Argument & Key Findings

The system of reentry institutions — including halfway houses, parole agencies, and housing assistance programs — can be extremely complicated for formerly incarcerated persons (FIPs) to navigate. These complications are not merely logistical, but also social and emotional: the ways in which FIPs interact with reentry institutions can affect their sense of belonging, dignity, and prosperity. When the rules and practices of reentry institutions undermine these needs, it becomes more likely that participants will violate rules, withdraw from the institutions altogether, or find themselves reincarcerated. 

In “Home But Not Free,” Gillian Slee offers a rich analysis of these socioemotional dynamics. The paper both increases our knowledge of reentry processes and deepens our understanding of FIPs and reentry staff. Previous scholars have focused more on how adverse outcomes stem from reentry institutions prioritizing surveillance or control. Slee pushes forward this conversation by highlighting how adverse outcomes also stem from failures to acknowledge and support the dignity of FIPs.

Slee’s paper is informed by over two years of ethnographic fieldwork with FIPs in Philadelphia. This includes observing over 200 appointments at a housing assistance program, analyzing more than 130 files of program participants, and both observing and assisting with programming at a women’s halfway house. 
 

Three Mechanisms:

The core of the paper centers on Slee’s elaboration of three mechanisms that link socioemotional concepts, such as indignity, to outcomes like withdrawal or reincarceration. Each mechanism is clarified through a range of examples and case studies.

1. Unrecognized vulnerability:

Reentry institutions and their staff often fail to recognize or respond to the constraints and vulnerabilities faced by FIPs. These failures can undermine the dignity of FIPs and provoke their withdrawal from such institutions. In the realm of housing assistance, the Philadelphia program requires that rent falls between 30% and 45% of participants’ income. However, this is often unrealistic given the difficulties of finding fairly priced units or securing gainful employment with a felony conviction. Accordingly, FIPs must seek low-quality units or roommates. Yet most participants do not want roommates because it reminds them of being incarcerated. Participants are thus presented with an undignified set of choices. The program restrictions mean that many FIPs cannot or will not utilize housing assistance programs, deepening their sense of instability.

Another source of vulnerability concerns the mismatch between FIPs’ expectations and the realities of frontline bureaucracy. For example, many housing assistance programs have too few staff, some of whom struggle to juggle appointments or return phone calls. Because reentry staff are overburdened, they may ask participants to pick up the slack by searching for housing units. Yet many FIPs lack the requisite know-how, for example, calling about units too frequently or too early in the morning. Others may show up hours early for their appointments, in the process annoying reentry staff. Yet participants are not coached on how to improve these behaviors, leading to neglect. Other FIPs must learn that the majority of units are listed online as opposed to in newspapers, incurring the mockery from reentry staff in the process. 

A final source of vulnerability concerns participants’ lack of efficacy — the sense that their efforts make little difference or are inadequate. Reentry staff may have high expectations of people who feel “cryogenically frozen in time” (p. 32) because of years of incarceration. Some are unable to use modern cell phones or have no rental history.
 

2. Discretion’s Benefits and Drawbacks:

The discretion exercised by reentry staff introduces difficult choices for participants, forcing them to choose between (a) following the rules and becoming socially isolated or (b) breaking the rules and developing social connections. For example, some halfway houses are restrictive about time spent outside of the house. Participants who abide by the rules may miss out on socially important events, like a child’s basketball game. Some FIPs may lie about or conceal where they live in order to deal with less intrusive parole agents. Others may cross state lines to pursue important career opportunities. One participant parked their mobile home outside of the parole district lines because it was less expensive and easier than seeking alternative units, but these kinds of ‘rational’ behaviors cannot be accommodated. Discretion is a highly variable attribute: some reentry staff cancel meetings and inconvenience participants, while others remember individuals’ needs and accommodate them. Those who expect more discretion than they receive may break the rules out of frustration. Ultimately, discretion and its absence can provoke a host of socioemotional problems.
 

3. Risk-Escalating Rules:

Instead of preventing noncompliance, program rules may serve to encourage it when they undermine participants’ sense of dignity. For example, 29 states prohibit associating with other FIPs, yet many participants have friends or family supervised by the system; as such, people violate the rules in order to preserve meaningful relationships. Some FIPs are faced with painful dilemmas, for example, choosing between living in halfway houses where drug use is common or breaking the rules by leaving. Others report using cocaine instead of marijuana because the latter can be detected in their bloodstream for much longer. Some halfway houses mandate spending a certain number of hours inside the house, but this leads to participants being unable to work multiple jobs to support themselves, a clear violation of their dignity.

