What Seems to be the Problem? Ex-Prisoners’ Reentry/Resettlement in the Czech Republic

Literature Overview and Theoretical Background

Many studies (e.g., Ahmed & Lång, 2017; Bumiller, 2015; Kurtovic & Rovira, 2017) were dedicated to an interplay between stigmatization and employment, as many ex-prisoners are denied a job due to their past prison experience. Usually, employers fear of ex-prisoners’ recurring crime activities at a workplace or disruption of the workplace climate. Employment is often perceived as the key factor for successful reentry/resettlement because it can contribute to filling up free time of ex-prisoners, structuring their daytime, create positive interactions and social network, and mitigate material deprivation (Breese et al., 2000; Davis et al., 2013). In terms of cultural stereotypes, having an employment is a sign of successful integration into society, otherwise an ex-prisoner is perceived as not properly socialized, which then negatively influence his/her self-esteem (Johnson, 2014). However, according to numerous studies (e.g., Ramakers et al., 2017; Tripodi et al., 2010; Visher et al., 2005), despite the fact that employment is an important factor, it is inconclusive whether, on its own, contributes to the recidivism or reincarceration rate reduction, implying that intervening mainly in one domain—employment—is simply not enough for successful rehabilitation.

Many ex-prisoners face deep poverty issues that denies them and their families fulfilling basic needs and live stable and dignified life (Breese et al., 2000; LeBel et al., 2008; Western et al., 2015). Material deprivation is often caused by the unavailability of proper jobs or denying released persons a social assistance they need in first weeks or months after the releasing (Wacquant, 2001). One of the most significant issues here is the absence of affordable standard housing (Alós et al., 2015; King, 2014), causing a typical situation where ex-prisoners live in a liminality: they do not have any home and alternate between shelters and streets (Hattery & Smith, 2010). Stable housing is, at the same time, crucial factor for reducing reoffending and supporting other factors, such as employment, education, and training (Madoc-Jones et al., 2018). Material deprivation may also induce substance abuse relapse, as ex-prisoners seek for a safe routine to cope with stress coming from the material insecurity (Binswanger et al., 2012).

Often, in terms of stable housing and employment, ex-prisoners rely on opportunities coming to them through their social networks and families, which may provide a crucial psychological support needed for overcoming all the post-prison affairs (Davis et al., 2013; Johnson, 2014; Shivy et al., 2007). In many cases, however, such a help is unavailable from various reasons. (1) The past social capital and family relationships are toxic, as they are linked with ex-prisoners’ criminal activity, and may lead to relapse/recidivism. (2) The prisonisation effect makes it difficult for family and close persons to understand and get along with ex-prisoners who are coping with the post-prison situation. (3) The relationships are broken due to the imprisonment itself so, first, ex-prisoners must struggle to win the confidence of their families and significant others back (Breese et al., 2000; Davis et al., 2013).

Interactions with family and/or peers may be potentially negatively influenced by drug abuse, which tend to be far more prevalent in prison/ex-prison populations than in the general one (Begun et al., 2016; Belenko, 2006). As Braun et. al. (2016) pose, substance abuse treatment, along with housing, healthcare, and supportive social services, was stressed by ex-prisoners as the most pressing issues at their reentry/resettlement. The issue is sometimes concealed by assumption that abstinence in the duration of the prison sentence is enough for persons to recover from their addiction. It is then presumed that ex-prisoners are released “clean” and the problem is solved, while the psychological dimension of substance dependence (e.g., mitigating traumatization by a drug) is neglected (Binswanger et al., 2012). Thus, as numerous scholars have stressed (Begun et al., 2016; Belenko, 2006; Binswanger et al., 2012), there is a shortage of post-prison drug treatment programs oriented on continuous work with ex-prisoners who have problems with substance abuse, despite the findings that prison therapeutic programs followed by similar post-prison programs greatly reduce the possibility of relapse/recidivism (Robbins et al., 2009). At the same time, the absence of social services treating drug abuse, with combination of other social services insufficiency and material and/or housing deprivation, can cause sense of hopelessness, which is solved by relapsing or/and overdosing on purpose as a coping mechanism with the hardship (Binswanger et al., 2012; Griffin et al., 2020).

