The Five Stages of Prisoner Reentry: Toward a Process Theory

This article is based on an ethnographic study involving 58 Roma and Romanian participants who were released from Jilava Prion in Romania between January and July 2015. The methodology involved interviews, observation, questionnaires, and photovoice. The findings seem to suggest that most of the factors associated with desistance and reentry in the literature are relevant to the ex-prisoner’s experiences. The main contribution of this article is the observation that these factors come into play at different times and in different stages of the reentry process. Five reentry stages were identified in this study: prerelease-anticipation, recovery and reunion, activation, consolidation, and relapse. The aim of the article is to describe this reentry process as the participants experienced it. Theoretical and practice implications are discussed.