By Pat M. Tomaino

Senators left and right are trying to reform the justice system and, this summer, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit a house of correction. With race and inequity on our minds, Americans are learning about jail conditions, sentencing, and the path from school to prison.

But don’t forget the well-worn path back to prison again. A 2014 study that tracked released prisoners in 30 states found that two-thirds were re-arrested within three years; three-quarters within five years.

In America, going to jail often means going back to jail:

The path back to prison. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014.

In our podcast conversation, Azan Reid, Unique Ismail, Douglas Benton, and Marselle Felton confirmed that half the prison struggle happens after you serve your time.

Azan Reid and daughter in Mattapan, Mass.

Azan complained about the traps (economic, legal, logistical) waiting to send you back:

You don’t have a job, which violates the terms of your probation.

You have a job, but you don’t make enough money to pay your probation fee, which violates the terms of your probation.

You have a job, but the schedule is hard, so you miss appointments with your officer, which violates the terms of your probation.

Collateral damage

We called two experts to learn more about how people land back in jail. Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University and legal analyst for WGBH News, cited similar traps:

Your felony record prevents you from ever obtaining a job.

Your photograph is in the police files so you can be misidentified in a photo array.

If an informant, who is in trouble himself, knows about your record, he might give your name to the police in exchange for or in the hopes of receiving favorable treatment.

If the crime was a sex offense, you might struggle to find housing or encounter hostility in your neighborhood even if you do.

And Francis Herrmann at Boston College gave a hypothetical out of Kafka:

You are on probation. You just got a job, finally, as probation requires. The job requires you to drive, but your license has been suspended because you owe money for traffic tickets you could not afford to pay because of unemployment (or because you failed to pay child support). To make the money to pay your debts, you drive on the suspended license. You are arrested for “driving after suspension”. You violated your probation because you have picked up a new offense.

They’re called collateral consequences. Penalties incurred for being an ex-con; ways that old trouble can lead to new trouble. A website that Professor Herrmann highlighted lists 797 collateral consequences in Massachusetts. You can read them all here.

“Why people go back and forth”

Or you can listen to our four guests this week. Azan told Chris Lydon about moments when the pressure builds into “panic” and the clearest path seems to lead back inside. And, in this clip, Unique explains the cycle of things:

Ain’t too many places trying to hire you. Maybe you made some bad decisions. You might still smoke weed in your spare time…and now that you smoke weed, it’s hard to get a job. But you’ve got my man right here, like “Yo, I know you messed up in the game. Here, take this. Give me back $200 and just keep it going.” … A lot of people they look at it like, “Maybe this works? If I’m making $300, $400, $500 a day. Damn that job at McDonald’s or Bradlees or wherever you could possibly get hired being an ex con, ex felon.” That’s why people go back and forth.

Life After Incarceration.

This week on Open Source.

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