Lindsey Raisa Feldman

LGBTQ+ people are disparately impacted by the carceral state. From higher rates of policing, to higher incidences of abuse behind bars, to greater material precarity after release from prison, queer/trans individuals are at greater risk of bodily and emotional harm from punitive social institutions that offer little care. This project is an engaged visual ethnography that seeks to challenge and move beyond normative, biomedical understandings of both care and risk within anthropology and broader policy and advocacy spaces, with the goal of increasing access to dignifying forms of care for LGBTQ+ upon release from imprisonment. In collaboration with The Haven, a non-profit serving the LGBTQ+ community in Memphis, TN, we will address meanings of care and risk at the theoretical, programmatic, and policy levels simultaneously. We ask how queer individuals who are navigating the reentry phase define care physically, mentally, emotionally, and morally, and seek understandings of access to care through both informal and formal avenues. We build on these lived experiences to improve community-driven healthcare programs, decrease stigma and dehumanization, and ultimately impact policy decisions that materially shape peoples’ access to all forms of care during the reentry phase.