@article{THESIS,
      recid = {2491},
      author = {Khirallah, Eleanor},
      title = {Presumed Innocent, Yet Purged from the Rolls: Navigating  Public Assistance Programs upon Release from Cook County  Jail},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {B.A.},
      address = {2019-06},
      number = {THESIS},
      abstract = {In grappling with mass incarceration, many policymakers  attempt to intervene during reentry, or the process of  leaving jail or prison and “reentering” the community. Some  of the more obvious reentry challenges include removal from  welfare programs as a result of convictions, despite the  fact that welfare programs can be beneficial for reentry.  Because state and federal statutes create lifetime bans on  welfare programs for people with convictions, policymakers  focus on removing these bans. However, it is possible that  barriers to public assistance exist regardless of having a  conviction, evidenced by examining the pretrial population.  These people leave jail without convictions, but are still  often unequipped for what waits for them after hours, days,  or months of being away from their lives due to pretrial  detention.  The pretrial population has been ignored in  conversations about removal from or limited access to  welfare programs during reentry. Because of that, I hope to  highlight how pretrial detention affects this access  through a case study on Cook County Jail. The bulk of my  research comes from interviews with forty-one individuals,  including bureaucrats from Cook County Jail jail and  relevant welfare agencies, and people working with formerly  incarcerated individuals at nonprofits and advocacy  organizations.  Overall, I find that pretrial detention  produces formal and informal barriers for people trying to  enroll in or maintain their enrollment in Medicaid, SNAP,  and SSI upon release from Cook County Jail. Formal barriers  are triggered by statutes and jail procedures, while  informal barriers directly result from bureaucracy and  on-the-ground practices. I ultimately recommend legislative  action and the implementation of programmatic interventions  at the jail. If the jail wants to facilitate better  outcomes upon release and lower the likelihood of a return  to jail, it has to be committed to combating these barriers  produced by pretrial detention. },
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/2491},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.2491},
}