The Architecture of Desistance

Stephen Farrall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429867804
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The volume of studies into desistance has grown dramatically in recent years. Much of this research has focused on the internal dynamics of desistance such as decision-making, choice and restraint. Bringing together leading figures and drawing upon case studies from around the world, this book seeks to fill a vacuum in the contemporary literature on desistance by considering processes and practices at a societal level that influence how and why people desist from crime.

Beginning with an outline of what is known about how social, cultural and economic structures shape desistance from crime, this book proceeds to explore studies of desistance in countries such as the UK, Brazil, France, Israel, Ireland, Sweden and Chile. These studies touch on variations by ethnicity, the nature of the criminal justice system, economic cycles, gender, religious belief systems and the use of time and space. Policy matters relating to desistance such as the rehabilitation and supervision of former offenders are also explored.

This book will be invaluable reading to students and scholars of criminology, sociology and social studies engaged in studies of desistance, criminology, criminal justice, victimology, penology and probation.

Part I
Setting the scene

Part I contains one chapter, in which the editor outlines what we know about why people stop offending and the ways in which structural processes of various types and levels of abstraction are known or believed to shape routes away from crime. This overview chapter locates in the wider literature some of the later chapters included in this collection. A theoretical approach to desistance from crime and persistence in offending is outlined, and a research agenda for future studies is sketched at the very end. Subsequent chapters deal with the influence on desistance processes of cultures and communities, economies and institutions, and historical and systematic changes.

1
The architecture of desistance

Exploring the structural sources of desistance and rehabilitation

Stephen Farrall

Introduction

In this chapter I will summarise and try to organise what little is known about the ways in which macro-level structures may shape routes out of crime for former offenders. This chapter has four sections to it. I will start by reviewing what we know about the relationship between structures and processes of desistance from crime in general. I will conclude that whilst many accept that both agency and structures shape processes of desistance, we have, as a community, tended of late to focus on agentic processes (such as choice, decision, motivation, hope and so on) rather more than on the structural processes. This review is consciously skewed towards a consideration of those studies which have uncovered and explored the ways in which wider social, economic, cultural or political processes (i.e. structures) can shape individual or cohort life-courses and trajectories away from crime. Following this, I will briefly summarise those structural processes which are related to desistance and give an indication of the strength of the evidence base for each. I will then briefly outline my own thinking on how we can explore these matters further, first at the theoretical level and second (as a fourth section) in terms of the sorts of studies which we would need to undertake in order to throw further light on this area of research. In some ways, then, my chapter is a ‘call to arms’ or manifesto for a future research agenda on desistance.

What is known about why people stop offending? ¹

Research into desistance from crime has recognised for some time that when people cease offending, the process involves the interplay of agency (decision-making, choice, restraint and so on; Farrall and Bowling, 1999) and wider social, cultural and economic processes (such as national and local economic conditions, criminal justice system ‘philosophy’ and opportunities for people to move away from areas where they are ‘known’, to mention just three such processes; Farrall et al., 2010; Bottoms et al., 2004). Whilst many researchers acknowledge the inevitable truth in these sentiments, very few have been able to demonstrate how and why these processes operate to facilitate or to hinder desistance, as I will show later. This is partly because most studies of desistance have been based on one country and/or jurisdiction (preventing the thorough exploration of macro-level system effects) and have been qualitative in nature, which has tended to focus on the internal dynamics of desistance (Vaughan, 2007; Maruna, 2001; Gadd and Farrall, 2004; Farrall, 2005). Some studies are beginning to emerge which do suggest differences at the country level (Osterman, 2015 or Segev, 2018, both of whom have contributed chapters to this collection), but these tended to be small-scale PhD projects and based on two-country comparisons. Other studies (such as that by Finestone, 1967 or, more recently Calverley, 2013) suggest variations in terms of ethnicity, but Finestone’s study of New York Poles and Italians is now almost 50 years old, and Calverley’s study was of non-white ethnic groups living in London, who may face additional obstacles to desistance.

Several of the more recent very good studies of desistance from crime (such as Maruna, 2001; Healy, 2010; Hunter, 2015 or Weaver, 2016) have focussed on the internal dynamics. Maruna’s goal, for example, was “to identify the common, psychosocial structure underlying … self-stories [of desistance], and therefore to outline a phenomenology of desistance” (2001: 8). He described his work as being a ‘supplement’ (2001: 8) to research examining the structural correlates of desistance, such as the work of Sampson and Laub. Maruna argued that in order “to desist from crime, ex-offenders need to develop a coherent, pro-social identity for themselves” (2001: 7) which they can use to explain to both themselves and other people how their past lives have contributed to their ‘new’ identities. This narrative device Maruna refers to as a redemption script. In a similar vein, Hunter 2015 used insights from existentialism to explore and elucidate the processes by which former ‘white-collar’ offenders try to make sense of their lives as they move on from conviction and imprisonment (see also Farrall, 2005, 2009; Hunter and Farrall, 2015 on existentialism in relation to desistance and recovery). Hunter’s work brings to the fore the roles of values and beliefs, feelings and emotions and the developing sense of self and the search for meaning which, to varying degrees, we all must confront. Such studies, of course, are not alone in charting the ‘inner world’ of desistance, for the likes of Peggy Giordano and her colleagues (2002), Barry Vaughan (2007), David Gadd (Gadd and Farrall, 2004; Gadd, 2006) and Ray Paternoster and Shawn Bushway (2009) have forced desistance theorists to think about hope, shifts in awareness, fears for the future, dedication, the ‘self as a project’ and choice. All of these studies, as ground-breaking, significant and welcome as they are tend to foreground ‘the agent’, ‘agency’ or ‘agentic processes’ in one way or another, and in so doing have, all for very good reasons, tended to ‘hold constant’ the issue of structural variation in processes of desistance (see also Farrall and Bowling, 1999).