For many FIPs in uncomfortable halfway houses, they cannot be placed in another house unless they break the rules of their existing house; some consider breaking the rules for the sake of their well-being, even though doing so might land them under even more restrictive supervision. One participant was refused permission to live in a camper that he could afford because the camper’s mobility posed a flight risk. Another participant broke the rules by traveling out of state because her son’s father had cancer, and a reentry professional later told her to return in a rather threatening way. The rules of reentry institutions thus incentivized FIPs to make very risky choices.
 

By highlighting socioemotional concepts — especially (in)dignity — as central to the experiences of formerly incarcerated persons, Slee shows how the rules and practices of reentry institutions can undermine reintegration. Addressing sources of vulnerability and counterproductive rules may help reform reentry institutions in more humane and effective ways.

The Taiwan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) was pleased to join the North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA) as a co-host of NATSA’s 2025 annual conference, Toward an Otherwise in Taiwan and Beyond. Held at Stanford University from June 30 to July 2, the conference continued NATSA’s three-decade tradition of convening Taiwan scholars across disciplines. Stanford East Asia Library and the National Museum of Taiwan Literature were the event’s additional co-hosts.

Organizing the annual interdisciplinary academic forum is a core mission of NATSA, a nonprofit organization operated by North American and overseas Taiwanese doctoral students and recent graduates studying Taiwan. This year’s conference invited participants to engage with the “otherwise,” a framework adopted by fields tied to social movements, including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, and gender and sexuality studies. Using this framework, the conference aimed to recenter marginalized aspects of Taiwan and challenge conventional methodologies and narratives in Taiwan studies.

The conference opened with welcome remarks by Stanford sociologist and APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin, who also serves as the director of the Taiwan Program. The ensuing agenda explored diverse topics and included roundtables, workshops, a mentoring session, a film screening, and a book display. The conversations underscored the need for scholarship rooted in solidarity, critical inquiry, and imagination. The following are highlights from selected roundtable discussions.

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Reflecting on Three Decades of Taiwan Studies

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The opening signature roundtable, Three Decades of Taiwan Studies, brought together four scholars from different programs to reflect on the historical development of Taiwan studies in North America. It featured Howard Chiang, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara; sociologist Ruo-Fan Liu, the 2024-26 Taiwan Program postdoctoral fellow at APARC; Richard J. Haddock, the assistant director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University, where he is also pursuing a doctorate in public policy and public administration; and University of Washington’s Ellen Y. Chang, a film scholar and art curator/practitioner.

The four speakers traced the transformation of Taiwan studies from its roots in traditional area studies into an interdisciplinary field. They emphasized that, despite growing academic interest in Taiwan and the field’s expansion in both content and relevance, institutional support remains precarious and long-term financial commitment is uncertain.

Taiwan’s Democratic Resilience in the Age of AI

The roundtable AI, Misinformation, and Global Security examined Taiwan’s leadership role in combating digital disinformation and defending democratic institutions. Mei-Chun Lee, an anthropologist at Academia Sinica, introduced Taiwan’s civil society responses to misinformation, including initiatives such as the Fake News Cleanser program, which helps older populations navigate misinformation. She emphasized a "security and care" framework combining fact-checking and civic education networks.

Thung-Hong Lin, a sociologist at Academia Sinica, examined Taiwan’s democratic resilience amid China’s sharp power tactics, sharing findings from a large dataset that tracks cross-Strait informational networks and their influence on voting patterns in Taiwan. 

Herbert Chang, a computational social scientist at Dartmouth College who studies social networks and online politics, analyzed the role of generative AI in misinformation during Taiwan’s 2024 elections. While memes (including AI-generated ones) spread rapidly, his study finds that AI did not significantly shift voting behavior due to entrenched political polarization. 

Yuan Hsiao, a Yale University sociologist studying the intersection of digital media, social networks, and collective action, discussed the emotional effects of misinformation on social media, focusing on how emotional manipulation drives identification with protest movements. He also raised methodological challenges in measuring misinformation.