Drug abuse is often indication of bad mental health typically caused by prior traumatization that is, again, more prevalent in (ex-)prison populations than the general one (Fritzon et al., 2021; Martin et al., 2015; Stensrud et al., 2019). It is important to note that not only pre-prison traumatization but also traumatization during the incarceration time contributes significantly to the issue (Wallace et al., 2011). Unresolved traumatization then tends to be long-lasting issue that can induce abusive using of drugs and criminal justice involvement (Doherty et al., 2014; Griffin et al., 2020). In fact, pre- and post-prison traumatization in combination with bad mental health and drug abuse are so prevalent in (ex-)prison populations that Wallace et al. (2011) suggest implementing prison and post-prison programs driven by the integrated trauma-informed treatment approach that would address all the issue simultaneously. Drug abuse is also often linked to physical health problems, namely HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C that affect especially intravenous drug users. (Ex-)Prison populations also have other physical health issues, for example dental cavities, gum disease, asthma, tuberculosis, diabetes, and hypertension, whereas these issues afflict younger individuals compared to older individuals in the general population (Hammett et al., 2001; Williams, 2007). Given that availability of healthcare services is limited for ex-prisoners (Binswanger et al., 2012; Hammett et al., 2001), the poor pre-prison, prison, and post-prison health conditions have potentially a great negative impact on public health, especially in terms of the untreated (and possibly undiagnosed) communicable, infectious, and chronic diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, or tuberculosis) (Hammett et al., 2001; Williams, 2007).

The last reentry/resettlement issue we will discuss here is ex-prisoners’ debt as an issue that has been rather under the radar, even though debts may have an incapacitating effect on reentry/resettlement. Recently, attention was given to legal financial obligations (LFOs) as a type of indebtedness that hit (ex-)prisoners hard. LFO is a term that “encompasses the cumulative monetary assessments charged over various points of a criminal sentence” (Pleggenkuhle, 2018: 122). That includes court costs, restitution, and fines; child support ordered by a court; fees and mandatory program costs during parole or community supervision; and sometimes also financial compensation from ex-prisoners for their sentence (Pleggenkuhle, 2018). As several studies have shown (Haney, 2018; Link, 2019; Pleggenkuhle, 2018), LFOs and consequents debts of between several hundreds and several thousand dollars are a widespread phenomenon that influences most of ex-prisoners in the USA. Amongst the LFOs, it seems that child support is the most pressing one, falling on economically marginalized individuals and families in particular: 70% of $115 billion child support debt is owed by individuals with income under $10,000 in the USA, while the average arrear can be as much as $36,500 (Haney, 2018; Roman & Link, 2017). The combination of poverty and a high level of indebtedness may act as a stressor, creating a strain and fear of reimprisonment and demotivating ex-prisoners to make formal earnings, which tend to be small and lead to a poverty trap. Ex-prisoners, facing a future prospect of 20 to 30 years of extreme hardship before the debt is repaid, even get back to an illegal activity that is often the only option to meet their obligations and live a dignified life (Haney, 2018). As Link (2019) and Pleggenkuhle (2018) argued, it is important to note that even a small amount owed may have destructive effect on the situation of ex-prisoners due to their marginalized social position. Pogrebin et al. (2014) showed that a combination of debt repayment, subsistence expenses, and precarised employment indebtedness was a potent destabilizing factor even for ex-prisoners who had a relatively stable situation. Recently, Todd-Kvam (2019) interpreted this situation in terms of liminality: high indebtedness is often perceived as secondary sentence by ex-prisoners who stay in some kind of a limbo state where they are released from prison but, due to debts burdening them for next years or even their lifetime, they cannot fully reenter/resettlement, take part in society, and desist.