As such, in recent years the developments which we have witnessed in our understanding of why people stop offending have mainly been focussed on what may be termed ‘internal’ processes. In part, this is to be expected; many of the landmark studies of desistance from crime in the modern era (namely, Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Sampson and Laub, 1993; Moffitt, 1993, and to a lesser extent Graham and Bowling, 1995) tended to emphasise social-structural variables and downplayed (or completely ignored) such internal processes. The flip side of this swing back towards uncovering the internal dynamics of desistance is that we may be neglecting the role played by larger social forces. Of course, what is needed are studies which attempt to build explanations which can incorporate both of these frameworks within one account – an issue I shall return to later. That said, many of the studies which I will rely on to demonstrate that wider structures can influence and shape desistance have been based on qualitative research designs. Later I review some of what we know based on the few studies which, I feel, tell us something really key about desistance and structures.

Studies which illuminate the role(s) of structures in processes of desistance

The first publication I wish to refer to relates to the peak age of offending and the last year of compulsory schooling in England and Wales (Barclay, 1990). Barclay reports that the peak age of conviction in England and Wales used to follow a fairly simple rule – it was the age of children when their compulsory education ended minus one. So when compulsory schooling in England and Wales ended at age 14, the peak age was 13; when the age at which one could leave school was raised to 15, the peak age of conviction rose to 14. As successive generations of young people in England and Wales started to remain in the education system (studying at sixth form colleges, for example), so the peak age of conviction rose and its relationship with compulsory education started to break down. What is one to take from this? First of all, if the peak age of conviction is used as a proxy measure of the start of cohort-wide processes of desistance, then it would appear that such processes are malleable by changes in social policies. Second, it could be argued that the retention of young people in education is part of a wider process by which the transition to adulthood has been lengthened for young people in many post-industrial nations. As such, delayed ages of marriage, home leaving, employment and the like imped the transition from dependence on parents and/or peer-group cohabitation and may also lengthen the age at which young people are likely to become embroiled in crime and offending (Farrall et al., 2010).

Another examination which suggested that changes in social and economic structures may have an impact on the processes associated with desistance from crime is that by Farrall et al. (2010). This review explored how the macro-level changes experienced by the UK between the early 1980s and the year 2000 may have affected the abilities of people caught up in crime to make this transition ‘towards the mainstream’. The authors point to the signifi-cant changes in the economy (in common with several other European countries). In terms of the employment available, there has been a significant decrease in those employed in manufacturing and mining and a dramatic increase in those working in banking, finance and insurance and in distribution, hotels and restaurants (Farrall et al., 2010: 554). As such, the jobs which are predominantly available require graduate-level skills and are not usually jobs which those with few (or no) formal skills are able to gain easily. Thus, exactly the type of employment which in the past assisted many men in making the move away from crime (manual labour) has largely disappeared to be replaced either by posts which require formal qualifications or by lower-status white-collar jobs which have often, in the UK, had the image of ‘feminised’ work (and therefore might be culturally difficult for young males to consider). In addition, there has been an increasing tendency for employers to ask prospective employees to undergo criminal record checks demonstrating no previous convictions; obviously, this creates potential difficulties for offenders wishing to desist.

Farrall et al. (2010) also discuss those shifts in the operation of the criminal justice system. A key shift has been the increasingly punitive approaches taken to offenders. This has focussed especially on violent and sexual offenders and on repeat offenders. Its most obvious manifestation is the massive growth in the size of the prison population, which in England and Wales has risen from 49,500 in January 1995 to 82,100 in January 2009, a cumulative growth rate of 3.8% per annum. (By contrast, in the period 1945–1995, the average growth rate was 2.5% per annum.) The recent rapid population increase results from both an increase in the courts’ use of imprisonment and from a lengthening of the average prison sentences imposed. Other features of the increasing punitiveness of recent criminal justice policy include the ‘tightening up’ of prison regimes in various ways and a general tendency to make community sentences more onerous. The net effect of these developments has been subtly to redefine the relationship between the offender and the state. Increasingly, the ‘penalty box’ analogy has been eroded. In the view of the classical jurists, during a period of punishment the state suspended various rights of the punished citizen, but on completion of the punishment, the citizen resumed those rights. More and more, however, such a view is being replaced by an ideology in which the individual being punished becomes a sort of ‘non-citizen’ or ‘other’, who is permitted to return to civil society only grudgingly or not at all.

