Serving Time by Coming Home

This chapter demonstrates how a reentry court in West Lafayette enables former prisoners to build new lives and stay out of trouble by supporting them with a team of legal specialists, social workers, health and job counselors, and other staff. While reentry is a part of the criminal-justice system and “doing time,” a reentry Problem Solving Court (PSC) is also an effort to reform the prison-industrial society. The chapter studies the deep power structures whereby the reentry court shapes ex-prisoners' experiences and navigation of court boundaries and surveillance as they become both disciplined and agentic in their path to becoming contributing citizens. It argues that the PSC demonstrates Michel Foucault's art of governing by creating a “subtle integration” of coercion and agency via its communicative organization.