Nevertheless, only few studies deal with an analysis of more complex interplay between these factors and, rather, one factor or simple correlations of several factors are posed as the solution for most reentry/resettlement problems. It is more fruitful to see the factors, as Bunn (2019) asserted, through the lens of the intersectionality concept (e.g., Walby et al., 2012; Winker & Degele, 2011). In this sense, being an ex-prisoner is seen as a specific social identity encompassing several layers of multiple reentry/resettlement needs and structural inequalities that “rely on each other to function, and thus cannot be fully understood in isolation” (Bunn, 2019: 5). The needs along with structural inequalities are linked together, act simultaneously, and mutually support and reproduce each other in a way that cannot be breached by solving of one, two or more factors separately. According to Bunn (2019), using the intersectional approach should also mean emphasizing ex-prisoners’ lived experience as crucial for public institutions to recognize the necessity of complex response to complex nexus of needs and inequalities. Along with the intersectionality, critical criminology and critical social work will also be employed as the theoretical background throughout this study. As critical criminologists have pointed out (e.g., DeKeseredy, 2011; Garrett, 2016; Taylor et al., 1975), criminality and recidivism is often produced by structural inequalities that create marginalized and distressed persons who are either prone to commit crimes or they have no other choice in terms of their subsistence. It is then vital to create more fair structural conditions, which would address needs of marginalized persons and groups, solving or alleviating most of crimes committed. Similarly, critical social workers (e.g., Bailey & Brake, 1977; Ferguson & Woodward, 2009; Turbett, 2014) see problems of their clients as structurally produced via unfair and unequal societies and their institutions. Until unfairness and inequalities are alleviated, social work would always temporarily solve consequences of the system, but not causes, returning clients into inherently dysfunctional systems with a vision of regression back to social services in some time. Therefore, the social institutions and values must be changed to help marginalized populations; and social workers should play a pivotal role in the process, as they possess field data and knowledge of what works and what does not.

In this study, similar intersectional analysis of housing, subsistence, employment, and indebtedness will be outlined. These structural factors unfairly affect (not only) ex-prisoners; and their intersection may lead to recidivism. The interplay of these four factors is, compared to other countries, very specific for the Czech Republic (CR), especially in terms of indebtedness that is, as we will see, a systemic problem negatively impacting marginalized populations. Specific conditions of indebtedness in the CR are, except for Norway (see Todd-K vam, 2019), unique for the reentry/resettlement process, so the analysis can contribute to current knowledge. Apart from that, the analysis of the Czech context is also valuable for comparative reasons, as the Anglo-Saxon social contexts are often overrepresented in criminological literature, while other contexts rather underrepresented. As for the Czech reentry/resettlement policy, there is no standardized procedure or protocol for releasing an ex-prisoner, so it is completely up to the prison (its personnel, collaboration with other institutions, and so on) under what conditions the person is released. In some cases, ex-prisoners have instructions they can visit public institutions or NGOs and ask for help, few prisons cooperate with NGOs and are able to secure follow-up social work (accompaniment after the release, assistance with administration at various offices etc.), but mostly the notion of responsibilisation (Mertl, 2020) is applied, so most ex-prisoners are sent outside a prison with money for transportation to their home and that is all. There are basically two public institutions that should give support to ex-prisoners: social curators and probations officers. Social curators are state social workers responsible for providing social services to marginalized populations on the municipality level and are the only state institution in the CR that works with ex-prisoners who are not released on parole. However, social curators do not work with ex-prisoners only but also with other marginalized populations, and most of them are only part-time. Probation officers, on the other hand, work only with ex-prisoners who are on parole, but they perceive their work with ex-prisoners in terms of repressive control and often send their clients to social curators or NGOs for social work (Tomášek et al., 2017). Apart of the public institutions, there is a network of social services provided by NGOs, but it is very variable; there are some regions, often with high concentration of prisons, where the offer is inadequate and do not meet the ex-prisoners’ needs. The variability is caused by irregular financing of social services via time-limited subsidies and grants that constantly change so it is difficult to maintain proven social services. Thus, overall, the support network for ex-prisoners is limited and, unfortunately, cannot meet complex interplay of ex-prisoners’ needs.

