Research

The stigma associated with a felony conviction can impede the reentry process, and emerging research findings indicate that one’s community can amplify or temper the mark of a criminal record. Researchers examining criminal stigma have focused on individuals living in urban areas, overlooking the experiences of persons outside these communities. Using qualitative data collected from a sample of men and women paroled for sexual offenses in Missouri, we contrast how social and structural stigma alter the reentry experiences for participants…

Sex offenders are a unique class of offenders. Although all offenders have been affected by recent punitive policy mandates, changes in the philosophies of the criminal justice system have virtually separated the sexual offender from every other type of criminal (Edwards and Hensley, 2001). As a result, the imprisonment rate for sex offenders has grown faster than for any other crime, and sex offenders serve a larger proportion of their sentence when compared to other offenders (Greenfeld, 1997). On average,…