Esperanza Vasquez ‘26 was living by the dollar, spending the last of her $5 on transportation tickets. Or, her character in a prison reentry simulation was.
“I found myself getting pretty emotional, just understanding that this is the average thing that most people go through,” Vasquez said.
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies lecturer Tara Gilligan hosted an event — partnering with the Landis Center for Community Engagement and the Anthropology and Sociology department — to help participants understand the first month of life after someone is released from prison.
Upon entering the reentry simulation in the Marlo Room on Wednesday, participants were given background information on their characters and a “life card,” detailing weekly living expenses and responsibilities.
“It’s a real eye-opener for people who have no idea what people go through when they come out,” said Diane Elliott ‘74, an organizer who runs a nonprofit that aids the reentry process.
Vasquez, for example, received a character with a bachelor’s degree who was unemployed.
Attendees were also given a reason why their character was arrested. What all the characters assigned had in common was a recent release from incarceration, or being a “justice-involved” person.
When the simulation began, participants quickly found out that they couldn’t do anything without an ID. In fact, many spent their whole first week (condensed into a 10-minute section) waiting in line to get forms for their birth certificate, driver’s license or social security card.
“This exercise is specifically to show people that when people get out of prison, they need to get IDs, they need to reestablish families, they need to check in with probation officers and somehow, they have to fit that all in while also trying to get a job,” Elliott said.
Different stations were set up on tables throughout the room to correspond with different facets of reentry: a career center for weekly check-ins to search for jobs and take a GED class, a transportation station to purchase public transport tokens needed to access other stations and, notably, an ID station to fill out forms for different forms of identification.
“I came to know about reentry simulations through other people who work specifically on women’s units in jails and prisons, and who had done it on their units,” Gilligan said. “I had the idea that I could bring it to Lafayette and we could do it here.”
The event ended with a discussion with three formerly-incarcerated panelists. Nearly two million people are incarcerated in the United States, with more than 600,000 released each year. 95% of people in prison will be released and returned home to face the difficult reentry process.
Gilligan has been teaching a course in collaboration with the Northampton County Prison since 2019. She takes her class to the prison weekly, where they meet with a group of incarcerated women, some of whom they see leave and return.
“I’m aware of a revolving door, and many of the challenges that come from having trouble securing housing and finding meaningful employment,” she said.
The lecturer said something she hears from the formerly incarcerated is that they are so accustomed to not being allowed to make physical contact with others that they feel startled or worried after bumping into others in public.
“I think that it needs to be spread to everybody,” said participant Angela Benecke, who works for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. “There was a lot of people who didn’t realize they were saying ‘them,’ like the people who go to jail are different, but they’re just us. We’re all the same people.”