Abstract
Studies of neighborhoods and reentry largely use quantitative analyses to estimate how neighborhood disadvantage impacts recidivism outcomes. Policies focused on neighborhoods and reentry emphasize mobility from disadvantaged neighborhoods as an important step in breaking cycles of incarceration. In Intersecting Lives: How Place Shapes Reentry, Andrea Leverentz broadens our understanding of place’s role in reentry through an in-depth accounting of neighborhood experiences following incarceration. She argues that neighborhoods and place are important dimensions of reentry because place fosters social connections and everyday interactions that can structure access to resources, expose people to surveillance, and disrupt or facilitate patterns that may lead to substance use, housing insecurity, and criminalization. Places shape reentry outcomes by organizing social relationships with family and loved ones, friends, neighbors, and strangers, and by structuring access to opportunities.
Intersecting Lives takes a novel approach to the question of how neighborhoods matter for reentry. Leverentz conducted longitudinal interviews with 100 men and women who had previously been incarcerated at a Boston House of Correction (a local facility similar to a jail where people serve relatively short sentences) and interviews with 84 residents of three focal neighborhoods in Boston: Dorchester, South End, and South Boston. The discussions of data are rich and deeply analyzed throughout the book. In addition to fieldwork and observation in community meetings, the joint perspective of those formerly incarcerated and their neighbors is a rare, multifaceted look at the ways neighborhoods can shape the trajectories of people leaving incarceration. Life after incarceration is institutionally situated and constrained by structural and personal histories that impact how people choose where to live and with whom. Simultaneously, how residents view their most marginalized neighbors can affect access to support and critical resources within communities.
The story of reentry in the South End presented in Chapter 4 of Intersecting Lives reveals several of the key themes and contributions Leverentz brings to research on place and mass incarceration. The ties that linked formerly incarcerated people to the South End centered largely on the abundance of public social services, including emergency housing and substance use treatment in that neighborhood. Leverentz explores how different residents understand the presence of these services and their clients, and how neighborhood diversity can be fostered and contested. Contested meanings of diversity and its influence on neighborhood social organization, particularly among white and wealthier residents, can shape how the most marginalized residents of a neighborhood experience membership within that community. Chapters 3 and 5 take us into two historic Boston neighborhoods—Dorchester and South Boston, respectively. For both neighborhoods, the racial dynamics of the larger city, community violence, and, perhaps more so, narratives of crime, affected both the neighborhood experiences of people leaving prison and other neighborhood residents. A theme across all three Boston neighborhood chapters was that each neighborhood is in a stage of gentrification, and this has influenced neighborhood composition, housing costs, and levels of surveillance and policing.
The fields of urban studies and criminal justice benefit from two key contributions of Intersecting Lives. First, Leverentz takes an intersectional approach to understanding vulnerability and reentry experiences. How race, gender, life histories, residential trajectories, age, and other factors intersect must be meaningfully addressed in a research area that heavily focuses on the experiences of young men. Second, Leverentz convincingly argues that looking only at people’s residences severely limits our understanding of the daily lives of people who have recently left prison, and more broadly, how and why places matter for reentry. Across the book, but particularly in Chapter 2, Leverentz shows how the fragmentation of social services and the ways that stigma, vulnerability, and frailty can structure connections to family and housing, have important implications for considering neighborhood effects conceptually and empirically. Leverentz concludes this chapter by plainly stating, “housing instability of returning prisoners is not new information” (p. 85). What Intersecting Lives offers, though, is a richly detailed portrait of how vulnerability, instability, and the spatial patterns of daily life after incarceration challenge conventional neighborhood effects research. Leverentz shows how a residentially anchored life versus one that is institutionally structured through accessing services presents very different conceptions of the mechanisms that link neighborhoods to their effects. Given this key finding, I would have been interested in a deeper discussion of Leverentz’s method of studying activity space, for example, how time and space were mapped to create these different spatial and place-based observations.
While conceived as a study of urban reentry, a sizable portion of Leverentz’s sample returned to small towns. A final empirical chapter (Chapter 6) explores the experiences of those who moved to these areas and identifies how weak access to programs and transportation intensifies social isolation. For those with substance use problems, these conditions set them apart from potentially life-saving treatment. My own research on the experiences of reentry social service providers in small cities across Massachusetts similarly found that social workers emphasized spatial remoteness and poor transportation infrastructure as key drivers of high rates of incarceration in their communities (2021).
In the conclusion of Intersecting Lives, Leverentz writes, “we maintain these seemingly intractable [criminal legal] systems because often we—as the general public and many community and political leaders—assume they are necessary. They are not” (p. 204). Although some may assume a short time in jail is a “simpler, more humane approach to punishment” (p. 204) compared to long sentences in prison, incarceration is a stunningly harsh and disruptive response to extreme poverty, racism, housing instability, and unmet health needs. Leverentz thus emphasizes a policy shift toward neighborhood development and helping people navigate the complexities of their community ties, while urging us to consider a world where less incarceration is both possible and urgently needed.