Picture Show: Free Again

Crime and punishment. Rehabilitation and reform. Correctional facilities. We use these phrases when we talk about prison, but the distance between these ideals and the experiences of people who have actually spent time incarcerated is vast. And such language fails to capture the profound complexity of what happens when a prison term is finished.

In "Free Again," the photographer Yusuf Sayman chronicles the day-to-day challenges associated with the re-entry process that follows a long prison sentence. His subjects are Tarik, a man in his third week of freedom after a four-year prison sentence (which began when he was just 16), and Doris, who has just completed 27 years of incarceration. "In prison they get used to a very different set of rules and social behaviors," says Sayman. "Doris said she never had to make decisions like what to wear. New-found freedoms as simple as shopping or taking the bus become very significant, very big deals."

What follows is a selection from the ongoing series "Free Again."



























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