Housing Insecurity among People with Criminal Records: A Focus on Landlords
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HOUSING INSECURITY AMONG PEOPLE WITH CRIMINAL
RECORDS: A FOCUS ON LANDLORDS
By Dr. Lucius Couloute' & Kacie Snyder2
I. INTRODUCTION
Approximately 600,000 people are released from prisons each year and at
least 79 million adults - over one third of the population - now hold some form
of a criminal record.3 Upon formal criminalization, a combination of
socioeconomic barriers compound to inhibit one's chances at successfully
(re)integrating into society. In particular, justice-involved individuals
consistently identify stable housing as an important factor in shaping reentry
success,4 yet various barriers to securing housing exist for this population.
Building on insights from organizational sociology and recent literature on
carceral citizenship, we take a sociological approach by examining the
organizational production of housing inequalities for people with criminal
records, focusing specifically on the policy-, practice-, and idea-based
inequality-producing mechanisms existing within and among landlords.
Specifically, we provide context around the scale of mass incarceration in
the U.S., illustrate patterns of criminalization, and explore housing insecurity as
an important consequence of criminalization. We then discuss the multiple
impacts of housing insecurity among justice-involved individuals, including
outcomes for health, socioeconomic well-being, and community belonging. The
second half of this paper focuses on private landlords and describes the
mechanisms of exclusion that prevent criminalized people from accessing stable
housing. In doing so, we argue that housing insecurity isn't an issue of individual
deficiency, rather, it is a structural problem shaped by distinctly relational
processes. Our contribution demonstrates how importing insights from
organizational sociology can help us better understand the specific and generic
mechanisms structuring housing inequality in private markets.
1 Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Suffolk University.
2 Master in Public Policy Graduate '22, University of New Hampshire.
Wendy Sawyer & Pete Wagner, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022, PRISON POL'Y
INITIATIVE (Mar. 14, 2022), https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.htm
[http://penna.cc/Z22N-T8X4].
4 Jocelyn Fontaine, U.S. DEP'T HOUS. AND URB. DEV., The Role of Supportive Housing in
Successful Reentry Outcomes for Disabled Prisoners, 15 CITYSCAPE: J. POL'Y DEV. AND RSCH.
53,passim (2013).
21](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/kjpp32&div=24&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Housing Insecurity among People with Criminal Records: A Focus on Landlords
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