Sociology

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Browsing Sociology by Author "Bryan, Brielle"

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    Housing Instability Following Felony Conviction and Incarceration: Disentangling Being Marked from Being Locked Up
    (Springer Nature, 2022) Bryan, Brielle
    Objectives: I examine housing instability among individuals with a felony conviction but no incarceration history relative to formerly incarcerated individuals as a means of separating the effect of felon status from that of incarceration per se—a distinction often neglected in prior research. I consider mechanisms and whether this relationship varies based on gender, race/ethnicity, time since conviction, and type of offense. Methods: I use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data and restricted comparison group, individual fixed effects, and sibling fixed effects models to examine residential mobility and temporary housing residence during early adulthood. Results: I find robust evidence that never-incarcerated individuals with felony convictions experience elevated risk of housing instability and residential mobility, even after adjusting for important mediators like financial resources and relationships. The evidence that incarceration has an additional, independent effect on housing instability is weaker, however, suggesting that the association between incarceration and housing instability found in prior studies may largely be driven by conviction status. Conclusions: These findings reveal that conviction, independent of incarceration, introduces instability into the lives of the 12 million Americans who have been convicted of a felony but never imprisoned. Thus, research that attempts to identify an incarceration effect by comparing outcomes to convicted individuals who receive non-custodial sentences may obscure the important independent effect of conviction. Moreover, these findings highlight that the socioeconomic effects of criminal justice contact are broader than incarceration-focused research suggests. Consequently, reform efforts promoting the use of community corrections over incarceration may do less to reduce the harm of criminal justice contact than expected.
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    Support seeking, system avoidance, and citizenship: Social safety net usage after incarceration
    (Wiley, 2023) Bryan, Brielle
    Scholars have long described the American penal state and welfare state as joined by a common logic of social marginalization. But researchers have only recently begun to explore how the individuals who pass through the carceral system also interact with welfare state programs. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, in this article, I explore how formerly incarcerated individuals make claims on the welfare state and how participation varies across social programs and states, as well as by race, drawing on theories of social welfare rights-claiming and system avoidance. In so doing, I provide the first nationwide estimates of the extent to which previously incarcerated adults use social safety net resources. I find that participation in welfare programs varies with incarceration history, program structure, and race. Rather than finding patterns consistent with system avoidance, I find that previously incarcerated White Americans seem to engage in active rights claiming, participating in public assistance programs more than similarly eligible never-incarcerated counterparts. All formerly incarcerated individuals, however, have limited access to more generous social insurance programs, and the shift to an increasingly employment-based social safety net seems likely to further limit access to the welfare state for the growing population of Americans leaving prison.