Entry Lessons: The Stories of Women Fighting for Their Place, Their Children, and Their Futures After Incarceration

Anthropologist Leap (Project Fatherhood), director of the Health and Social Justice Partnership at UCLA, delivers an eye-opening if somewhat disjointed group portrait of women in Los Angeles who are struggling to heal from the interrelated traumas of poverty, racism, drug abuse, domestic violence, and incarceration. Drawing on interviews with dozens of formerly imprisoned women, Leap documents their path from neglected childhoods to gang affiliation to criminal activity (usually small-scale and drug-related) to imprisonment and release back into the same environment that led to trouble in the first place, with limited resources for supporting reentry. Throughout, Leap takes a critical view of halfway houses, foster care, juvenile courts, and other components of the “carceral system,” and laments that criminal justice reform efforts are typically focused on male prisoners. Details about programs that offer counseling, job placement, and other services provide a measure of hope, but Leap’s abrupt shifts of topic are jarring, and the story of two women arrested and convicted for their involvement in a high-profile murder adds drama but somewhat muddies the book’s larger message. Still, readers will be appalled by how high the odds are stacked against women who’ve served their time. (Apr.)