I do what I’m told, sort of: Reformed subjects, unruly citizens, and parole
| Author | Robert Werth |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480611410775 |
| Published date | 01 August 2012 |
| Date | 01 August 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
410775TCRXXX10.1177/1362480611410775WerthTheoretical Criminology
Article
Theoretical Criminology
16(3) 329 –346
I do what I’m told, sort of:
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Reformed subjects, unruly
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480611410775
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citizens, and parole
Robert Werth
Quinnipiac University, USA
Abstract
Although parole and the processes of prisoner reentry have received considerable attention,
how individuals on parole respond to the State’s efforts to regulate their conduct and
govern their personhood remains under theorized. Drawing from ethnographic research
with individuals on parole, this article examines how parolees navigate the social control
inherent in this penal practice. Parole entails both productive and repressive power;
responsibilizing and de-responsibilizing elements. The parole agency’s efforts to govern
up-close—through supervision and regulation of everyday conduct—are frequently met
with subversion, resistance, and hostility, while efforts to govern-at-a-distance are more
productive. In general paroled subjects reproduce the injunction to transform their lives,
becoming committed to ‘going straight’, ethical reformation, and responsible citizenship.
This ‘reformed subjectivity’ guides how individuals enact parole, but does not reflect
subjection or their full acquiescence to penal power. Rather, by engaging selectively with
the rules, they render their conditions of parole malleable. These individuals on parole are
committed to going straight but doing so, as much as possible, on their own terms. In this
way, the reformed subjectivities they display both reflect and resist penal power.
Keywords
community penalties, governance, parole, regulation, reintegration, subjectivity
Introduction
Parole enables the supervision and regulation of individuals released from prison and
is meant to facilitate their reentry into the community. Parole represents a liminal position;
Corresponding author:
Robert Werth, Quinnipiac University, Department of Sociology, College of Arts & Sciences I, 275 Mount
Carmel Avenue, Hamden, CT 06518-1908, USA
Email: Robert.Werth@quinnipiac.edu
330
Theoretical Criminology 16(3)
no longer incarcerated, paroled subjects reside in the community but remain subject to
penal custody and regulation.1 Individuals are supervised by the parole agency and must
comply with formal parole conditions. These conditions, as techniques for governing
‘free’ subjects, entail a variety of detailed prescriptions and proscriptions. Reentering the
community and successfully discharging parole proves difficult for many and approximately
40 percent of parolees in the USA are returned to prison (Grattet et al., 2008).2 Utilizing
ethnographic methods, this article examines how a small group of individuals on parole in
California experienced this liminal state and responded to the regulation and social control
inherent in this penal practice.
A growing body of scholarship explores how penal interventions, including parole,
operate as techniques of regulation and governance. Work in the vein argues that carceral
and community punishments require penal subjects to be governable and obedient, while
simultaneously promoting autonomy and enterprising self-management (Bosworth, 2007;
Hörnqvist, 2007; Turnbull and Hannah-Moffat, 2009). Penal practices, authors suggest,
encourage normalization through techniques of responsibilization and governance at-a-
distance, presenting ethical self-reformulation as the key to social reintegration (Bosworth,
2007; Rose, 1999, 2000). Turnbull and Hannah-Moffat (2009) specifically examine how
parole conditions apply both repressive and productive penal power, simultaneously
stimulating and limiting autonomy (see also Hörnqvist, 2007). As they demonstrate,
although parole governance incites self-management and self-policing, it also regulates
freedom and constructs parolees as unprepared for prudent self-governance.
