Book review: Keesha Middlemass, Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry and Bruce Western, Homeward: Life in the Year after Prison
| Author | Beth M Huebner |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619858442 |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
858442TCR0010.1177/1362480619858442Theoretical CriminologyBook review
book-review2019
Theoretical Criminology
2019, Vol. 23(4) 563 –577
Book reviews
© The Author(s) 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619858442
DOI: 10.1177/1362480619858442
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Keesha Middlemass, Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry, New
York University Press: New York, 2017; 283 pp.: 9780814770627, $30.00 (pbk)
Bruce Western, Homeward: Life in the Year after Prison, Russell Sage Foundation: New York,
2018; 234 pp.: 0871549557, $29.95 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Beth M Huebner, University of Missouri-St Louis, USA
The dramatic increase in the use of prisons over the past three decades, also deemed mass
incarceration, has been well documented. With the rise in imprisonment comes a con-
comitant growth in the number of individuals released to the community. Although there
is a wealth of quantitative studies on the transition from prison to community and recidi-
vism more specifically, much remains to be learned about how individuals experience
reentry. The lived experiences of individuals returning home from prison are considered
in two recent books, including Keesha Middlemass’ Convicted and Condemned: The
Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry and Bruce Western’s Homeward: Life in the
Year after Prison. These books help fill a void in the literature and describe how the
structure of laws, historical discrimination, entrenched poverty, and violence influence
the transition home.
Middlemass and Western draw upon the narratives of a sample of men and women
who have served time in prison. In Homeward, Western paints a nuanced, dynamic pic-
ture of the challenges individuals face coming home, deepening our understanding of life
following incarceration. He uses data from the larger Boston Reentry Study, which
includes interviews with 122 individuals released to Boston, Massachusetts between
2012 and 2014. His research is unique in that he provides a longitudinal account of expe-
riences during the first year home based on narrative data collected during five discrete
interviews. Although the research design is labor and resource intensive, longitudinal
and qualitative research are essential for documenting and understanding the dynamic
nature of the reentry process. The methodology section could be used as a primer for
those who seek to conduct research on hard-to-reach populations as the study boasts a
90% retention rate, no small feat for work of this type. Strengths aside, a methodological
appendix that details the sample selection process...
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