Guggenheim Fellow Bruce Western and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Matthew Desmond will discuss mass incarceration and prisoner re-entry through the lens of Western’s new book, “Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison.” The conversation will be held at Princeton University on Monday, Oct. 15, 4:30 p.m., in Robertson Hall. A book sale and signing will follow the discussion.

In “Homeward,” Western draws from comprehensive interviews with more than 100 individuals to describe the difficult and tumultuous first year after release from prison — with poverty, racial inequality, and other factors affecting re-entry into society. Western’s research examines trends in American economic inequality and the growth of the U.S. penal population. These topics are joined by an interest in the shifting landscape of American poverty over the last 40 years.

The author of “Punishment and Inequality in America,” Western served as vice-chair of a consensus panel of the National Academy of Sciences on the causes and consequences of high rates of incarceration in the United States. He is professor of sociology and co-director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University. Western also is a Radcliffe Fellow and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the National Academies of Science. 

Desmond is professor of sociology at Princeton and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.” His research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality and ethnography.