%0 Journal Article
%T How Formerly Incarcerated Women Confront the Limits of Caring and the Burdens of Control Amid California¡¯s Carceral Realignment
%A Megan Welsh
%J Feminist Criminology
%@ 1557-086X
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1557085117698751
%X The largest scale effort to reduce our reliance on incarceration is currently taking place in California. Drawing on in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated women on two different forms of community supervision in one California county, this article makes two main contributions. First, I offer a conceptual framework for understanding how women experience the goals of community supervision. Because actual rehabilitation is often off-limits, I suggest that these institutional goals are organized around caring, control, and self-governance: Caring is exhibited by supervision officers in lieu of substantive assistance toward rehabilitation; control for the sake of public safety remains a key aim of community supervision; and self-governance is an unstated institutional goal through which women are forced to take on the invisible work of managing their own rehabilitation. Second, I assess how¡ªif at all¡ªCalifornia¡¯s decarceration effort has shifted institutional goals, and what this means for women. I argue that decarceration¡¯s continued emphasis on control for the sake of public safety impedes the transformative potential of efforts to restructure the crime-processing system
%K decarceration
%K parole and probation
%K women¡¯s incarceration and reentry
%K California¡¯s Public Safety Realignment
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1557085117698751