A Note From the Editors
Ever since we have had prisons, most people held in them have been released back into society. For over 100 years people leaving prison have been supervised by probation services or other organizations, but little has been written about how those who are supervised experience this process, or how supervision interacts with experiences post-release. The term āparoleā derives from the French meaning āspoken wordāāthe idea being one of promise and trustāof taking someone at their word, and allowing them to complete part of their custodial sentence beyond the confines of the prison, dependent upon them keeping this promise to do well. The practice of supervising people after release from prison has grown out of this gesture of hope. As this collection shows, practices of supervision in the community vary widely in different economic and cultural realities of different countries, while the realities of life after prison have some striking similarities. Where post-release supervision is more established (in Western European countries and North America) its practices have steadily moved away from an orientation to support people as they try to rebuild their lives after prison, towards a more law enforcement (USA) and risk management (England) emphasis. These changes in practice have led scholars to suggest ācurrent parole practice scarcely resembles the classic model of parole developed a century agoā (Travis and Lawrence 2002:24).
Despite operational prevalence in many countries, and growing moves towards its implementation in others, post-release supervision is a relatively under-researched area of criminal justice jurisdiction. Some of the existing research takes a rather descriptive approach to the legislation or the arrangements around parole (Petersilia 2009; Padfield et al. 2010; Hucklesby and Hagley-Dickinson 2007). Another part of the literature focuses on resettlement theory and practice (see for example Maruna and Immarigeon 2004). Research on compliance and co-production (see McCulloch 2005; Weaver 2011) suggests that the success or failure of supervision in terms of reoffending may be related to how it is experienced. Limited research focusses on the experiences of general criminal justice supervision (Davies 1979; Kyvsgaard 1998; Healy 2012; Kawamura-Reindl and Stancu 2010); the subjective experience of offenders under drug treatment (Colman et al. 2011; De Wree et al. 2008); the difficulties experienced by probationers under electronic monitoring (Hammerschick and Neuman 2008; Stassart et al. 2000; Jorgensen 2011); and experiences of community service (McIvor 1992; Bramberger 2009; Dantinne et al. 2009; van den Dorpel et al. 2010).
More outcome-oriented scholarship on parole tends to sideline how parole practices interact with the realities of life after prison. This is arguably foolhardy, because if parole is irrelevant to these realities, or makes them more difficult to overcome, it risks being tainted with the traits of illegitimate power. Theoretical and empirical studies link perceptions of procedural relevance and fairness with attributions of legitimacy, and attributions of legitimacy with compliance and decreased re-offending (Digard 2010; Tyler 2003; Paternoster et al. 1997). It follows, therefore, that the processes of parole and the perceptions of parolees may play an important part in understanding parole outcomes. The lack of attention to the paroleeās voice in the last 40 years of scholarship on parole has permitted a gap in analysis of the orientation and perceived legitimacy of parole supervision. In his ethnography of paroleesā experiences Werth (2011, see further chapter 5 in this collection) addressed this point and argued that the interesting question on legitimacy arising from his data was not the more researched analysis of why people may comply with systems and institutions they consider lack legitimacy, but rather why, when parolees demonstrate a commitment to reform and self-betterment, they still resist compliance with the rules imposed by an agency with these aims.
However, studies that directly scrutinize experiences of parole or conditional release are quite scarce (see for instance Werth 2011; Halsey and Deegan 2015) or quite dated (Irwin 1970 and Erwin 1987). From more recent research (see Gunnison and Helgott 2013) we know that ex-prisoners tend to face many difficulties in dealing with the new responsibilities of the āfreeā society. Transportation, finding a job or accommodation, coping with new technology and so on are often mentioned as challenges for those released. Meeting parole supervision conditions is almost always mentioned as a pain of life after prison. Exceptions to this include when the parole officer is trusting, listens, understands, motivates and gives parolees āa breakā. Where parole officers have a humane orientation to supervision this pays dividends. āIntelligent flexibilityā (128) was often mentioned by parolees when describing an effective way to deal with parole violations. In contrast, being unnecessarily punitive or suspicious contribute significantly to a negative experience of supervision and as Petersilia (2009) puts it, usually backfires on success in reentry.
The last forty years has also seen the growth of research on the processes through which people rebuild their lives after being convicted of a criminal offence, and move away from crime. Desistance research establishes that several factors interact to help people move into more positive futures. Individual factors matter: age and maturation play a role, as do a sense of individual agency and the establishment of a non-criminal identity. But social and situational factors are also important: employment and living arrangements can support pro-social aims and identities, just as having friends and family one wants to please can help to bolster the necessary resilience (for an excellent overview see Bottoms 2014).
This research establishes that over time most people desist from crime, and that many of them do so on their own initiative. The kind of change that underpins the āpromiseā of parole suggests that the ātrustā shown to parolees should be a good bet. However, research on the early stages of desistance shows that while the majority of people convicted of criminal offences desire to leave a life of crime behind, despite their conformist views, many people commit offences along the way (Shapland and Bottoms 2011, 2006). Desistance is difficult. A wish to try to change oneās life is a common first step (Farrall et al. 2010), but is not, in itself, sufficient. Moving from ācontemplating changeā to āachieving changeā is a problem (Shapland and Bottoms 2011:272). As with any journey, both the landscape and the voyager change as they travel, so that at its inception the desistance process, and any non-criminal identity, may be far more tentative than that projected on reflection in years to come (Weaver and McNeill 2010, Maruna and Farrall 2004; Bottoms et al. 2004). Our understandings of the process can therefore be influenced by whether we study desistance contemporaneously or retrospectively. Studied as it happens desistance is a slow, faltering, precarious struggle, involving episodes of relapse and recovery (Burnett 1992, 2004; Bottoms and Shapland 2011).
For recidivist young men in the UK, Shapland and Bottoms (2011) found desistance involved āsignificant changes in routine activities and different patterns of socialization and friendshipā (272, see also Bottoms and Shapland 2011, and Farrall et al. 2010). Most had opportunities or invitations to reoffend, but those who had decided to desist said they had declined this temptation not because of the risk of detection or sanction, but for āmoralā reasons: because they no longer wanted to commit crime....