Reconfiguring life after a prison sentence. The lived experience of persons on parole in Switzerland

Abstract

Time on parole is not only marked by the supervision and support of probation officers but constitutes a particular time in the concerned people’s lives. The experience of this transition period has constituted a topic of research, but most studies have neglected a thorough conceptualisation of the notion of experience and relied empirically on oral data such as interviews. We propose a conceptualisation of experience as lived and embodied, reflected and communicated, and, finally, sedimented. To capture these various dimensions, we developed a multisensorial methodology that explores emotions and places as well as narratives on the experience of the time on parole. Our results concentrate on a group of formerly incarcerated people who are rarely discussed in research: people who were well integrated into society before and who manage to organise their lives afterwards fairly well. They experience distinct challenges and encounter obstacles produced by the criminal justice system itself.