Desistance Research and Intervention Practice

1. Desistance Researchand Intervention Practice Fergus McNeill Universities of Glasgow F.McNeill@lbss.gla.ac.uk

2. Thinking about interventions Social Context Staff Skills Intervention (RNR) Desister Offender Relation-ship Motivation

3. Thinking about the desistance process

4. Thinking about thedesistance process

5. Primary and secondary desistance When it comes to persistent offenders, secondary desistance is (or should be) the ‘holy grail’ of offender management and resettlement Desistance is a process characterised by ambivalence and vacillation. It is not an event. Desistance may be provoked by aging, by related life events and by developing social bonds, depending on the meaning of those events and bonds for the offender. Desistance may be provoked by someone ‘believing in’ the offender. Hope seems to be an important factor. Understanding desistance 1

6. There is an important ongoing debate about whether or not desistance typically involves a change in narrative identities (or self-stories). However, it is likely that some form of narrative reconstruction is necessary for persistent offenders. Desistance seems to involve discovering (or developing) agency – the ability to make choices and govern one’s own life. Persistent offenders tend to be fatalistic. Different forms of capital are significant in the desistance process. Desistance probably requires more than just the development of human capital (capacities); social capital is also critical to the process. This suggests that intervention needs to be about more than sponsoring change within offenders. For many desisters, desistance is about ‘redemption’ or restoration; it often involves finding purpose through ‘generative activities’. Understanding desistance 2

7. Supporting desistance • Interventions need to take account of: • Identity and diversity in the process • Motivation, hope and ambivalence (affects) • The relational contexts of change (personal and professional) • Strengths and resources for overcoming obstacles to desistance (as opposed to risks and needs) • The development of an agentic identity • Social capital (as opposed to human capital) • Interventions are part of the process, but the process exists before and beyond them

8. Think change process first,interventions second • ‘Treatment [intervention] was birthed as an adjunct to recovery [change], but, as treatment [intervention] grew in size and status, it defined recovery [change] as an adjunct of itself. The original perspective needs to be recaptured. Treatment [intervention] institutions need to once again become servants of the larger recovery change] process and the community in which that recovery [change] is nested and sustained’ (White 2000, in Maruna et al 2004).

9. Embedding interventions Desistance Case Management Programmes

10. A counsellor who helps to develop and deploy motivation A case manager who holds it all together Motivation Opportunities Capacities (Skills) An educator who helps to develop and deploy human capital An advocate who helps to develop and deploy social capital

11. ‘What works’ and desistance (McNeill, 2006)

12. Conclusion • There may be a desistance paradigm, but there can be no desistance programme and no desistance manual • But any interventions strategies and practices can and must be embedded in understandings of the change processes that they exist to support • And the research can direct planners and practitioners towards the key issues and questions that must be addressed in supporting desistance