Unsettling the discourse of punishment? Competing narratives of reentry and the possibilities for change
| Author | Traci Lacock,Sara Steen,Shelby McKinzey |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474511424681 |
| Published date | 01 January 2012 |
| Date | 01 January 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
14(1) 29–50
!The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474511424681
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Article
Unsettling the discourse
of punishment?
Competing narratives
of reentry and the
possibilities for change
Sara Steen
University of Colorado, USA
Traci Lacock
University of Colorado, USA
Shelby McKinzey
University of Colorado, USA
Abstract
In academic and policy circles, there is widespread optimism about the ability of reentry
to change the terms of the punishment debate. In this article, we assess the impact of
the reentry concept on discourse and reform in Colorado through analysis of the
recent work of the Colorado Criminal and Juvenile Justice Commission. We identify
two distinct reentry narratives, which we call the reintegration and recidivism reduction
narratives. The reintegration narrative challenges dominant assumptions about punish-
ment in ways consistent with the rehabilitation model, while the recidivism reduction
narrative stays close to the retributive model. While the reintegration narrative was
clearly present in the Colorado conversation about reform, most of the policy recom-
mendations put forth were driven by the recidivism reduction narrative, in large part
due to concerns about potential public perceptions of the Commission’s work. We
conclude that reentry has not only failed to change the discourse in any significant way,
it has also served to further entrench the retributive framework of punishment.
Keywords
culture of punishment, prisoner reentry, risk assessment
Corresponding author:
Sara Steen, Department of Sociology, UCB 327, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
Email: steen@colorado.edu
Introduction
It is hard to overstate recent interest in prisoner reentry. As Americans have awak-
ened to the financial realities of mass incarceration in an era of budgetary woes,
reformers have invoked the reentry concept to focus attention on what happens
when prisoners are released from prison and ‘come home’ (Petersilia, 2003). In a
policy arena dominated by retributive rhetoric for more than 30 years, Simon
(2005: 496) calls reentry ‘the most promising strategy for reframing the debate
on incarceration in several decades’.
1
Academics and policy-makers share high
hopes for the ability of the reentry concept to change the tenor of the law and
order discourse and, consequently, the realities of the criminal justice system in the
21st century.
The definition of reentry, however, is slippery (Lynch, 2006), and Maruna and
LeBel (2003: 92) aptly characterize it as ‘an initiative in need of a narrative’.
Drawing on Jonathan Simon’s (1993) early work, Maruna and LeBel argue that
the reentry project requires a compelling story that would justify its elevation
within the criminal justice bureaucracy. Because its impact on the discourse and
realities of punishment is largely undocumented, it is impossible to pin down its
narrative, and perhaps still too early to know whether or not it will locate a nar-
rative compelling enough to make headway in the calcified realm of punishment
discourse. In the introduction to his 2005 book But They All Come Back, Jeremy
Travis claims that reentry is a neutral concept. By defining reentry as ‘the process
of leaving prison and returning to society’ (2005: 87), he posits that there is no
necessary valence to reentry – that it simply is. The unstated hope is that this
neutral idea will begin to move us beyond the stubborn binaries built into the
retribution versus rehabilitation debate. At the same time, however, Travis
acknowledges that the meaning of reentry may change with the move out of aca-
demia into the policy arena, suggesting that ‘the public safety issue has the poten-
tial to shape and distort most policy debates on how best to meet the challenges of
prisoner reentry’ (2005: 87). This article takes an empirical look at the rhetorical
impact of the concept of reentry, asking whether and, if so, how it has changed the
public discourse of punishment in the United States.
To examine this issue, we follow the work of the newly formed Colorado
Criminal and Juvenile Justice Commission, a 26-member commission that tackled
the ‘reentry issue’ in 2008. Combining official meeting minutes and documents with
our own fieldnotes and interviews with commissioners, we have a rich database
detailing the journey of the reentry concept from its introduction through to its
presentation as the central guiding concept in the Commission’s final report to the
governor. This article follows the reentry concept while it remains contained in
rhetoric, without following it into the realm of practice. From a sociological per-
spective, accounts, narratives, and ideas are important on their own terms, regard-
less of the truth behind the talk or its subsequent impact on practice. In an early
treatise on social control talk, Stanley Cohen (1985: 109) argued that ‘the [social]
structure might ...only ‘‘allow’’ certain ideas to dominate at any one time, but once
this facilitation occurs, the ideas take on something of a life of their own – a life
30 Punishment & Society 14(1)
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