I do what I’m told, sort of: Reformed subjects, unruly citizens, and parole

Abstract

Although parole and the processes of prisoner reentry have received considerable attention, how individuals on parole respond to the State’s efforts to regulate their conduct and govern their personhood remains under theorized. Drawing from ethnographic research with individuals on parole, this article examines how parolees navigate the social control inherent in this penal practice. Parole entails both productive and repressive power; responsibilizing and de-responsibilizing elements. The parole agency’s efforts to govern up-close—through supervision and regulation of everyday conduct—are frequently met with subversion, resistance, and hostility, while efforts to govern-at-a-distance are more productive. In general paroled subjects reproduce the injunction to transform their lives, becoming committed to ‘going straight’, ethical reformation, and responsible citizenship. This ‘reformed subjectivity’ guides how individuals enact parole, but does not reflect subjection or their full acquiescence to penal power. Rather, by engaging selectively with the rules, they render their conditions of parole malleable. These individuals on parole are committed to going straight but doing so, as much as possible, on their own terms. In this way, the reformed subjectivities they display both reflect and resist penal power.