Concentrated disadvantage and stress in daily life after prison

Reentry from prison is a stressful life transition, which has consequences for recidivism, health, and well-being. Navigating poor and highly surveilled neighborhoods after prison is considered a primary stressor after release; however, it is methodologically challenging to document how poor places exert these invisible, day-to-day strains. Bringing together theories of stress with “activity space” research, we analyze nearly 300,000 GPS estimates and more than 5300 daily reports of emotions collected through mobile phones across 3 months among a cohort of men recently released from prison in Newark, New Jersey. Using a new approach to measure activity spaces, which we term “egocentric places,” combined with multilevel models that investigate within-person changes over time, we find that daily exposure to disadvantaged places is associated with increased negative emotions, specifically, stress. These associations are most evident when navigating commonly visited places (as opposed to rarely visited places) and are most concentrated among people who already live in highly disadvantaged residential areas. These findings illuminate a generally hidden process in which spending time in disadvantaged places exacerbates stress after prison.