Narratives of post-custodial experiences: Surveillance, sobriety and risk

Unprecendented increases in prison populations and imprisonment rates nationally and internationally, particularly in the last two decades, have caused concern of a global front. As a consequence, western society is now witnessing an unmatched number of prisoners released to the community each year. Prisoner release has traditionally raised questions of public safety, and the social and economic costs for communities. Indeed recidivism is one of the few prisoner release issues to make it into public and political debates. Current discussions however, dominated by concerns for broader social issues of risk, cripplingly limit the ways society knows, understands and engages with released men and women. Most significantly, the omission of prisoner narrative and consideration to individual experiences and understandings of release positions a discourse that fails to acknowledge a most critical voice.