Transcript Desistance Research and Intervention Practice Fergus McNeill Universities of Glasgow [email protected] Thinking about interventions Social Context Staff Skills Intervention (RNR) Offender Relationship Desister Motivation Thinking about the desistance process30 No.

Desistance Research
and Intervention Practice
Fergus McNeill
Universities of Glasgow
[email protected]
Thinking about
interventions
Social
Context
Staff
Skills
Intervention
(RNR)
Offender
Relationship
Desister
Motivation
Thinking about the
desistance process
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No. of offences
25
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15
10
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Age
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Thinking about the
desistance process
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30
25
Age
20
15
10
5
0
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5
7
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No. of offences
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Understanding desistance 1
• 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 2
• 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’.
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
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).
Embedding interventions
Programmes
Case Management
Desistance
A counsellor
who helps to
develop
and deploy
motivation
Motivation
A case manager who holds it all together
Capacities
(Skills)
An educator
who helps to
develop
and deploy
human capital
Opportunities
An advocate
who helps to
develop
and deploy
social capital
‘What works’ and
desistance
The ‘what works’ paradigm
(forefronts intervention)
The desistance paradigm
(forefronts the change process)
Intervention or treatment required to
reduce re-offending and protect the
public
Help in navigation towards desistance to
reduce harm and make good to offenders,
victims and communities
‘Professional’ assessment of risk and need Explicit dialogue and negotiation
governed by structured assessment
assessing risks, needs and strengths and
instruments
resources; and exploring opportunities to
make good
Compulsory engagement in structured
programmes and offender management
as required elements of legal orders
imposed irrespective of consent
Collaboratively defined tasks which tackle
risks and needs and target obstacles to
desistance by developing the offender’s
human and social capital
(McNeill, 2006)
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