Offending and Desistance

The importance of social relations

Beth Weaver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138799721
• eBook ISBN: 9781317628590
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

In Offending and Desistance, Beth Weaver examines the role of a co-offending peer group in shaping and influencing offending and desistance, focusing on three phases of their criminal careers: onset, persistence and desistance. While there is consensus across the body of desistance research that social relations have a role to play in variously constraining, enabling and sustaining desistance, no desistance studies have adequately analysed the dynamics or properties of social relations, or their relationship to individuals and social structures. This book aims to reset this balance.

By examining the social relations and life stories of six Scottish men (in their forties), Weaver reveals the central role of friendship groups, intimate relationships and families of formation, employment and religious communities. She shows how, for different individuals, these relations triggered reflexive evaluation of their priorities, behaviours and lifestyles, but with differing results.

Weaver's re-examination of the relationships between structure, agency, identity and reflexivity in the desistance process ultimately illuminates new directions for research, policy and practice. This book is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of criminology and criminal justice, delinquency, probation and criminal law.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315755915-1

Empirical and theoretical context

Criminological interest in desistance developed in the 1970s and 1980s (for example Cusson and Pinsonneault, 1986; Meisenhelder, 1977, 1982; Rand, 1987; Shover, 1983) and became a significant area of enquiry in criminal career research in the 1990s (for example Graham and Bowling, 1995; Maruna, 1997; Sampson and Laub, 1993). Since this time, desistance research has moved beyond identifying who desists, and when, to propose a range of theories that seek to account for and explain desistance as a process (for example Bottoms and Shapland, 2011; Giordano, Cernkovich and Rudolph, 2002; Farrall et al., 2011; Laub and Sampson, 2003; Maruna, 2001).

In elaborating the process of desistance, researchers and theorists generally conceptualise the desistance process as an interaction between, or integration of, agentic and structural factors. These accounts of the desistance process place differing emphases on the role of individuals and their social contexts. Throughout the literature, desistance is represented as the outcome of an individual seeking to alter their socio-structural situation and context, and in so doing acquiring new behaviours and new pro-social roles, or vice versa, variously resulting in associated shifts in the individual’s personal and social identity (see for example Barry, 2010; Bottoms et al., 2004; Farrall, 2002; Farrall, Bottoms and Shapland, 2010; Giordano et al., 2002; Maruna and Farrall, 2004; Uggen, Manza and Behrens, 2004). Within these divergent explanations, while there is a more or less implicit or explicit recognition of the individual as a reflexive subject, limited attention has been given to what processes of reflexivity actually entail (notable recent exceptions include Farrall et al., 2010; King, 2014; Vaughan, 2007). Such theories are therefore restricted in their capacity to reveal how individuals’ reasoning and actions are variously enabled or constrained by the relational, cultural and structural contexts within which they are embedded. While many principally agentic theories of the change process elaborate the early stages of desistance, they do not explain what triggers the resultant cognitive transformation or why one social relation at one time rather than another exerts this effect (see for example Giordano et al., 2002). Neither can they explain why people stay in particular relationships or jobs when the meanings and dynamics of these social relations change over time (Vaughan, 2007). While, then, agentically weighted theories are limited in their capacities to explain what triggers reflexivity, structural theories similarly fail to illuminate how social structures shape decisions, ignoring or under-analysing how the individual perceives and responds to such influences (see for example Laub and Sampson, 2003).

While there is some consensus across desistance research that social relations, such as friendship groups, marriage, parenthood, employment and religious communities have a role to play in variously constraining, enabling and sustaining desistance, few desistance studies have adequately analysed the dynamics or properties of social relations, or their relationship to individuals and social structures. Moreover, while there is increasing consensus that the desistance process is an outcome of the interplay between the agent and their structural context, the methodological focus is generally on individuals rather than groups even though the collective context within which much offending takes place is well established (see for example Akers, 1998; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960; Sutherland, 1947; Warr, 2002). While there has been considerable attention to ‘gangs’ (Aldridge, Medina and Ralphs, 2007, Bannister and Fraser, 2008; Deuchar, 2009; Fraser, 2010, Klein, Weerman and Thornberry, 2006; Pyrooz, Decker and Webb, 2010; Pyrooz, Sweeten and Piquero, 2012), there has been scant research revealing the experiences of people who co-offend and on their subsequent processes of desistance. This methodological focus on the individual precludes an analysis of the role of the group, as a social relation in and of itself, in shaping and affecting offending and desistance, and thus of how individual, relational, cultural and social contexts influence onset, persistence and desistance. There is therefore a significant gap in criminological understanding of the impact that friendship groups (among other social relations) can exert on criminal careers – both empirically and theoretically.

