Welcome to Episode 9 of the One in Four podcast. In this episode, we bring you a conversation with Keesha Middlemass, Associate Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Political Science at Howard University. Professor Middlemass is also the author of Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry. This book is focused on a research study about reentry that Professor Middlemass conducted in New Jersey. The findings are relevant to reentry in other parts of the country.
Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our Podcast in iTunes (if you open it up on Apple Podcasts, go to the Itunes page to leave us a review), Spotify, and on Google Play.
Send tips, comments and questions to: podcastoneinfour@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter: @oneinfourpodca1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oneinfourpodcast/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oneinfourpodcast
Hosts: Bea M. Spadacini and Tim Nicholson
EPISODE 9
A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR KEESHA MIDDLEMASS
AUTHOR OF CONVICTED AND CONDEMNED
Prof. Middlemass: Social disability theory is usually applied to individuals who are physically or mentally challenged and how we have as a society mainstreamed them into educational programs, but also into society. So the idea of if someone's in a wheelchair, we now as a society provide curb ramps, we provide ramps, we provide bars and bathrooms and wider doors and other architectural designs to allow people in wheelchairs to be able to access spaces.
Prof. Middlemass: And so I applied the same concept to a felony conviction where this idea of individuals convicted of a felony are socially disabled in the sense that there's no curb ramp for them. Public policies prevent them from getting access to certain services. The felony conviction can prevent them from reuniting with their kids. There's a long list of negative connotations related to a felony conviction. So using this concept of being socially disabled, I was making the argument that it's the systems. It is policies that are preventing people from reentering. Yes, they have to make good individual choices, but even making good individual choices, people still struggle to reenter because they just can't access jobs and housing and their families.
NARRATION 1
Hi there and welcome to Episode 9 of the One in Four podcast. My name is Bea Spadacini and I am one of your co-hosts. The person you just heard speaking in the intro is Keesha Middlemass, Associate Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Political Science at Howard University.
Professor Middlemass is also the author of Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry. I met Professor Middlemass when she presented her book at Georgetown University and I was intrigued by her research process and findings. Even though her research focused on people coming out of the federal prison system and back into Newark, NJ – her findings are relevant for anyone re-entering society after a period of incarceration. So, in this episode, we offer you a deeper dive into Professor Middlemass’ book. We hope you enjoy it.
Bea: So, maybe we can start with you telling us why did you decide to focus on Newark, New Jersey?
Prof. Middlemass: Well, thank you very much for having me on your podcast. It's a great opportunity to actually talk about reentry and what happens to individuals that come home. So at the time, a data collection, I was working in New Jersey and Newark and knew lots of community members through my other research and through that those kind of connections, those informal connections, I was able to access a nonprofit organization in Newark. And the individual by the name of Warren, he became my gatekeeper. So he was able to actually introduce me to staff and volunteers and clients of the nonprofit organization to determine whether or not I wanted to do research there. So Warren really was the one that facilitated my access to the nonprofit organization.
Bea: Can you give us a little bit of specifics about the details about your study group, the demographic, the balance between men and women, and a little bit more about the research itself?
Prof. Middlemass: So, in Newark, they have two organizations that cater directly to women. So they engage with women and reentry. At the nonprofit organization. I worked at was probably 90 percent of men that were coming home. And so my participants skewed towards men. But they also skewed towards minorities. So mostly black, some Latinos. They range in age from the individuals that I interacted with from age 18 to 65 plus.
Prof. Middlemass: All of them had at least one felony conviction and mostly related to drugs, weapons or robbery, and that they'd served a minimum of 18 months in a state or federal prison and were reentering in new in Newark, New Jersey.
Bea: You sort of hinted about the issue of anonymity in sort of changing names and you had a gatekeeper. So that helped in gaining trust. But trust is a big issue. This is a topic that is very personal. And we have come across also doing this podcast. And how do you protect also individuals because they're vulnerable, especially on reentry. What has been your experience with that?
Keesha: I knew going into this project that trust was going to be critical, that in order to get participants to open up and talk to be and actually tell me their story, I had to learn their trust. And so I incorporated what is known as ethnography. And in simple terms, ethnography is you just go and hang out in the space where the people that you want to learn from interact. So I hung out. I made myself present at the nonprofit organization. I would have informal conversations. But this way individuals were able to ask me questions. They were able to question, why was I doing this? Who was I? Was I connected to the police or parole? Was I trying to find so-called dirt on individuals to send them back into prison?
Prof. Middlemass: And one of these informal conversations was with a participant by the name of Tyrone. That is not his real name. But he and I had these great ongoing conversations over time. And he was also a big personality. So when he realized I wasn't with parole or police, he then signaled to other clients of the nonprofit organization she's OK to talk what to. She is not going to try to trip you up. She's not going to try to send you away. So his approval, because I'd been there for literally almost three months of just these informal conversations, just sort of having these come having these quick conversations. But it allowed individuals to ask me questions, and I was always honest with them upfront, straightforward. I never lied. I never misled anybody. And I also told them up front that if they shared any information with them, I would secure and make sure they were anonymous through the entire process.
