After Crime and Punishment Pathways to Offender Reintegration

Resettling ex-prisoners into the community has become an important issue and, in the words of Janet Reno, "one of the most pressing problems we face as a nation." In the US over 600,000 prisoners leave prison each year, or over 1,600 each day, and they are finding it more difficult than ever before to re-enter society successfully. At the same time parole violations have more than doubled since 1980. The recent re-entry problem is not only a product of the rapid increase in rates of incarceration, but a leading cause of this as well. Yet this issue has not been well served by the criminological literature, and the new policies and programs that have been set up to address the problem have not been well grounded in criminological thinking. This book seeks to address the important set of issues involved by bringing together the best of recent thinking and research into desistance from crime, drawing upon research in both the UK and the US, and with a distinct focus on how this might have

The issue of resettling ex-prisoners and ex-offenders into the community has become an increasingly important one on both sides of the Atlantic. In the USA the former Attorney General Janet Reno identified the issue as 'one of the most pressing problems we face as a nation' in view of the massive prison population and the rapid increase in rates of incarceration, while in the UK it has become an increasingly important issue for similar reasons, and the subject of recent reports by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and HM Inspectorate of Probation, as well as from the Social Exclusion Unit of the Home Office. Yet this issue has not been well served by the criminological literature, and the new policies and programmes that have been set up to address the problem have not been well grounded in criminological thinking. This book seeks to address the important set of issues involved by bringing together the best of recent thinking and research into desistance from crime, drawing upon research in both the UK and the USA, and with a distinct focus on how this might impact upon the design and implementation of ex-offender reintegration policy.

Contents. Foreword by Neal Shover Part I: Desistance Theory and Reintegration Practice 1. Ex-offender Reintegration: Theory and Practice by Shadd Maruna, Russ Immarigeon and Thomas P. LeBel 2. Reintegration and Restorative Justice: Towards a Theory and Practice of Informal Social Control and Support by Gordon Bazemore and Carsten Erbe 3. Social Capital and Offender Reintegration: Making Probation Desistance Focused by Stephen Farrall Part II: Methodological Considerations 4. Connecting Desistance and Recidivism: Measuring Changes in Criminality over the Lifespan by Shawn D. Bushway, Robert Brame and Raymond Paternoster 5. Somewhere Between Persistence and Desistence: The Intermittency of Criminal Careers by Alex R. Piquero Part III: Applied Research on Desistance 6. Jail or the Army: Does Military Service Facilitate Desistance from Crime? by Leana Allen Bouffard and John H. Lamb 7. To Reoffend or not to Reoffend? The Ambivalence of Convicted Property Offenders by Ros Burnett 8. Desistance from Crime: Is it Different for Women and Girls? by Gill McIvor, Cathy Murray and Janet Jamieson9. Beating the Perpetual Incarceration Machine: Overcoming Structural Impediments to Re-entry by Stephen C. Richards and Richard S. Jones 10. With Eyes Wide Open: Formalizing Community and Social Control Intervention in Offender Reintegration Programmes by Faye S. Taxman, Douglas Young and James M. Byrne 11. Less than the Average Citizen': Stigma, Role Transition and the Civic Reintegration of Convicted Felonsby Christopher Uggen, Jeff Manza and Angela Behrens Index