By Will Leaver, M.A.P.L., M.A., M.S.
For the last several years I have worked as a Subject Matter Expert in reentry, helping Universities establish Academic Reentry programs, and as a Reentry Coordinator for Metro State University. When meeting with Higher Education in Prison (HEP) administrators, and reentry workers, I am often asked, “What is the most important aspect of Reentry?” Once, I was even on a panel that posed this question.
The first to answer was another reentry navigator who proclaimed, “housing.” They went on to explain how, without a doubt, housing is the most enduring challenge. It is a struggle for anyone with a criminal conviction, but there are many offenders—arsonists, sex offenders, and those with drug convictions—that find securing housing nearly impossible.” Another member of the panel took issue with this, explaining how “housing is indeed a pressing concern, but finding employment that would allow them to afford housing is a more immediate concern.” He addressed the first navigator: “The challenges you indicated also exist in the job market, and without a job, even if I get you housing, you will eventually lose it.” They both looked at me as if I would weigh in and settle the debate. They had both mentioned what are debatably the most pressing service navigation issues in the field of reentry, and they are both essential.
I responded, expressing that they both named vital struggles that must be addressed, and for many finding a solution is exceedingly elusive. When thinking about reentry—especially academic reentry—I organize the work we do within four pillars: service navigation, academic support, relationship building, and existential support. Both housing and employment are parts of the first pillar, service navigation. These are essential tasks, and they must be addressed, but the problem—as I see it—in the field of reentry is that too many believe if they can connect those they serve with the right combination of services—housing, employment, medical care—then their job is done. Let me be clear: If you connect reentering individuals to these services, you have helped them take a major step in their reentry journey, but it is the existential harm of incarceration, that issue that remains unseen, that traps us in a vicious cycle. If I have a house and a job but unknown forces I can’t see or name dictate the terms of my reentry— if my internal narrative still whispers that I am unworthy, if my sense of time is fractured, if I forgotten how to act with agency, if I cannot see myself as someone who belongs—then I am not truly free. Reentry must move beyond solely addressing the logistical challenges of service navigation. Reentry work requires us to create the conditions where agency might be cultivated, where—in collaboration with those we serve—we help reconstruct the conditions of their becoming. Without that, what we build will always be precarious—structurally sound perhaps, but existentially unstable. If I must answer what is the most important aspect of reentry, it is cultivating the conditions for the emergence of agency.
Will Leaver is now a PhD student in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, where he is exploring the unseen and unnamed phenomena that shapes the lives of reentering individuals. He believes reentry navigators must think about reentry differently, moving beyond the limits of service navigation, to confront the lingering, often unspoken, existential harms of confinement. His work asks what it means to build a life after release not through access to services alone, but through the slow, deliberate emergence of self, time, and being. In doing so, he seeks not to offer a roadmap back, but to co-create the conditions for something new to emerge.