Social Science

Doing the Time on the Outside by Donald Braman

Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America

Donald Braman

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

In the tradition of the best-selling ethnographies No Shame in My Game by Katherine Newman and Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier, Doing Time on the Outside tells the other side of the incarceration saga: the little-told story of the effects of imprisonment on the families of the prisoners.

Since 1970 the incarceration rate in the U.S. has more than tripled, and in many cities—urban centers such as Washington, D.C.—it has increased over five-fold. Today, one out of every ten adult black men in the District is in prison. This has caused a deep rupture in the lives of the prisoners and their families.

Author Donald Braman shows that doing time on the inside has a ripple effect on the outside—one that reaches far beyond the individual prisoner and deep into the family itself. Braman offers wrenching personal stories of the ordeals families face when one of their members is imprisoned. Citing major examples such as lost income and delayed parenting opportunities, he also uncovers seemingly innocuous details that nevertheless have a cumulatively adverse effect; for example, the onerously large phone bills that often result when a family member goes to prison.

This ground-breaking ethnography of modern urban America reveals a genuinely new argument: how misguided the commonly accepted ideas about supposed pride in prison time really are. Moreover, Braman brings to light the darker side of a system that is failing not only its criminals, but their families, too. Finally, the author argues that prisoners themselves must take more responsibility for their lives, as well as for their families.

Donald Braman holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and is currently in law school at Yale.

June 2004
280 pages