Data and Methodology

The analysis is based on qualitative data created via three research projects focused on penitentiary and post-penitentiary situation in the CR; although all the projects had discrete aims, reentry/resettlement was one of the main focuses in all of them. During these projects, semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders (ex-prisoners, social workers, social curators, representants of the Czech Prison Service, prison personnel, probation officers, and other relevant experts) were conducted by four researchers overall (the author of this study participated in all projects). The study will be drew on 26 interviews with ex-prisoners, and 30 interviews with NGO social workers who provide prison and post-prison social services.

As for interviews with ex-prisoners, 17 of them were conducted from July 2017 to October 2017 and the rest from March 2020 to August 2020. The time gap had no effect on the data; one informant mentioned problems with securing social services during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but, overall, the findings were not affected by the pandemic and should be understood as long-term and stable systemic problems in the CR. The sample consisted of 21 men and 6 women; the age of participants ranged from 26 to 63 (mean over 44; median 46); the time served in prison ranged from 6 months to 20 years; the time since the last release from prison ranged from 1 week to 32 years; and the participants came from or were situated in almost all the parts of the CR. Thus, the sample was quite variable and ensured heterogenous experiences and reflections, which, furthermore, contributed to better validity of the findings, as several scholars pose (Creswell, 2007; Gray, 2004; Larsson, 2009), as it increases chances that recurring identified codes and themes in very different narratives constitute a core knowledge of the issue being analyzed. Ex-prisoners were addressed via social workers and social curators whom they worked with, so the combination of purposive and voluntary sampling was employed with prior prison experience as the only mandatory precondition for participation in the research. To ensure mentioned narrative diversity, an emphasis on variability of the sample in terms of geographical localization, gender, and length of sentence of participants was given throughout the sampling process to ensure as much heterogeneous and rich experiences as possible. Of course, the heterogeneity could also be perceived as a limitation in terms of codes and themes representation and relation to specific subgroups within Czech ex-prisoner population. However, themes discussed in the study were identified across the interviews and cross validated by the interviews with social workers.

The sample of ex-prisoners was analyzed as one group without gender differences considered. The differences are analyzed in the literature mostly in terms of drug abuse and mental health, where some studies pose that there are some differences (Griffin et al., 2020; Lane, 2020) and some found out no differences (e.g., Begun et al., 2016; Martin et al., 2015), so the situation is inconclusive. At the same time, the factors analyzed in this study are mainly of material and subsistence character. As many studies shown (Burch, 2017; Doherty et al., 2014; Fróis, 2017; Johnson, 2014), these factors are quite a universal problem for both the male and female ex-prisoners.

The interviews with social workers were conducted as a part of the TERAPEUT-VTOS project that is still ongoing and is primarily aimed at prison personnel’s reflection of counseling/therapeutic work with inmates in Czech prisons. Some of the prison programs are provided by NGOs that regularly visit prisons and work with inmates on their various issues. For sampling the NGOs, the list made of NGO that were mentioned by prison personnel during interviews was used. After conducting interviews with the NGOs on the list, it was analyzed which part of the CR are the interviewed NGOs situated in and what prisons they visit. Accordingly, more NGOs from the parts of the CR that were underrepresented were sampled and interviewed. Thus, the purposive sampling with an emphasis on geographical localization of NGOs and prisons they visit was employed. In the end, the sample consists of 17 NGOs from all over the CR, except for Zlínský region as the only region that do not have prison within its territory, and ex-prisoners returning there use social services mainly from the other regions around. From these NGOs, 30 social workers agreed to be interviewed, whereas 11 of them worked in an NGO that provided drug counseling and therapies; six social counseling; six social counseling combined with debt counseling; four debt counseling; one combination of debt, job, and legal counseling, plus therapeutic programs focused on behavior; one job counseling combined with provision of an employment and housing; and one operated a shelter house. The age of participants ranged from 27 to 60 years (mean 38,5; median 38); and the length of work experience with inmates and ex-prisoners ranged from 3 months to 22 years (mean over 6 years; median over 4 years). The interviews with social workers were conducted from November 2020 to April 2021.

