Local Planning in the Age of Mass Decarceration

Abstract

This exploratory study discusses the results of a nationwide survey of planning directors, designed to understand whether local agencies understand and actively engage with reentry and social integration efforts targeting formerly incarcerated people. The results suggest agencies play administrative-bureaucratic roles facilitating environments that affect housing and employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated populations, yet many appear unaware of how regulatory and policy frameworks translate into local infrastructures of inclusion and exclusion. These knowledge gaps are exacerbated by engagement practices that tend to privilege security and incarceration stakeholders over those connected to reentry, including formerly incarcerated people themselves.