Desisting Sisters is the culmination of my doctoral research. The studentship through which the fees for my thesis were funded originally bore the title: Young Offenders on the Road to Desistance. It was not, initially, intended as an exploration of the gendered desistance journey. However, upon exploring the desistance literature, it quickly became apparent that women’s experiences were largely side-lined, marginalised and incorporated within the male-focused explorations of desistance. For example, one of the first texts I considered was Farrall and Calverley’s 2006 Understanding Desistance from Crime: Theoretical directions in resettlement and rehabilitation. This book dedicates 3 pages of 209 to women. Two of these are dedicated to the limitations of the study. A book published in 2013 by Sam King, Desistance Transitions and the Impact of Probation, contains only a single short paragraph about women. As of late, there have been moves to consider female desistance experiences (Rodermond et al. 2016; Gomm 2016; Hart 2017). Yet women’s voices within desistance literature are still marginalised, particularly in England. Therefore, this book examines the desistance experiences of a small group of Northshire-based women. Through a re-analysis of traditional desistance perspectives, the book contends that a ‘critical desistance’ (Hart 2017) must ground desistance research and practice within the structural conditions in which it does or does not occur. It must have at its base an abolitionist outlook and an awareness of the intersectionality of both criminalisation and desistance, as well as the harmful impact of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). This chapter provides an introduction to the book by setting out definitional issues and plotting the emergence of desistance as a separate theoretical concern within criminology. An explanation will be offered for the apparent gender blindness (Gelsthorpe and Morris 1988) of desistance research. It will be argued that this blindness is a consequence of a wider insidious gender blindness of patriarchal criminological research. An outline of the book’s chapters, including some limitations of this research, follows.
Defining Desistance
Crime and deviance involve normative behaviours, and most criminalised individuals do eventually stop offending, arguably undergoing desistance (Barry 2006). Establishing a definition of desistance is necessary before any consideration of how desistance ‘works’ can be established. However, the exact meaning of desistance, has been much contested. Weaver and McNeill (2010) note that ‘most criminologists have associated desistance with both ceasing and refraining from offending’ (p. 37).
It is not assumed that desistance is a simple process which follows a straight and definite line. A consistent, but not unchallenged (e.g., see Sampson and Laub 1993 or Giordano et al. 2002), finding in the desistance literature is that there is no specific ‘turning point’ in time where former law breakers become ‘desisters’ (Maruna 2001; Bottoms and Shapland 2011). On the contrary, desistance has been likened to a zigzag path (Glaser 1964). Healy (2012) describes desistance as the area ‘betwixt and between’ crime. Leibrich (1993) meanwhile refers to the ‘curved’ pathway of desistance. Matza’s (1964) theory of ‘drift’ suggests that people tend to move between conventional and delinquent behaviour throughout the life course and especially in their younger years. Most desistance authors now recognise desistance as a process or a path rather than a specific event. These definitions suggest that a person may go through many periods of desistance throughout the life course, making it difficult to categorise individuals in terms of ‘desisters’ and ‘persisters’.
Maruna and Farrall (2004) have differentiated between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ desistance. ‘Primary’ desistance can be taken to mean any lull or crime-free period in the course of a criminal career. The Stockholm Life Course Project findings (Carlsson 2012) have suggested that there are two forms of ‘intermittency’ in criminal careers, or two forms of primary desistance. The first is when an offender experiences breaks or pauses in offending for various reasons but which are not related to any long-term commitment to change, whilst the second can be understood as attempts to desist where attempts to change are present but for various reasons are not realised (Carlsson 2012). These may be people who stop deviant or addictive behaviour but for various reasons return to it at a later date. As the author notes, ‘Intermittent offending is the criminal career, because the great majority of offenders, if not all, tend to follow a zigzag path between onset and desistance’ (2012: 931). ‘Secondary’ desistance, on the other hand, can be described as ‘measureable changes at the level of personal identity or the “me” of the individual’ (Maruna et al. 2009: 34). Essentially, secondary desistance involves the casting off of the former ‘offender’ identity and a move towards generative concerns consistent with a new identity. It can also be known as ‘true’ or ‘complete’ desistance. It is worth noting that both these forms of desistance can apply to criminalised people previously considered as persistent or serious offenders at different points in the life cycle.
More recently, the dual nature of desistance has been called into question. Healy and O’Donnell, in their 2006 study of Irish male probationers found little evidence of agency or generative concerns consistent with notions of secondary desistance in the narratives they collected. Vaughan (2007) has introduced a tertiary and final stage of desistance which suggests a commitment to a new identity so powerful that it is incompatible with any former criminal identity. Rumgay (2004) has meanwhile asserted that desistance is better described as a process of maintenance which tends not to emanate from a single event or decision ‘but as a process in which skills and advantages accumulate over time, mutually reinforcing each other and progressively the offender’s capacity to avoid recidivism’ (p. 413). This process of maintenance is pertinent for the current research. As the following chapters will show, desistance for the research participants involved constant maintenance. Kelly-Marie’s narrative, for example, highlighted this process of accumulation of skills and advantages over time. Desistance can also mean the collection of bricolage as a method of survival. As will be seen in the following chapters, desistance for the women studied herein often meant survival and resistance to the structural conditions of their criminalisation. In contrast, traditional desistance theories have linked the cessation of crime with factors such as maturity, adult social bonds, agency, identity and hope (Bottoms et al. 2004). The structural conditions of both criminalisation and desistance are notable for their absence amongst traditional (male-focused) desistance theories. This book aims to address this fissure and re-examine these traditional perspectives through the lens of criminalised women’s experiences.
The study of desistance has evolved from its beginnings as an afterthought of developmental, life-course and criminal career research into a substantial body of literature in its own right. Life-course studies can be traced back to 1937 in the form of Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck’s pioneering, in-depth work which was eventually published as Unravelling Juvenile Delinquency (1950), which involved the study of 500 juvenile delinquents in an effort to untangle the causes of delinquent behaviour. The Gluecks linked desistance with the ageing process. During this time however, criminology tended to be concerned with the onset rather than the diminishment of criminal behaviour. For example, Gove (1985: 118), in his study of six of the most influential theories of deviance: labelling theory, conflict theory, differential association theory, control theory, anomie theory and functional theory, concluded that ‘all of these theoretical perspectives either explicitly or implicitly suggest that deviant behaviour is an amplifying process that leads ...