The Effect of Criminal Record Discrimination on Future Orientation and the Buffering Impact of Social Support.

Abstract

Individuals returning to communities post incarceration face uncertainty. They are faced with discrimination and prohibited from many aspects of society. During community re-entry, individuals may benefit from future orientation. Future orientation has been defined as one's ability to set future goals and plans. Social support may be able to lessen the detrimental effects of discrimination and bolster future orientation, but it is critical to decipher which type of social support is most effective: specific or general. To explore this relation, 3 models were executed with both types of support analyzed as moderators in three separate binomial logistic regressions. The results suggest that participants who reported having ample general social support were able to conceptualize a positive future for themselves even in the face discrimination due to their criminal record, but individuals lacking in sufficient general social support had their future orientation greatly and negatively affected by criminal record discrimination.