Date of Award
January 2017
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Geography
Advisor(s)
Don Mitchell
Keywords
carceral geography, Chicago, prison, public housing, public space, reentry
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
The Chicago Housing Authority’s recently announced Reentry Pilot allows limited numbers and limited types of ex-offenders to live in Chicago’s public housing for the first time (officially). Through interviews with policymakers, advocates, resident leadership, and service providers, as well as ex-offenders enrolled in or waitlisted for the Pilot, this thesis explores how the various stakeholders envision the goals of this Pilot and what factors they identify that may limit its success. By reshaping housing policy not only for the limited number of ex-offenders included in the Pilot but indeed, by pushing for broader sets of reforms, the Pilot attempts to intervene in the carceral continuum that exists in the U.S.: a fundamentally spatial continuum that regulates poor, racialized bodies rendered surplus under capitalism. In this way, the Pilot has the potential to be a system-pressuring “non-reformist reform.” What studying the Pilot teaches us is that, to begin to make inroads into addressing the carceral continuum and to make our cities more just for everyone—to the extent possible under current political and economic systems—we need a concordant policy continuum that is currently lacking in US political and administrative institutions.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Hamlin, Madeleine Rose, "Chicago's Carceral Geographies: Public Housing and Prisoner Reentry in the City" (2017). Theses - ALL. 129.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/129
