overarching goal is to show that:
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