Bea: So in your book, you talk about a gray area in the reentry process. It is not just about success or failure in terms of reentry. Can you elaborate on what this gray area stands for? What does it mean?
Prof. Middlemass: Yes. So, this is a concept that I'd come across in the immigration literature where an individuals immigrate to a new country. They are not citizens of the country, but they're still living in the community. And so they exist in the sort of gray area. Well, I took that concept as a way to think about reentry in sort of three phases: There's failure to reentry where individuals will be rearrested re incarcerated. They will be re-incarcerated for parole, the parole or probation violation, but also committing new crimes. And then, of course, success is you are now a successful citizen. You've got a job, you're taking care of your kids. You're no longer involved in crime.
Prof. Middlemass: The gray area, however, is the space between the prison and fully incorporated success in society where so many participants were literally not successful, but they weren't getting rearrested. So they were homeless. They may have been trying to find a job while they were homeless or they would still be using drugs and maybe even interacting in low level crimes around the drug trade. But they weren't getting rearrested. Individuals would be trying to get clean and be in a drug treatment facility for a few weeks and then come out. But they still didn't have a job. They were homeless. They didn't have sort of access to weather appropriate clothes. So I concept this conceptualize this gray area as somewhere between success and failure, where so many people reentering society actually exist.
Bea: So. in your research, were there outstanding differences in the reentry process for men and women and their rate of success? I know you mainly dealt with participants that were male. But if anything, that sort of stands out.
Prof. Middlemass: What really stood out to me is that I think all the participants, men and women, were traumatized either based on their experiences, family trauma, violence, sexual abuse, whatever the trauma was. Women were more likely to talk about it. They wanted to be able to express how they were feeling, how they were damaged and wanting to be able to fix themselves and get assistance.
Prof. Middlemass: But unfortunately, there are few mental health support systems, even for those with jobs and good paying jobs and good health insurance. Health care in the mental health area is just lacking and it is lacking significantly for individuals coming home. And so women wanted to reach out and find mental health care providers to assist them in thinking through their trauma and how they could be better.
Prof. Middlemass: Another difference when men and women is women, particularly those who were who were mothers, they were focused on reconnecting with their kids. They they wanted to reconnect with their kids. And it was just so depressing and utterly shameful that mothers would not be able to even see their children if their kids were in foster care because the mother had a felony conviction, even if the conviction was not related to their children.
Prof. Middlemass: The mother was labeled as unfit and therefore would have to not just navigate the lack of social benefits for herself, but would not be able to even reconnect with her kids or even see her kids. I'm not even talking about being a full time mother and caretaker. But the idea that she wouldn't even be able to spend an hour with her children once a week because of a felony conviction was just was sort of re traumatizing to the woman.
Bea: To go back to the question, the original question I asked you about trust when they asked you, why are you doing this? I'm sure they did. What was your you know, what did you tell them?
Prof. Middlemass: Of course, I never lied to them, but I did tell them I wanted to understand their experiences. I wanted to ask them, you know, how are you doing this reentry thing? How are you managing? What are you doing? And eventually, of course, people would open up. But they also thanked me. They said, thank you for asking these questions. No one has asked me, how am I doing? What am I doing? How do I feel about these things? And so there was so many participants that we're actually thankful that I was asking them questions. I also told them that I probably won't be able to change their life, but that the data I was collecting with the idea of being able to change public policies, they would be helping me in that process. And they were like, that's good. If you can help the next generation not have to have my same experiences, that would be really helpful. So they were forthcoming and actually thankful that someone cared about them at the human level.
Bea: In your book, you kind of go deeper into the housing and also the education, the Pell Grants. Talk about some of these barriers that this podcast. In some ways we've tried we're trying to bit by bit to cover them with individual stories of people who tell us what it is like to reenter and to face and overcome if they can or stay in the limbo of the gray area.
Prof. Middlemass: So within the scholarship and the literature, they're known as invisible punishments or collateral consequences of a felony conviction. And these invisible punishments, they're invisible, because they are outside of the criminal justice system. They are embedded in state statutes that are attached to a felony conviction. So in the sense of what is visible, you can think about a prison sentence, someone's parole status, the imposition of criminal fines. Those are visible.
Prof. Middlemass: The invisible punishments or those that target particular rights of citizenship and social benefits, such as being able to access Section 8 housing grants or Pell Grants. The idea that you're denied SNAP and food stamp benefits. A Common one about the denial of voting rights is a common invisible punishment where you think sort of like the idea of noone has taken away your citizenship, but if you have been convicted of felony, your voting rights are hampered in so many different states. So these invisible punishments are post criminal justice punishment. They come after someone is released from prison and sometimes you don't even know what those restrictions are until you apply for a job. And then you come to find out that because you're a convicted felon, you cannot be a dog walker, for instance.
