Making Ends Meet After Prison David J. Harding Jessica J. B. Wyse Cheyney Dobson Jeffrey D. Morenoff Abstract Former prisoners are at high risk of economic insecurity due to the challenges they face in finding employment and to the difficulties of securing and maintaining public assistance while incarcerated. This study examines the processes through which former prisoners attain economic security, examining how they meet basic material needs and achieve upward mobility over time. It draws on unique qualitative data from in-depth, unstructured interviews with a sample of former prisoners followed over a two- to three-year period to assess how subjects draw upon a combination of employment, social supports, and public benefits to make ends meet. Findings reveal considerable struggle among our subjects to meet even minimal needs for shelter and food, although economic security and stability could be attained when employment or public benefits were coupled with familial social support. Sustained economic security was rarely achieved absent either strong social support or access to long-term public benefits. However, a select few were able to leverage material support and social networks into trajectories of upward mobility and economic independence. Policy implications are discussed. C  2013 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. In 1975, the population in jails and prisons on any given day was roughly 400,000 people. By 2003, this number had increased more than fivefold to 2.1 million people (Western, 2006). Although the upward trend in incarceration has begun to level off in the last few years, the number of individuals in state and federal prisons was over 1.6 million at the end of 2009 (West, Sabol, & Greenman, 2010). Compared to other nations and earlier periods in U.S. history, current incarceration rates are unprecedented (Raphael, 2011; Western, 2006), leading to what some have termed the era of mass imprisonment (Garland, 2001; Mauer & Chesney-Lind, 2002). Be- cause almost all prisoners are eventually released, mass incarceration has in turn produced a steep rise in the number of individuals reentering society and undergo- ing the process of social and economic reintegration (Travis, 2005). Over 700,000 individuals are now released from state and federal prisons each year (West, Sabol, & Greenman, 2010). In addition, the prison boom was accompanied by an even larger boom in the number of people under community supervision, with a recent study finding that one in every 48 American adults are either on probation or parole on any given day (Glaze & Bonczar, 2011). Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 00, No. 0, 1–31 (2013) C  2013 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pam DOI:10.1002/pam.21741