sis may be found in "Wage and Status Effects of Employment on Affective Well-Being Among Ex-Felons," by Liker. In citing the extraeconomic benefits of job holding (1982, p. 265), Liker essentially argues from a neo-Durkheimian standpoint of social anthropology, that what may be seen as the ritual of employment (though Liker does not use that term) produces individual solidarity with the social mainstream, or more exactly the experience of social coherence, for ex-felons who are at risk for social maladjustment or criminal pathology because of their alien status in the mainstream. This standpoint is consistent with Liker's explanation of "compelling arguments for the importance of legitimate employment to ex-felons," notably that a job is a source of socially legitimate goals and values; a path to social respectability; a symbol of the expectation of work-for-hire; a context for (noncriminal) activity in general and social interaction and integration in particular (p. 267). Together with the obvious financial benefits associated with a regular paycheck, all of these factors go to the experience of affective well-being, or "the absence of the emotional problems commonly experienced by ex-felons leaving prison" (Liker, 1982, p. 268). In turn, says Liker, affective well-being informs employability and thereby economic benefits flowing therefrom.
Liker says that the concept of postprison adjustment is "underidentified" (p. 269), implying the difficulty of tracking such adjustment over long periods. Nevertheless, he appears to place confidence in using employment status as a measure of affective well-being, which is an important marker of every other aspect of a postprison adjustment model that also involves employment experiences, TARP (an income-subsidy program alternative to ex-felon employment) payments, and economic adjustment in general.
From a theoretical perspective, the operative word is adjustment, a vital clue that the socio...