Nathan W. Link

1 INTRODUCTION Formerly incarcerated people face many legal and social challenges as they attempt to reenter their communities (Visher & Travis, 2011; Western et al., 2015). A robust literature has been developed during the past several decades that has convincingly described the pervasive impact of the collateral consequences of justice system involvement (Bannon et al., 2010; Kirk & Wakefield, 2018; Petersilia, 2003).

The American Society of Criminology’s Division on Corrections & Sentencing sponsors a series of volumes published by Routledge on seminal and topical issues that span the fields of sentencing and corrections. The critical essays, reviews, and original research in each volume provide a comprehensive assessment of the current state of knowledge, contribute to public policy discussions, and identify future research directions.

Scholarship from the life-course paradigm has produced much evidence on the crime-reducing benefits of turning points such as securing a good job or developing a stable, positive relationship. Building on these insights, recent work has demonstrated the utility of incorporating health into the study of desistance; for various reasons, both mental and physical health statuses have been shown to influence the likelihood of achieving these key life-course milestones.