HOMEWARD: LIFE IN THE YEAR AFTER PRISON
Bruce Western’s new book, Homeward, examines the tumultuous first year after release from prison. Drawing from in-depth interviews with over one hundred individuals returning from Massachusetts state prisons, he describes the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrates how poverty, racial inequality, and failures of social support trap many in a cycle of vulnerability despite their efforts to rejoin society.
What people are saying:
“Bruce Western, our foremost authority on mass incarceration, has filled in a yawning gap in the research on one of the great banes of our era. Homeward is a thorough and deeply illuminating study on the end-point of mass incarceration—the effort to reintegrate ex-offenders into our society. The challenges outlined in the book should not simply inform our reentry efforts, but should also make us question the American policy of handing down sentences, which, in some profound way, never really end.”
—Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent, The Atlantic
“In Homeward, Bruce Western probes in rich detail the lives of ex-prisoners in their first year of life back on the streets of Boston. He looks unflinchingly at the correlated web of adversities that men and women face in the transition out of prison, especially how violence, drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, and family chaos exacerbate the stigma of a prison record in the reentry to society. Beautifully written and deeply researched, this book provides an important framework on social and criminal justice. The implications for policy are profound.”
—Robert J. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University