The aim of the respective project had been explained to the participants who were then assured that any information which can create a harm to them or anybody else will be anonymized and that maintaining their confidentiality is the non-breakable rule in every project. All the participants gave both oral and written informed consent with their participation. Ethical committees, or any similar institution, are non-existent in the CR (except for medical research), so none of the projects could have been approved in this way.

The interviews consisted of several main topics. For ex-prisoners, these were: current social position, prison experiences, criminal past, employment, and experience with probation where appliable. For social workers: experiences with prisons and their personnel, sustainable provision of social services, and social position of ex-prisoners. For this study, the topic of ex-prisoners’ social position reflection was pivotal, as it contained issues and barriers ex-prisoners must cope with to increase chances for successful reentry/resettlement. The ex-prisoners were encouraged to speak about their experiences and situations they encountered, whilst social workers were asked to contemplate on the ex-prisoners’ social position in general and elaborate their experiences with providing social services to ex-prisoners. The length of interviews ranged between 35 minutes to almost 3 hours and the average was 1 hour and half. All interviews were audio recorded, except for one (the participant was worried that he would be tracked by people from his criminal past, so the researcher took thorough notes from the interview), and then coded via MAXQDA software to better grasp all themes.

The coding process took place at several levels and in several cycles (as was introduced, e.g., by Charmaz, 2006; Saldaña, 2009). The coding process itself was guided by the qualitative content analysis characterized by Mayring (2000), which is specific because it combines deductive and inductive approaches. Thus, in the first cycle, the data were coded deductively in accordance with the main topics, and in other cycles, these big themes were modified and extended to accommodate partial, more focused, sub-themes, which were identified inductively.

Findings

These issues regarding (un)successful reentry/resettlement were identified by the informants (brackets signify the number of informants who brought up the theme):

In the next subsections, due to the space limitation of this study, only four themes—(1) housing, (2) subsistence, (3) stable employment, and (4) debt and enforcement proceedings—will be discussed in more detail. These were chosen because, compared to other countries, they have some specifics in the CR and, thus, can potentially enrich the reentry/resettlement discussion. Also, they serve well for showing the intersectional interplay between the factors.

Discussion and Conclusion

In the study, four major obstacles for ex-prisoners in their successful reentry/resettlement—housing, subsistence, stable employment, debts, and enforcement proceedings—were discussed. Compared to other studies and experiences, securing stable housing and coping with debts and enforcement proceedings were more problematic factors for Czech ex-prisoners. This is caused by specific structural conditions in the CR: limited local housing-first policies and absence of the policy on the state level; until recent years, long-term absence of non-bank debts regulation; and demanding conditions for a personal bankruptcy. As a result, work dormitories and shelters, often not suitable for ex-prisoners because of drug consumption, stressful environment, and prison regime resemblance, became the housing standard, and debts and enforcement proceedings force ex-prisoners to do informal/illegal jobs, and severely limit material security and general wellbeing.

This situation significantly coincides with the individualization of social insecurities, globalization of capital and employment opportunities, and neoliberalisation of public institutions, which is well described and analyzed (e.g., Bauman, 2005; Wacquant, 2009; Young, 1999). These changes resulted in increasing poverty and social marginalization that were answered with tightened criminal policy and incarceration, as Wacquant (2009) and Fassin (2017) have pointed out. The CR did not avoid this discourse (Mertl, 2017) and, recently, studies focused on marginalization-criminalization-incarceration interplay (Kupka et al., 2021; Toušek et al., 2018) unveiled that marginalized populations are more victimized by a various criminal activity and, due to their subsistence problems, these populations tend to participate in property crimes to cope with material insecurity. This was also confirmed by the SARPO, a screening software tool used in prisons for categorizing inmates, indicating that nearly 60% of inmates have insecure or no housing; in last 3 years prior to incarceration, over 26% of inmates did not have any experience with legal employment; for 46%, informal/illegal employment was a common mean for securing subsistence; and only 21% had a stable legal employment. From the perspective of the prison population rate, the CR had 201 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019, which is high above the EU average (111 in 2018 according to Eurostat ¹ ) and the second highest in the EU (only Lithuania had higher rate). In 2020, over 73% of prison population was sentenced for a property crime, whereas over 47% of it were banal property crimes (theft and debit card frauds) (PSCR, 2021). Thus, it seems, as stresses Wacquant (2010), that it is problematic to think about reentry/resettlement in terms of reintegration (i.e., build on the previous stable factors) because many inmates had never been integrated into society in the first place. It is then symptomatic that many informants stressed housing, subsistence, and stable employment as the most pressing problems for them after the release.

