Cross-Examining the Race-Neutral Frameworks of Prisoner Re-Entry

Prisoner re-entry literature has primarily been framed as a problem that affects all types of ex-offenders, regardless of race. Surprisingly, the issue of race has been ignored in most of the literature on prisoner re-entry. In this paper, we maintain that the effect of contextual racial stratification is so powerful that for the majority of White exoffenders the large social capital at their disposal might buffer against the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction. By contrast, Black ex-prisoners might be more vulnerable to the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction precisely because of their greater individual-level, accumulated disadvantage. We contend that structural-level factors have more explanatory power than individual-level factors and identify causal mechanisms that link social context with the large Black-White disparity in recidivism. Finally, we propose a racial/ethnic integration model for successful re-entry and reintegration