"We Are Supposed to be Grateful to be Included": Formerly Incarcerated Women's Experiences of Exploitation, Embodied Incarceration, and Healing

Background: Formerly incarcerated women commonly experience forms of stigma, exclusion, and discrimination due to their histories of criminal legal system involvement. These experiences persist throughout their lives and constitute and reinforce dynamics of carceral citizenship. Recent theorizing posits that carceral citizenship interconnects with ongoing forms of racialized and gendered social control and that women navigate and resist these forms of control individually and collectively. In addition to impacting their social identity, experiences of incarceration and reentry often live on in women’s bodies, as theorized as the somatic carceral condition. Based on these theories, this study explored formerly incarcerated women’s experiences of life after prison, including their embodied experiences of navigating the impacts of incarceration.

Methods: With a racially diverse sample of 23 formerly incarcerated women living in the United States, we conducted six focus groups to explore women’s individual and collective experiences of life after prison. Most women had been out of prison for more than two years. The focus groups were held virtually and consisted of two parts: a discussion of dimensions of life after incarceration (including treatment by others and healing from incarceration) and body-mapping methods for visual storytelling of their experiences. Based on constructivist grounded theory methods, we engaged in constant comparison analysis to code and analyze transcripts of the focus groups for a thematic analysis.

Findings: Our analysis revealed three major themes. Our first theme is women’s experiences of constricted and exploitive belonging due to their histories of incarceration. Women detailed how they were often hired or contracted for work related to their lived experiences of incarceration. However, their incarceration history was commonly deployed in exploitative ways within social movement and employment spaces, including restrictions on what they can share (e.g., “they don’t want to know all of the details”), being “overworked and underpaid”, and being tokenized or “treated as a guest.” While many women felt compelled to do this work, they also felt controlled by others while doing this work. They spoke of this tension as also showing up somatically, e.g., “tension in my shoulders” and as a sick feeling (e.g., “nauseous in my belly and chest”). Our second theme focuses on women’s experiences of exploitation within community-based support services, a type of revictimization in the sense of being treated in ways that mimic prison dynamics. Several women experienced anger within their bodies and ongoing headaches from navigating challenges from this mistreatment. Our third theme highlights how women find healing through community-building (e.g., “still fighting” for justice) and epistemic comfort (i.e., a shared knowing) with other formerly incarcerated women. In solidarity, they find a form of healing that buffers against experiences of exploitation that make them “physically ill.”

Discussion: The findings contribute to theorizing about women’s experiences of carceral citizenship and the embodied impacts of incarceration and reentry and inform directions for advancements in social work research, policy, and practice. Given the mistreatment of women within community-based services, employment, and social movement work, they also provide insight into shifting power dynamics for meaningful inclusion.