1 Sexual Offending, Desistance and Rehabilitation Fergus McNeill University of Glasgow

Desistance

How can criminal justice impede or support desistance?

Social relations (Weaver 2013) “Those social relations [intimate relationships and family, friendship, faith or work groups] which were most causally influential in the desistance process were characterised by… solidarity and subsidiarity, or on other words, a sense of ‘we-ness’. Put simply, subsidiarity is a way to support and help another person without making him or her passive or dependent. It allows and assists the other to do what they need to do for themselves to realise their ultimate concerns, goals or aspirations. Subsidiarity cannot work without solidarity (which means sharing a responsibility through reciprocity and which implies interdependence). These principles confer mutual responsibilities on each person for supporting change and in taking responsibility for personal change” (p13).

Desistance from sexual offending 6 Harris (2014) Maruna and McAlinden Hackett and Masson Laws and Ward

“…it is not enough for a sex offender program to enhance an offender’s empathy skills or equip him with the ability to cope with stress or emotional loneliness. Beyond these essential tasks practitioners should be looking to create social supports and opportunities, and to help create ways of living that follow from a personally significant, and ethically acceptable (redemptive) practical identity…” (Ward, T and Laws, R. (2010) ‘Desistance from Sex Offending: Motivating Change, Enriching Practice’, International Journal of Forensic Mental Health 9:1, 11-23, DOI: / ). ‘‘7

Criminologists on (re-)integration Have argued about the related roles and responsibilities of aindividuals, civil society associations and the state (cf. Carlen, Rotman, Cullen) Have endlessly discussed ‘What Works?’ to prepare and equip individuals for reintegration Have described and analysed practices and processes of exclusion and of integration (cf. Braithwaite) Have highlighted the many barriers to reintegration that punishment creates, and that ex-offenders face (cf. Uggen)… and have pointed our that many offenders were never integrated in the first place. 8

But have we ever offered a model or framework or analysis of what integration means, of what it is and of how we might assess the achievements and failures of penal institutions and practices in this respect? Any examples (maybe from beyond the ‘Anglo-Saxon hegemony’)? 9

10 Based on McNeill and Maruna (2010); McNeill (2012) Rehabilitation and Reintegration

11 Migration and integration From Ager and Strang (2008)

Some problems for this framework Special issue of Journal of Refugee Studies 23(4) Varying notions of nationhood and citizenship –Integration or assimilation (cf. ‘Britishness’ and ‘otherness’) –Citizenship: ius sanguinis (blood ties), citoyennete´, or multiculturalism –The pursuit of ‘social cohesion’ Looking beyond or behind social capital –Bonds, bridges and links –The nature of reciprocity, trust and social connection Seeing integration as a two-way process (and one that policy can disrupt as well as support) The dynamics of integration –‘Resource acquisition (or loss) spirals’ 12

After desistance: Future directions Might a clearer and more critical account of (re-) integration (perhaps as distinct from re-assimilation or resocialisation?) help us move beyond the preoccupation with reoffending… and even with desistance? Might it edge us towards a more positive criminology and a more positive practice that examines, articulates and advances the social goods that justice exists to promote? Might we have a lot to learn from how integration is conceptualised and measured in other fields? 13