Not unrelated to this, the period since the mid-1970s has seen changes in the way that the concept of the rehabilitation of offenders has been understood and developed. This concept was, in the early post-war period, a cornerstone of the criminal justice system, and at that time the welfare of offenders was usually considered integral to rehabilitation. That version of ‘the rehabilitative ideal’ was dealt a severe blow by a series of research overviews (Martinson, 1974) and controlled experiments (Folkard et al., 1974, 1976); these resulted in a marked diminution of confidence in rehabilitative approaches. Among the many consequences of these events, the training of probation officers in England and Wales has been drastically reshaped so that it is no longer associated with social work training (Raynor, 1996: 17). ‘Rehabilitation’, however, has not died; instead, since the 1990s it has been reborn in the so-called ‘What Works?’ agenda, where the primary theoretical focus has been on cognitive-behavioural treatment approaches centred upon the modification of offending behaviour and the development of improved ‘thinking skills’.

Kemshall (2003) has linked the rise of interest in risk with the demise of the ‘modernist’ welfare-oriented penal agenda. The rise of the risk agenda means that there is increasing pressure to apply ‘risk assessment’ tools (for example, the Offending Group Reconviction Score) to guide key decisions. The rise of the risk management style of thinking in the probation service has been charted by Gwen Robinson (2002), who notes that approaches to risk management are not “imbued with a sense of transformative or rehabilitative optimism” (2002: 10). In an era dominated by concerns with public protection, risk assessments can lead to a risk-aversive mind-set on the part of officials and consequently to defensive or precautionary actions (such as refusing bail or parole). Perhaps the most worrying of outcomes arising from the ‘risk agenda’ arises from the trend towards categorising people on the basis of their level of risk and assuming that these categorisations remain valid or invariable in the next few years. This is particularly true for late adolescence and the early twenties, when there can be major changes in lifestyle and social contexts. By categorising an individual as being ‘high risk’, one sends various messages. The first of these is sent to the offender. The communication to an individual that they are at ‘high risk’ of re-offending is equivalent to saying to them, ‘You can’t change’. In some cases this may motivate the individual to prove the system wrong, but in many cases, given the obstacles to desistance such individuals may already face (lack of qualifications, lack of employment record, etc.), this message may lead to a fatalistic outlook (Halsey et al., 2016).

There are very few cross-national studies of desistance from crime. One study which did explore desistance in two countries is that by Linnéa Osterman (2015, 2018 and herein). Osterman studied females in the criminal justice systems in Sweden and England, interviewing 12 women in each country who had identified themselves as desisting. Osterman’s study contributes to the much-needed internationalisation of criminological knowledge about gender, offending careers, desistance and crime through an analysis of these female ex-offenders’ experiences of crime and criminal justice. Osterman focussed on pathways into crime, the gendered experiences of criminal justice and (of most interest in this context) desistance from crime. Of course, some cross-national symmetry is detected between the countries (both are European countries with high levels of human development and gender equality). However, Osterman finds that the differing ‘inclusive’ and ‘exclusive’ penal cultures shaped the women’s desistance. As such, these ‘macro-level’ cultures ‘trickle down’ and help produce different female experiences of criminal justice and desistance in Sweden and England. Osterman argues that the Swedish criminal justice system offers a context (supported by a strong welfare state) in which routes out of crime are easier, shorter and less burdensome, meaning that former inmates are more effectively able to play a full and active part in mainstream society. Osterman puts the differences down to the following features of the Swedish criminal justice system when compared to that in England and Wales: (1) a more robust infrastructure which is able to support individual change (for example, Sweden has higher-quality drugs and alcohol provision than is the case in England and Wales); (2) fewer conflictual relations between the prisoners navigating the criminal justice system and the authorities (which increased feelings of legitimacy and trust in individual-level criminal justice interactions, encouraging desistance); (3) the adoption and commitment to what Osterman refers to as ‘normalisation ideals’ and practices associated with this within the criminal justice system, which enabled smoother transitions away from the criminal justice system. Finally (4) she pointed to more accessible and attractive routes into participation and inclusion in wider society, including structured and well-resourced investments in employment support.

A study which is in many ways similar to that undertaken by Osterman is that undertaken by Dana Segev (see herein on one aspect of this study). Segev has interviewed 30 male probationers who are making good progress towards desistance in England and Israel, comparing their routes away from crime. What is certainly true is that whilst Israel and England share a very similar criminal code (the Israelis simply adopted most of the criminal justice system’s apparatus after Palestine ceased to exist in 1948), it appears that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• PART I Setting the scene
• PART II Cross-cultural stories of desistance and rehabilitation
• PART III New places and new topics in desistance research
• PART IV Turning ideas into workable policies: the implementation and implications of research into desistance from crime
• Index