Incarceration

Life-Path Interview 12

Purpose: Understand the effect incarceration or custody had on a person's life, identity, relationships, skills, and return to the community.

This interview is about the experience and its consequences, not establishing guilt or collecting offence details. The participant may skip any question.

Participant code: ____________________ Date: ____________________

Interviewer: ____________________

□ The participant agrees to have these responses recorded and stored privately for Union support planning. Questions may be skipped. The participant can ask the administrator to review or correct the record, or discuss withdrawal.

1. First Custody Experience

How old were you the first time you were held in custody, jail, youth detention, or prison?

Before entering, what did you expect it would be like?

What surprised you?

2. Adjustment

What did you have to learn quickly - rules, routine, who to trust, how to communicate, avoid conflict, occupy time, protect belongings, or understand procedures?

Which habits helped you inside?

3. Effects Outside

What happened to housing, employment, family, relationships, children, possessions, identification, benefits, health care, or other parts of life while you were incarcerated?

What was hardest to maintain?

4. Useful Experiences

Did you learn anything useful while incarcerated - trade, education, exercise, reading, discipline, communication, self-control, mentorship, spiritual practice, or something else?

Was there anyone there who genuinely helped you?

5. Release

What was the first week after release like?

What was unexpectedly difficult?

What did you need immediately?

What did you actually receive?

6. Re-entry

What makes staying out of custody easier?

What tends to pull someone back toward the same situations?

What support is most important during the first day, week, month, and six months?

7. Identity

Did incarceration change how other people saw you?

Did it change how you saw yourself?

Did you carry useful institutional habits outside?

Did you carry habits that became harmful outside?

8. Looking Back

What should happen before someone walks out the gate?

What do organizations misunderstand about people returning from incarceration?

9. Participant's Own Interpretation

Finish: "The hardest part of incarceration was..."

Finish: "The hardest part of getting out was..."

Interviewer Notes

First custody age: ____________________________________________

Re-entry barriers: ____________________________________________

Useful skills developed: ____________________________________________

Institutional habits needing adjustment: ____________________________________________

Strongest protective factors: ____________________________________________

Do not collect unnecessary offence details or identifying information about other incarcerated people.