Muñiz, Janet, and Kristin Turney. 2020. “Collateral Consequences of Incarceration on Community.” Pp. 280-293 in American Prisons, edited by L. Gould and J. Brent. New York: Routledge.

INTRODUCTION

Nearly 2.3 million people in the United States are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons, local jails, juvenile correctional centers, and immigration detention facilities (Wagner and Sawyer, 2018). Incarceration is a stressful life event that has myriad deleterious collateral consequences for domains such as economic wellbeing, family life, and physical and mental health (Lopoo and Western, 2005; Pager, 2003;Western, 2002).This stressful life event is also consequential for the families of currently and formerly incarcerated individuals (Braman, 2004; Comfort, 2008). For example, incarceration can engender mental health problems among mothers, romantic partners, and children of those who experience confinement (Green, Ensminger, Robertson, and Juon, 2006; Turney, 2014; Wildeman, Schnittker, and Turney, 2012). Indeed, research increasingly highlights how formerly incarcerated individuals and their family members negotiate life after release.

Although most existing literature on the consequences of incarceration focuses on currently and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families, a burgeoning literature examines the role that incarceration has on broader communities. Indeed, communities play an integral role in understanding both who experiences incarceration and its consequences.

Incarceration is spatially concentrated, occurring frequently in poor urban areas, with the com- munities from which individuals are extracted also being large receiving communities for the formerly incarcerated (Kirk, 2019). This becomes a mutually reinforcing process where neighborhood disadvantage and crime are associated with high rates of incarceration (Sampson and Loeffler, 2010).

In this chapter, we review theoretical and empirical literature highlighting the consequences of incarceration for communities.We begin by outlining the deleterious consequences of living in a disadvantaged community that disproportionately funnels individuals into various correctional facilities. Next we highlight how returning home is one of the many challenges to integration postrelease (Harding, Morenoff, and Herbert, 2013;Western, 2018;Western, Braga, Davis, and Sirois, 2015).This becomes a critical juncture for individuals who are released from jail or prison, as this transition can significantly influence their likelihood of recidivism and prospects of successful reentry into family, social, and economic life (Lee, Harding, and Morenoff, 2017).The postrelease context, and possible reoccurring contact with the broader criminal justice system following an individual’s incarceration, is critical to understanding incarceration’s effects on communities. Indeed, incarcerated individuals are more likely to live in disadvantaged areas before prison and, as a result, are likely to return to these or similarly disadvantaged communities after prison (La Vigne and Parthasarathy, 2005; Massoglia, Firebaugh, and Warner, 2013; Visher and Farrell, 2005).

Most of the literature on the collateral consequences of incarceration focuses on pre- and postincarceration contexts. We begin this chapter by reviewing the literature on individuals’ pre-incarceration residential contexts. Then we highlight the social and economic environments that individuals enter after release. Based on our review of the literature, we conclude this chapter by suggesting three avenues of future research to further understand the role of incarceration for communities. These include: 1) examining heterogeneous incarceration contexts by studying jail incarceration; 2) reframing forms of capital brought by the formerly incarcerated into their communities; and 3) understanding multiple identity categories individuals possess in terms of their outcomes after release.