Imagining Alternative Futures Across Asia

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The roundtable Toward Otherwise Futures in Asia brought together scholars focusing on the intersecting yet distinct cultural and political landscapes of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Tibet. The conversation featured Harvard University’s political theorist Samuel Chan; Cornell University’s doctoral candidate in anthropology Yu Liang, also known as Leeve Palray; Stanford University’s political theorist and postdoctoral scholar Simon Sihang Luo; and Tenzing Wangdak, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.

Together, they explored how communities in the four distinct regions respond to cultural displacement, political repression, and transnational authoritarianism. The discussion centered on how each place navigates power asymmetries relative to China and whether there is any alternative path to democratization in China. The conversation raised questions about alternative political futures and relational frameworks for understanding different types of power dynamics in East Asia.
 

The Evolving Contours of Taiwan Studies

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The closing forum, Working Across Differences: NATSA and 30 Years of Community-Building, invited three scholars to reflect on the overall theme of the conference, drawing on their disciplinary perspectives and rich engagement with NATSA. The conversation featured anthropologist Mei-Chun Lee of Academia Sinica; legal and public health scholar Po-Han Lee of National Taiwan University; and I-Lin Liu, a doctoral candidate in media studies at Indiana University Bloomington.

The panelists considered NATSA’s unique position as a student-led network that fosters scholarly exchange across disciplines and generations. They discussed the importance of promoting flexibility and inclusiveness as the field of Taiwan studies responds to academic and political shifts. Looking ahead, the speakers called for incorporating marginalized voices from Taiwan.

As Taiwan increasingly gains visibility on the world stage, the conference affirmed the importance of advancing Taiwan studies as an interdisciplinary, justice-oriented, and globally connected field.

The results show dramatic opinion shifts and notable consensus-building across party lines. Most notably, dissatisfaction with American democracy dropped 21 points overall—from 75% to 54%—with Republicans, Democrats, and independents all showing significant improvement in democratic confidence at the end of the weekend.

"When Pennsylvanians were given the space for informed, civil conversation, they consistently depolarized on issues that dominate cable news narratives as hopeless partisan battles," said James Fishkin, Director of Stanford's Deliberative Democracy Lab. "This experiment proves that America's political divisions and opinions are not as intractable as they might seem. Voters, when presented with balanced information and the opportunity to listen to one another, emerged with considered judgments about what needed to be done as well as greater respect for those they disagree with. The results offer a look at what really matters to voters when they think in depth about the issues. In my view, it also offers an inspiring picture of how democracy could actually work better.”
 

Key findings:
 

• Immigration: Support for increasing visas for low-skilled workers doubled from 25% to 50%, with Democrats moving from 41% to 69% support and Republicans increasing from 9% to 30%. State-level DACA protections gained significant Republican backing, rising from 18% to 38%.
• Voting Rights: Support for broad voter enfranchisement jumped to 96% (up from 83%), with Republicans increasing their support by 22 points. Democrats increased their support for voter ID requirements, increasing from 48% to 57%.
• Election Integrity: An overwhelming majority of participants supported increases in election integrity, with 77% supporting random ballot audits, and 87% supporting criminal penalties for voter intimidation.
• Healthcare: Rural healthcare initiatives achieved near-unanimous support, with 94% backing loan forgiveness for healthcare workers in underserved areas and 88% supporting tax credits for rural facilities.
• Foreign policy: Support for providing military support to Taiwan in case of Chinese invasion doubled from 35% to 69%, with massive bipartisan increases among both Democrats (40-point jump) and Republicans (30-point jump).
• Education: While trade school subsidies gained overwhelming support (81%), free college tuition support dropped from 59% to 47% as participants weighed budget realities.
• Transformed relationships & Understanding: Perhaps most significantly, 91% of participants reported respecting opposing political viewpoints (up from 72%) following their experience at America in One Room: Pennsylvania and 90% expressed willingness to compromise with political opponents (up from 80%). As a whole, 97% of participants reported that A1R: PA was valuable in helping them clarify their positions on key public policy issues debated.

America in One Room: Pennsylvania is the fifth Deliberative Polling® event organized by Helena in collaboration with Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab. Public Opinion Strategies conducted outreach, selected the representative samples, and administered the questionnaires.

Full results and executive summary are available below: