Release, risk, repeat: how previously incarcerated men use tactics to respond to restrictive supervision

After release, previously incarcerated men’s (PIM) lives are shaped by risk-averse logics that extend carceral control beyond prison. This manifests in restrictive supervision and sustains what scholars describe as the “shadow carceral state” and “carceral citizenship.” While the impact of supervision on previously incarcerated people is well documented, less attention has been given to how PIM respond to it day-to-day. Drawing on 16 months of ongoing ethnographic research in Ontario, Canada – including over 600 hours of participant observation, 102 interviews, and document analysis – I identify three fluid “tactics” that PIM use to make their lives more manageable under supervision: over compliance, compliance, and edgewalking. By showing how PIM move within and between these tactics, I highlight their actions as forms of situated agency that shift along a continuum of resistance and submission. While their tactics offer temporary stability, they also paradoxically deepen PIMs’ entanglement in the systems they aim to avoid, undermining the very goals of supervision. Building on the sociology of risk governance, surveillance, and adaptive responses, I provide a grounded account of the limits of state control in reintegration and the ways PIM enact bounded agency under supervision. I conclude by outlining limitations and directions for future research.