Compared to social contexts, apart from some exceptions (Haney, 2018; Todd-Kvam, 2019; Roman & Link, 2017), debts and enforcement proceedings play more significant role in the CR than anywhere else. Czech ex-prisoners usually have debts of several 1000 Euros enforced through various proceedings, which have a paralyzing effect on their reentry/resettlement process. This effect is triggered by high salary deductions that leave ex-prisoners in a poverty trap: they do not possess enough money for dignified existence (standard housing and subsistence) and have prospects of being in such a situation for decades or even their lifetime. The situation is very stressful and demotivating, leaving ex-prisoners with two possibilities: personal bankruptcy, which is unavailable for many ex-prisoners, or informal/illegal employment. For most of ex-prisoners, the option of informal/illegal employment is the only available possibility how to cope with the debt situation and relatively quickly solve subsistence problem. The solution is, however, essentially temporal, as informal/illegal jobs tend to be risky and unreliable, and, perceived by a long-term perspective, with social and health insurance not being paid there is no social assistance in a case something goes wrong and the subsistence problem is eventually postponed to old age.

However, it would be a mistake to single out these two, or any other, factors as the key to more successful reentry/resettlement process, since the more complex and simultaneous interplay of all factors along with structural inequalities is in the place. Typically, a Czech ex-prisoner is marginalized before getting to prison, struggles with material insecurity, experiences unstable housing, has debts of several 1000 Euros, copes with drug abuse, struggles with prisonisation effect, and have problematic relationships with family and other close persons. Due to a limited availability of therapeutic/counseling programs in prison and prioritization of prison employment, these problems are often neglected, and it is not unusual that ex-prisoners are released more dangerous, have more problems than before incarceration, and are harmed by prisonisation effect (Mertl, 2021). In such situation, stable housing, secured subsistence, and an employment is a viable start, but not the end because other unaddressed issues can disrupt even relatively stable material situation. For example, an ex-prisoner may agree to temporarily reside at a work dormitory until earn some money to pay for a standard housing; then (s)he may begin to work on relationships, repay debts and so on. It seems like a promising plan. However, the factors do not act separately and one by one. When going to an employment and having enforcement proceedings, an ex-prisoner usually encounters salary deduction after 1 or 2 months, so first (and possibly second) month (s)he receives full salary without deduction and then deductions would kick in. This situation is very demotivating and stressful, and, when combined with tense environment in a dormitory, problematic social interactions, and drug abuse history, it may result, as some studies also have shown (e.g., Binswanger et al., 2012; Todd-Kvam, 2019), in the high level of strain, which may induce harmful behavior, relapse, and recidivism. What sounded as a reasonable plan at the beginning, is now a potential ticket to recurring incarceration. Thus, a comprehensive individual, informed, and participative plan in compliance with ex-prisoner’s needs delivering in time and targeted interventions is necessary. Participation, targeting, and right timing have been documented quite well in the literature to be important factors in reentry/resettlement (e.g., McNeill, 2019; Porporino & Fabiano, 2007; Werth, 2012).

Unfortunately, this is not the case of the CR: as said in the introduction section, ex-prisoners are neglected by public institutions and official social policy as a population for a specific social work intervention. Thus, ex-prisoners are marginalized before incarceration, their marginalization is deepened during serving the sentence, and a scarce and untargeted support is provided after the release. As Wacquant (2010: 611) posed, reentry/resettlement then becomes a mere bureaucratic ceremony and rather “prelude to another entry into the prison” than proper process of return and (re)integration into society.