Aims of the book

This book aims to address this gap in our knowledge and understanding by exploring the role of a co-offending peer group in shaping and influencing offending and desistance. It presents group and individual level analyses into the life stories of six Scottish men (in their forties) who were part of a gang called ‘the Del’. It examines three phases of their criminal careers: onset, persistence and desistance. In so doing, it reveals the relational dynamics of co-offending and desistance through an exploration of the relationships between these men and the wider social relations in which they individually and collectively participated over the life course.

In taking social relations as a central unit of analysis, rather than solely the individual agent and/or social structure, this book explores the relative contributions of individual actions, social relations and social systems to the process of desistance. The aim is to gain a greater understanding of the dynamics of offending and desistance as it occurs between co-offending peers. This book does not, however, intend to be construed as a study of gangs, gang behaviour, identities or processes of extrication from gang membership. Nevertheless studies of gangs can offer a useful context for understanding the relational dynamics of groups of people who co-offend and processes of extrication, and where relevant, this is drawn on and discussed in Chapter 4.¹ Rather, this book specifically aims to identify the individual, relational and structural contributions to the desistance process as they occur within and between individuals and, as part of that, to reveal the role of social relations in accounting for desistance over time. In so doing, this book reveals the central role of friendship groups, intimate relationships and families of formation, employment and religious communities. It shows how, for different individuals, these social relations triggered reflexive evaluation of their priorities, behaviours and lifestyles but with differing results. However, despite these differences, the common theme is that desistance from crime was a means of realising and maintaining the men’s individual and relational concerns, with which continued offending became (sometimes incrementally) incompatible. It is hoped that by re-examining the relationships between structure, agency, identity and reflexivity in the desistance process, this book can inform how these understandings can and should translate into policy and practice.

Overview of the book

This chapter has introduced the context within which the rationale for the study emerged. Chapter 2 critically analyses the international body of research on desistance. The chapter explores the various definitions of desistance in the research literature, prior to presenting an overview of theoretical explanations of desistance and the empirical studies that inform these explanations. This literature is categorised under three broad headings that echo the classificatory distinctions drawn by Maruna (1997) and Barry (2010): namely, individual and agentic; social and structural; and interactionist – adding a new category, situational. In particular, the analysis presented in this chapter considers how contemporary understandings of desistance conceptualise the relationships between structure, agency, reflexivity and identity in the desistance process. The chapter concludes with a review of the limited research that examines the role of professional practice in supporting desistance.

Building on the review of research in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 progresses an alternative conceptual framework for theorising desistance. It draws heavily on the complementary approaches of Archer’s Critical Realist Morphogenetic Approach and Donati’s Relational Sociology. This framework gives proper weight to individual actions, social relations and social systems where actions, systems and relations are provided with inner characteristics and influences which are particular to them. In so doing, I propose that this framework represents an alternative conceptual framework through which to empirically analyse and theorise desistance, one which can overcome the limitations of existing approaches outlined above.

The data analysis is presented in eight data chapters (Chapters 4–11). Chapter 4 presents a group level analysis of their shared lives and in so doing discusses the formation of the group, the onset and maintenance of their offending and the nature and dynamics of the group while situating their lived experiences within their shared historical, cultural and structural contexts. It pursues a discussion on the nature of friendship and reveals both the nature and form of the group as a social relation and the relational rules which structure and characterise the (changing) nature and form of their interactive dynamics and collective action. It reveals the heterogeneity of individual experiences of the group and how the group variously influenced individuals’ behaviour. The chapter concludes by describing the situational nature of the ‘fragmentation of the Del’ and the divergent outcomes for individuals. In so doing it foreshadows the role of the splinter or ‘revised ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A critical review of desistance research
• 3 Critical realism and relational sociology: a conceptual framework for theorising desistance
• 4 The dynamics of co-offending: from formation to fragmentation
• 5 Work, family and transitional masculinities: Seth’s story
• 6 Fighting, football and fatherhood: Harry’s story
• 7 From delinquency to desistance and back again? Jed’s story
• 8 Being, becoming and belonging – from gangs to God: Jay’s story
• 9 Reflexivity, relationality, religiosity and recognition: Evan’s story
• 10 An imprisoned life: Andy’s story
• 11 The dynamics of desistance
• 12 Conclusion
• Annex: research methods
• Index