Although halfway houses have been touted for years as affirmative rehabilitation locations that ready women for life in the outside world, in this remarkable case study Gail Caputo shows how these places reinforce patterns of control and abuse that reaffirm the dependency and victimization of the inmates. Based on observations made while living and working alongside women at a halfway house within the prison system in a city in the Northeast, Caputo's analysis is anchored in the words and experiences of over a dozen women. Organized according to the progression of "levels" residents traverse during their time in the house, and the rules and behaviors associated with each level, Caputo offers a riveting look at what passes for "rehabilitation" and "reintegration" in such places, and delineates the many ways these women retain agency by resisting regulations designed to keep them in their place.

Cuban exile William Figueras, a thirty-eight-year-old writer suffering from schizophrenia, is sent to a shabby boarding home for the mentally ill in Miami.

“A teenager’s psychotic break unhinges her family in this sure-footed first novel.” —The New York Times Book Review A New York Times Editors’ Choice Winner of the Kate Chopin Writing Award Winner of the Ken/NAMI Award One day, Angie Voorster—diligent student, all-star swimmer, and ivy-league bound high school senior—dives to the bottom of a pool and stays there. In that moment, everything the Voorster family believes they know about each other changes. Katharine Noel’s extraordinary debut illuminates the fault lines in one family’s relationships, as well as the complex emotional ties that bind them together. With grace and precision rarely seen in a first novel, Noel guides her reader through a world where love is imperfect, and where longing for an imagined ideal can both destroy one family’s happiness and offer them redemption. Halfway House introduces a powerful, eloquent new literary voice. “An eloquent literary performance . . . [A] memorable first novel with a uniquely powerful grace.” —The Boston Globe

A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record. Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths. Recently released individuals are faced with jobs that are off-limits, apartments that cannot be occupied and votes that cannot be cast. As The Color of Law exposed about our understanding of housing segregation, Halfway Home shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate. Parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they've paid their debt to society. Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of incarcerated men, captures the stories of the men, women, and communities fighting against a system that is designed for them to fail. It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens. PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist Winner of the 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences 2022 PROSE Awards Finalist 2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner for Cultural Anthropology and Sociology An NPR Selected 2021 Books We Love As heard on NPR’s Fresh Air