RT Article
T1 Performing rehabilitation: Reentry, art, and identity
JF Punishment & society
VO 27
IS 4
SP 826
OP 844
A1 Inzana, Victoria
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1936157926
AB This article investigates the implications that theater role-taking has on identity transformation for individuals recently released from prison in the United States. Drawing upon 15 in-depth and semistructured interviews with individuals recently released from prison involved in a theater program, this study finds that theater role-taking provides the gateway to personal identity role-taking at three levels: the self, the family, and the broader society. At each level individuals are simultaneously accessing the roles of the “agentic self,” “the responsible family member,” and “the productive citizen.” These personal identity role-taking opportunities have implications for how individuals engage in “performing rehabilitation” or the presentation of self, which identifies reentering individuals as “changed.” As individuals engage in a presentation of self that are aligned with the rehabilitative ideas of the state, the theater program extends notions of rehabilitation that mirror those found across the reentry landscape.
K1 dramaturgy
K1 Rehabilitation
K1 Punishment
K1 Social roles
K1 Identity
DO 10.1177/14624745251344299