Prof. Middlemass: You should know that there are thousands of collateral consequences and in individual punishments in every states statutes.
Bea: And is this an area where ordinary people are possibly listening to this podcast could actually have play a role and try to find out an influence because this really basically dictates either success or failure or staying in this gray area for a long time.
Prof. Middlemass: Yes. So what individuals and organizations and advocacy groups can do is advocate on one particular issue, for instance, like accessing food stamps. Food is a basic necessity. Yes, housing is to and whether appropriate clothes are, too. But with food stamps, I've done other research in and have not and have found that individuals that are denied food stamps go hungry or they commit petty crimes, misdemeanor crimes because they steal food and that then can lead to more incarceration and back to prison if it's a parole violation. But food would be a very simple way of allowing people to have some substance and not committing minor crimes.
Bea: But why would food stamps be denied to someone with a felony conviction? I'm just saying it doesn't make sense. Right?
Prof. Middlemass: Right. Well, a lot of these individual punishments are not connected to the original crime. Like legislators do not spend a lot of time fine tuning things. For instance, if you were convicted of armed robbery of a bank, you should probably never work around money. But there's lots of other things you can do in life that you never touch currency ever again. But legislators do not fine tune laws that way. They make oversimplifications. If someone has a felony, then they are bad and therefore they should be restricted from all access to social benefits. So I know I've listed some of them, but some people have their parental rights denied to them based on a felony conviction, even if the felony conviction has nothing to do or no harm to the child.
Prof. Middlemass: They are not allowed to leave; like the idea of mobility. The United States is very mobile society. They are unable to leave their county or state without permission from either their parole officer or probation officer. But even if they are a convicted felon, they might not be able to leave because of other states laws. So this whole idea is we restrict people. And so if we're gonna make changes, we need advocacy groups and individuals to be lobbying each of these individual areas to make changes.
Bea: In your experience with this research. Was there a barrier that most of them faced that was pretty hard to overcome? What would you say that would be? I mean, I know we're generalizing because it's just a particular group at a specific point in time in a specific state.
Prof. Middlemass: I think the largest challenge was stable housing. And that despite the idea or at least the inference from the Department of Corrections that when people are released, they go home to family. But in reality, a lot of individuals that I interacted with, they were not in communication with their family anymore. They had been, you know, the equivalent of being disowned. The family had moved or their parents had died while they were incarcerated. So housing was the largest challenge. So between being homeless and living in homeless shelters or living on the street or couch surfing.
Bea: What is the motivation behind policies that deny convicted felons with done their time and have spent time and they're ready to start a life again? They're now free. They should be able to access public benefits that can help them successfully reintegrate into mainstream society. So what is the motivation behind these policies? I mean, some of it is clearly there's political motivations?
Prof. Middlemass: Yes. In fact, the easy answer is it's mostly political motivations. It's this idea of being tough on crime or tough on criminals. It dates back to old England. And the concept then, of course, came over to America. But the idea of being tough on crime can get individual legislators reelected. And the tougher they are, the more likely they will be reelected. And even though the language around criminal justice and reentry is changing, thankfully. But when you're running for office, you never want to appear to be soft on crime, that they're still those political attacks about being soft on crime that will probably lead to your your losing an election. So individuals are tough on crime and it's very easy now to pass legislation regardless of the type of crime. But just to deny all felons any social benefits with the argument, well, they're bad people. They're not tax paying people, without even considering that they serve time. Like prison is not a is not a picnic. Prison is harsh. Prison creates its own prison induced PTSD. And that is sort of seem to be forgotten when we think about reentry.
Professor Middlemass: And oftentimes we forget that a lot of people are disconnected from their families. I know I've said that a few times today, but it is true that so many people coming home from prison do not have family connections. And if they do have family connections and their families willing to help them, the family doesn't have a spare bedroom. The family has cramped living spaces or the family doesn't want to have to put up with parole and the violation of their own personal space to be able to house a loved one. And I know that sounds harsh, but it is the reality of a lot of families is they do not want to invite the criminal justice system even further into their lived space. So reentry is difficult because the planning phase is so short. But it's also this idea of a lack of support services where someone is given a bus ticket and they're walking money. That might be 70 dollars or 100 dollars and told good luck and they're supposed to succeed.
Bea: I came across a book recently by Isa Koehler Houseman, an associate professor of law and sociology at Yale University, which is entitled Misdemeanor Land. And the author talks about how lower criminal court operate a form of social control that does not necessarily impose immediate imprisonment, but subjects people and entire communities to systemic surveillance and repeated finding and arrests that eventually build up a record and possibly end some. Someone ends up in jail. Did you come across this trend in your research, perhaps with some of the participants prior to their formal arrests?
