Thanks to scholarly and activist attention to the unprecedented explosion of America’s prison and jail population since the mid-1970s, the mass public is increasingly familiar with the nation’s status as the world’s jailer. This attention to the carceral boom has expanded to examinations of the policies, problems, and injustices related to mass incarceration that occur beyond prison walls. One such issue, the process of reentry, is addressed in Keesha M. Middlemass’s Convicted and Condemned. As more and more people are locked up, the vast majority of them eventually leave prison. To address this “reentry” process, an entire industry of private, nonprofit, and charitable organizations has cropped up to secure contracts to serve the formerly incarcerated. Additionally, politicians from both sides of the aisle address reentry as a pillar of any criminal justice policy platform.

Amidst the clamor of academic and political attention to life after prison, this book stands out in its focus on the voices of those who are “reentering.” After putting the personal experience of those with the felon label under a magnifying glass, Middlemass bluntly concludes that “reentry is basically a myth and a hoax” (p. 177). She argues that life after prison with a felony conviction is a “social disability” without any accommodations (pp. 26–29). Returning to the outside world as a felon comes with painfully degrading stigmas and almost complete exclusion from public resources, such as housing, education, and employment.

The book turns the notion of “successful reentry” on its head, challenging the traditional metrics of “success” and the precedence that individual responsibility takes in most reentry scholarship and policy. The author’s treatment of success radically shifts the analytic focus in the field away from an individual deficit model, where felons are solely responsible for their reentry success, toward a critical assessment of policies that set felons up to fail upon their return home. Middlemass exposes the shortcomings of reentry assessments that rely on strictly quantified variables, such as explaining recidivism as a function of whether a felon gets a job. Instead, she provides a nuanced account of the interaction between felons and the political, social, and economic landscape they traverse. For example, she traces the history of criminal background checks and demonstrates how they are used to screen out a vast majority of felons from consideration for employment (pp. 152–56). Her approach helps move the fundamental question from “Why don’t felons succeed?” to “Why can’t felons succeed?”

The research employed by the author is interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse, relying on 29 weeks of ethnographic fieldwork and 53 semistructured in-depth interviews, as well as archival research. A rare approach for both Americanists in political science and scholars of reentry, these qualitative methods and evidence provide an alternative perspective to both “top-down” policy-oriented research and quantitative, “evidence-based” research. The strength of this approach is evident in Middlemass’s discussion of the relationship between felons and voting. While low voter turnout among felons is not a novel finding, her ethnographic evidence provides a specific, personal account for the reasons that many felons cannot or do not vote.

Convicted and Condemned is a poignant reminder that the mundane can be horrific. The reality of reentry can only be seen through the documentation of the daily struggles of life with a felony conviction. The mental and physical effects of time inside prison follow the formerly incarcerated home after their release, disrupting nearly every aspect of their lives. The struggles begin as soon as former felons get in the car to drive away from prison. A common experience for many is to become severely carsick after having gone years without being in a moving vehicle (p. 70). Those returning to the outside also suffer from a mental habituation to “the count” (a central part of institutional life when prisoners are counted daily), a range of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and sensory overload (pp. 60–69). In addition to these mental and physical trials, felons also face exclusion from essential public resources.

In a series of chapters that are rich in detail and cover historical policy development, Middlemass addresses three primary issues for felons: housing, education, and employment. For each, despite being essential elements of “successful reentry,” most felons are banned from accessing these resources. In Chapter 3, the author catalogs the steady destruction of public housing, from Presidents Nixon to Reagan to the Clinton reforms, that closed the door on public housing for felons. Just when public housing residents were becoming poorer, this public good was destabilized and funds were diverted to fighting crime (p. 95). The policy history of public housing contextualizes why the common mantra of reentry staff, “first housing,” is such an impossible goal.

Similar to the developments in housing, Chapter 4 details how access to education has been cut off for felons. Inside-Out programs and Pell Grants for prisoners and the formerly incarcerated were drastically scaled back or eliminated in the 1990s. While felons are expected to pursue education as a way to improve their chances at employment and economic stability, most are priced out of, or excluded from, this route to “success.” Beyond the enormous commitment and investment that an education requires, a degree does not guarantee a job, something, Middlemass points out, that is often ignored in reentry scholarship (p. 112).

Those just released, whether or not they are employed, can owe private for-profit debt-collection agencies for a wide variety of fines and fees. In some jurisdictions, individuals are even charged a fee for each mile the police drive to serve an arrest warrant for their failure to pay fees (p. 145). In Chapter 5, Middlemass describes how those with the felon label and saddled with debt face a tight labor market where the vast majority of employers simply do not want them. The personal accounts in this chapter reveal not just the economic hardships that come from a lack of employment but also the emotional brutality of being denied employment. One of the author’s participants bitterly joked in regards to the job search: “Who wants to get rejected today?” (p. 146).

Middlemass complements but does not explicitly connect her research to broader trends in U.S. policymaking in which many Americans, in addition to felons, are increasingly excluded from public resources. “Once a person is convicted of a felony . . . law transforms him or her into a contemporary outlaw,” writes Middlemass (p. 3; italics in original). However, several of the elements of outlaw status that she describes (being denied public housing, being priced out of education, and lacking stable employment) are conditions faced by many today, not just those with felony convictions. As one of her participants, Savannah, aptly put it: “Reentry is verbally and physically abusive. The name, the word, is the stupidest word on earth. Most people are entering, not (re)entering. People cannot reenter a community they’ve never been a part of” (p. 68). The “felon label” does not account for all of the patterns of struggle that Middlemass identifies.

A greater connection to the wider developments of the retraction of public goods writ large in the United States would both better situate and amplify the author’s contribution of the particular experience of felons. This broader context would also help flesh out the “why” of these pernicious policy developments. Although politicians’ fear of being “soft on crime” was certainly important, widening the lens could contextualize these punitive policies as part of the broader bipartisan reduction of social generosity. Further, this explicit framing would lead to more practical and cogent solutions to the injustices that Middlemass so affectingly captures.

There are limitations to the solutions proposed, stemming from the narrowness of the analysis. Middlemass contends that a clear line has been drawn between “us” (those without a felony conviction) and “them” (those with a felony conviction), yet in reality this line is blurred. While removing the felon label and increasing funds for reentry services are critical interventions, they still fall short of addressing issues of exclusion before incarceration. Linking the plight of felons to universalistic fights for guaranteed housing, education, and employment would lead to the solidarity and coalitions needed to get to the heart of the suffering that so many face before and even more acutely after incarceration.

As more courses and research agendas proliferate on the topic of America’s prison system, Convicted and Condemned is a much-needed contribution. It gives voice to the lived realities of those ensnared in the lifelong sentence of a felony conviction.