We’re teaming up with Sound Talks CT again, a lecture series bringing big ideas + smart people into comfortable community spaces.

Sensing freedom: Sensory criminology, prison release and community

reintegration

What does freedom feel like?
An estimated 610,000 people are released from prison in the US each year. Returning
citizens face many challenges as they navigate institutional and social processes rooted
in stigma and discrimination. The dulling experience of low-wage work, insecure
housing, and weak family ties are the much-documented bleak reality. But what does it
really feel like to come home?
Using the lens of the emerging field of sensory criminology, this talk explores the
sensory experiences of freedom and community reintegration after prison. Drawing on
in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated people in New York and Connecticut, we
will explore how freedom is experienced through the senses: the feel of civilian clothes,
the rush of city crowds, the taste of fresh food, the brightness of color, and even walking
in the rain.
By focusing on these everyday details, the presentation offers a new way of
understanding punishment and reentry — not just as policies or statistics, but as
authentic, lived, and embodied experience. Sensory criminology invites us to think
about what freedom means to us, to consider how we feel it, and reflect on what it
means to finally come home.