Prof. Middlemass: Yes, that a lot of individuals that I interviewed talked about being convicted of low level misdemeanor crimes before they were later arrested for a felony conviction. But what also comes with this idea of social controls, it starts earlier than the criminal justice system. It starts in the schools. And how do we police, particularly black girls, but also black boys in schools? Why do we have now have more officers in schools than we do mental health counselors or college counselors? So how we police particular bodies now is a way to control. Yes. But it's also a way of using misdemeanors is also known as net widening. So this idea of one law captures a person in the criminal justice system and now they're in the system. Now they have a record. So they have a second interaction with police and now they've got a longer record. And those misdemeanors can by prosecutors be bunched together and actually be created into a felony. So you start thinking about how people are policed in educational public school systems. How they are policed in the community, and then how the criminal justice system can put labels on people.
Bea: One of the conclusions from your research is that individuals are responsible for their own success. While, ultimately, this is true, isn't there an important role that community based organizations and advocacy group can play to ensure more convicted felons reintegrate successfully?
Prof. Middlemass: When you think about community organizations and advocacy groups, they play an important role because, one, they provide services that the government is no longer providing or has denied individuals with a felony conviction from. But they also provide information. And sometimes an individual coming home needs just simple information, correct information to be able to know what is possible. But on the other hand, organizations and advocacy groups are able to lobby legislators and change the law. And despite it being a very piecemeal process that lets say if we fix the food stamps, will individuals still can't get Section 8 housing?
Prof. Middlemass: There are approximately 12 to 13000 individuals, adults that come home every single week, every single year. So we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people that do not have access to social benefits. They're socially disabled. So these organizations and advocacy groups are really providing the one. Place where individuals can go and get access to computers, to get G.D. courses, to be able to understand what options they have.
Bea: What's your biggest takeaway from this project in this book that you wrote on reentry that you perhaps were not aware of when you started this project and you did a deep dive into the subject?
Prof. Middlemass: I think the biggest takeaways. There's two. These are normal individuals. The men and women that I spoke to, our normal individuals but they have experienced some form of trauma, as I as I mentioned earlier, particularly with women, but they're also poor. And so the combination of lacking hard resources and the lack of family connections really put them at a disadvantage. Additionally, the men and women I interacted with, they don't want to go back to prison. Prison is not a fun experience. They don't want to go back, but they don't have the means or the resources or even the information to be successful. So hence we get back to the gray area.
Prof. Middlemass: Reentry success hovers around 37 to 40 percent, and some of the failure to reenter successfully, of course, is individual choices. But even individuals making good choices are held back because of the social systems that have failed them along the way, be it the educational system, the housing system, health care, and then those net widening laws that once you're caught in the criminal justice system, it is up to the individual to break free. Government legislators, other elected officials, appointed officials, they have spent so much time - I'm talking decades here - thinking about putting people in prison, but they have not thought about what happens when individuals leave prison. And ninety five percent of individuals that are incarcerated eventually are released, which means that society has to figure out how do we now change the system way. Felony conviction cannot label a person as defective, but rather change the system to allow them all to come home and be successful.
Bea: So it's not enough to just have reforms that let people out. But then what do you do when they're out? How do you help them?
Prof. Middlemass: Let me let me be clear here: Reforms allowing individuals to come home from prison are good. The fewer years, months, days the individuals have to spend in prison is a good thing. But the felony conviction is still attached to their public record. And so when they do a background check for a job, that felony conviction will appear. When they apply for even private housing, the felony conviction can appear. So it's the felony conviction, really, that individuals cannot get away from. It is very hard to go from being a felon to a non-felon. Some states have rehabilitative certificate. Some states will allow you to be able to demonstrate that you have been rehabilitated. But the felony conviction remains on one's record. And that is really the challenge. When someone is doing all the right things, they still cannot get over the hurdle of being a convicted felon.
FINAL NARRATION
Speaking of New Jersey, in December 2019, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a bill restoring voting rights to more than 80,000 people who are on probation or parole. This makes New Jersey one of 17 other states, plus the District of Columbia, to have passed legislation allowing people on parole and probation access to the ballot box. According to the Sentencing Project, only in Maine and Vermont, felons never lose their right to vote, even while they are incarcerated. However, as Professor Middlemass points out in the course of this podcast episode, other critical measures like access to housing, mental health services and food benefits must be put in place for people coming home from prison and jail. Otherwise, their felony record will continue to be a liability or, in the words of Prof. Middlesmass “a social disability” that will hamper their successful reintegration into society.
Thank you for listening! You can support us by subscribing to this podcast, sharing it and leaving us a review on Apple i-tunes. Believe it or not, all of these actions make a big difference.