Liam Martin, Halfway House: Prisoner Reentry and the Shadow of Carceral Care
| Published date | 01 January 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745231158404 |
| Author | Kaitlyn Quinn |
| Date | 01 January 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
program in Seattle that provides intensive case management and services to people
“contending with extreme poverty and unmet behavioral health issues”(152). In the
first iteration of LEAD, police officers referred people to the program whom they
would have otherwise arrested. Over time referrals to LEAD were decoupled from
arrests, demonstrating how policy can change local cultural norms, such as the “policibil-
ity”of homelessness and mental illness (Gascon and Roussell, 2019). However, LEAD
sits precariously atop the urban growth machine. As key constituents, business owners
eventually embraced LEAD as a better response to people they considered public nui-
sances. Yet the program is only sustainable if city leaders forgo profitable property devel-
opment to provide housing for poor people. As such, we might conclude that policies that
favor free-market capitalism and neglect extreme social disadvantage will constrain
attempts to change penal culture.
ORCID iD
Heather Schoenfeld https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2659-2027
Heather Schoenfeld
Boston University, USA
References
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Gascon LD and Roussell A (2019) The Limits of Community Policing: Civilian Power and
Police Accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles. New York, NY: New York
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Murphy J (2015) Illness or Deviance? Drug Courts, Drug Treatment, and the Ambiguity of
Addiction. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Simes J (2021) Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment. Berkeley, CA:
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Liam Martin, Halfway House: Prisoner Reentry and the Shadow of Carceral
Care, New York University Press: New York, NY, 2021; 247 pp. (including
index): 9781479800698, $28.00 (paperback)
Liam Martin’sHalfway House concludes with a simple declaration: “a halfway house
saved Joe Badillo’s life”(p. 209). Some 200 pages earlier we are introduced to Joe as
the gravitational center of this book. Joe is a mixed-race man in his 40s who experienced
a“cycle of confinement spanning two decades of recurring movements in and out, in and
out”(p. 25). From 2012–2015, he lived in a halfway house in the greater Boston neigh-
borhood Martin calls Clearview Crossing. Across nine chapters, Martin offers a moving
Book Reviews 217
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