This rich scholarship has expanded our understanding of how the subject position of the
prisoner and/or parolee is constituted. Yet how individuals negotiate this fractured subject
position—and the State’s attempts to animate and constrain conduct—remains under theo-
rized. This article aims to fill this gap. In it, I argue that parole elicits paradoxical and counter-
intuitive responses from those subject to it. The parole agency’s efforts to govern up-close,
through supervision and regulation of everyday conduct, are frequently met with subversion,
resistance, and hostility, while efforts to govern-at-a-distance are more productive. The
paroled subjects I worked with had seemingly accepted the injunction to transform their
lives, and appeared committed to ‘going straight’, ethical reformation, and responsible citi-
zenship. This ‘reformed subjectivity,’ as I term it, however, did not signal their full subjection
or acquiescence to penal power. Rather, the reformed subjectivities they displayed both
reflected and resisted penal power. Individuals thus evinced a commitment to being ‘good’,
reformed parolees while they were agentively engaging with (and sometimes subverting)
parole governance. By and large, the parolees I interviewed self-governed in accordance
with a ‘spirit’ of deference to the law, without necessarily fully desisting from crime or
complying with their formal parole conditions. By engaging selectively with these rules,
they rendered the conditions of their parole malleable. They were not passive objects of
penal regulation or power, but active co-producers of their parole experience.
Methodology
This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork with 24 individuals on parole in the State
of California. Fieldwork took place over the course of nine months: an initial period of
five months in 2006 and a second period of four months in 2008. Data collection consisted
Werth
331
of interviews and participant observation. Research participants were interviewed at least
two times; many participated in five or more interviews. Observations were conducted
throughout the period of fieldwork in various settings, including in people’s homes, as
they went about daily activities, traveling to and from parole offices, and while attending
self-help or assistance programs.
I selected participants through purposive and snowball sampling strategies with the goal
of obtaining a diverse sample in relation to past experience with parole, age, gender, racial
and ethnic background, and socio-economic status. This goal was largely met. Participants
included 17 men and seven women, their race and ethnicity broadly reflected the larger
California prison population. They ranged in age from 22 to 64. Individuals varied in rela-
tion to whether or not they had been sentenced to parole previously, to how much time
remained on their parole sentence, and to their supervision level.3 Research participants
resided in various—urban, suburban, and rural—locations throughout Southern California,
and no one shared the same parole agent.
There was little divergence among the group in socio-economic terms. Nearly half were
searching for work and often depended on family members, friends, or, in some cases,
governmental assistance for temporary financial support and housing. Even among those
with employment, most lived ‘paycheck to paycheck’ and were near or below the poverty
line. As a result, a central concern for virtually everyone was obtaining long-term employ-
ment and becoming financially self-sufficient. Slightly over half lived alone or with non-
family members. The other half lived with a partner, spouse, or other family member. Twelve
had children, although only five were living with them.
It is difficult to claim that the experiences of these 24 individuals are representative of
paroled subjects everywhere. Yet, ethnographic methods—encompassing interviews,
informal conversations, and observation—provided access to the experiences and mundane,
often unseen, practices of individuals. Further, this approach allowed (partial) entrée into
the perspectives, subjectivities, and life-worlds of individuals on parole, a crucial perspec-
tive for understanding how punishment, regulation, and penal power impact—and interact
with—those enmeshed within penal interventions.
Producing responsible, governable subjects
The California Division of Adult Parole Operations (DAPO) supervises paroled subjects
and establishes their parole conditions. Conditions are of two types. General conditions
apply uniformly to all, and include a ban on traveling more than 50 miles without prior
approval and submission to search of person and home without the requirement of a war-
rant. Special conditions may be imposed by DAPO on an individualized basis. The par-
ticipants I worked with were all subject to at least one special condition and many to
multiple ones, including but not limited to: curfews; drug testing; prohibitions against
association with specified others (e.g. ‘known gang members’ or ‘victims’); and manda-
tory participation in treatment programs.
Paroled subjects reside in the community and are expected to manage their own affairs,
yet are subject to surveillance and extensive regulation. Parole is, thus, a transitional state
between liberty and reimprisonment (Blumstein and Beck, 2005), regulated by conditions
that stimulate both productive and repressive forms of power (Hörnqvist, 2007). As Turnbull
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