Reentry stigma does not end at the prison gate. It follows people into job interviews, apartment applications, and everyday interactions long after their sentence is served. A paper published in the newest volume of the Annual Review of Criminal Justice Studies (ARCJS), a peer-reviewed journal produced by students at San Francisco State University, takes a close look at how this stigma forms and why it is so hard to shake.

The research traces stigma through two stages: the pressure incarcerated individuals face while inside, and the social scrutiny that follows them once they are out. In both settings, a person’s past becomes the lens through which everything else is judged. How they look, how they speak, how they carry themselves. The paper points out that this scrutiny does concrete damage in two of the areas that matter most for a stable life after release: finding a job and finding a place to live.

That matters for the work RBI does every day. Consider a returning artist who has spent months developing a body of work inside, only to find that the conversation with a potential landlord or employer keeps circling back to their record instead of their portfolio. The stigma is not a footnote to their reentry, it is often the main obstacle.

The encouraging part of the research is what it points toward as a solution. The paper argues that stigma reduction and rehabilitative programming, the kind of structured, community-facing work that gives people a new context to be seen in, can lower the risk of recidivism. In other words, stigma is not fixed. It responds to exposure, to relationship, and to platforms that let a person’s work speak before their record does.

That is the model RBI is built around: giving artists a marketplace where the first thing a buyer sees is the work itself.