Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
-
Upload
compras-concepcion -
Category
Documents
-
view
220 -
download
0
Transcript of Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
1/23
http://crj.sagepub.com/Justice
Criminology and Criminal
http://crj.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/03/1748895811432958The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1748895811432958
published online 9 January 2012Criminology and Criminal JusticeAlisa Stevens
narrative reframing in therapeutic community prisons'I am the person now I was always meant to be': Identity reconstruction and
- Nov 16, 2012version of this article was published onmore recentA
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
British Society of Criminology
can be found at:Criminology and Criminal JusticeAdditional services and information for
http://crj.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:
http://crj.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/03/1748895811432958http://crj.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/03/1748895811432958http://crj.sagepub.com/content/12/5/527http://crj.sagepub.com/content/12/5/527http://www.sagepublications.com/http://www.britsoccrim.org/http://crj.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://crj.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://crj.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://crj.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://crj.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.britsoccrim.org/http://www.sagepublications.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/content/12/5/527http://crj.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/03/1748895811432958http://crj.sagepub.com/ -
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
2/23
What is This?
- Jan 9, 2012OnlineFirst Version of Record>>
- Nov 16, 2012Version of Record
by guest on October 12, 2013crj.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://crj.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/03/1748895811432958.full.pdfhttp://crj.sagepub.com/content/12/5/527.full.pdfhttp://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://crj.sagepub.com/http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://crj.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/03/1748895811432958.full.pdfhttp://crj.sagepub.com/content/12/5/527.full.pdf -
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
3/23
Criminology & Criminal Justice
0(0) 121 The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1748895811432958crj.sagepub.com
I am the person now I wasalways meant to be: Identityreconstruction and narrativereframing in therapeuticcommunity prisons
Alisa StevensUniversity of Kent, UK
AbstractDrawing upon semi-ethnographic research, this article explores desistance in process among
serious offenders residing in democratic therapeutic communities. It is argued that offender
rehabilitation in therapeutic communities involves a process of purposive and agenticreconstruction of identity and narrative reframing, so that a new and better person emerges
whose attitudes and behaviours cohere with long-term desistance from crime. This is possible
because the prison-based therapeutic community, with its commitment to a radically different
culture and mode of rehabilitation, socially enables, produces and reinforces the emergence of
someone different. The article therefore develops existing understandings of change in forensic
therapeutic communities, and reaffirms theories of desistance which emphasize the importance
of pro-social changes to the offenders personal identity and self-narrative.
Keywordsdesistance, identity, prisons, rehabilitation, self-narrative, therapeutic community
Introduction
In his examination of identity in late modernity, Giddens (1991: 54, emphasis in original)
declared: A persons identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor important though this
is in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going.
This statement reflects the reconceptualization of identity away from essentialist notions
Corresponding author:
Alisa Stevens, University of Kent, Gillingham Building 210, Chatham Martitime, ME4 4AG, UK
Email: [email protected]
Article
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
4/23
2 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
of a categorical or trait-based core self, which remains largely fixed throughout life, to a
reiterative activity and developmental process, and a narrated, situated accomplishment
of the symbolic project of the self. Identity is inherently fluid and fragile, actively and
selectively constructed and repeatedly reconstructed, dramaturgically performed and
achieved, in response to both ones maturing and mutable cognitions, desires, expecta-tions, choices and conduct, and ones relationships, of similarity and of difference, with
others and the social structure (Elliott, 2001; Giddens, 1991; Goffman, 1959; Hall, 2000;
Jenkins, 2004). As Giddens suggests, however, identity also requires a sustained, sequen-
tial, integrated and purposive self-narrative: the stories we live by (McAdams, 1993)
and (metaphorically and literally) tell ourselves and others about who we are.
Theorists interested in the narrative study of lives (Josselson and Lieblich, 1993) and
creation of a storied self (McAdams, 1996) accordingly argue that, as ones life
unfolds, one creates and internalizes a self-narrative or life story which provides unity,
purpose and meaning, and conjoins, in a personally (and probably socially) acceptableand plausible way, the disparate elements of ones life and the past to the present. To
enable this narrative to keep going, one may have to refine certain aspects of it in the
light of new plot developments, or rhetorically emphasize, interpret and revise key auto-
biographical events, in order to craft a consistent and temporally coherent storyline
(emplotment) and so justify why it was necessary (notcausally, but morally, socially,
psychologically) that the life had gone a particular way (Bruner, 1990: 121, emphasis
in original). Thus, the whips and scorns of time, mistakes, lessons learned from those
mistakes, turning points, pleasures, triumphs and serendipitous incidents all life stories
contain must be, consciously or unconsciously, incorporated, edited, evaluated andrefashioned to reflect the desired overarching life story and adequately express the (it is
to be hoped) wisdom, self-awareness, resilience and emotional maturity such significant
life events will have conferred (inter alia, Bourdieu, 2000; Bruner, 1987, 1990;
McAdams, 1985, 1993, 2006; Polkinghorne, 1988; Ricoeur, 1984, 1992).
For criminologists, the exploration of these narrative identities assists in unearthing
the explanatory variables offenders themselves propose for the antecedents to and
continuation of their offending (Bennett, 1981; Presser, 2009). More specifically, under-
standing tales of desistance that is, the giving up of crime helps unravel the puzzle
of why some people are able to make good, while others seem eternally doomed todeviance (Maruna, 2001; Vaughan, 2007). Although desistance theory is a relatively
recent addition to the terrain of criminological inquiry, an already impressive accumula-
tion of empirical research suggests that people who abandon criminal activity make
identifiable changes to their personal identity and self-narrative, and produce a new,
improved self which no longer cognitively or emotionally coheres with offending (inter
alia, Burnett, 1992, 2004; Farrall, 2002; Farrall and Calverley, 2006; Gadd and Farrall,
2004; Giordano et al., 2002; Laub and Sampson, 2003; Leibrich, 1993; Maruna, 2001;
Sampson and Laub, 1993; Shover, 1985, 1996; Veysey et al., 2009).
This article, then, contributes to the desistance literature by drawing upon qualitative
research conducted in three English prison-based therapeutic communities (TCs)
(Stevens, forthcoming). It is argued that offender rehabilitation in the TC involves a
process of purposive and agentic reconstruction of identity and narrative reframing, so
that a new and better person emerges for whom long-term desistance from crime is a
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
5/23
Stevens 3
viable and personally desirable achievement. This emphasis upon the TCs facilitation of
the production and reinforcement of a more adaptive, desistance-friendly narrative
identity introduces a supplementary and complementary explanation of how therapeutic
communities can work to promote change, in which, unusually, the first-hand accounts
of TC prisoners are privileged. The article begins with a necessarily brief outline ofthe characteristics and work of prison-based TCs, and the research methods employed.
The institutional and individual processes by which a reconfigured self becomes possible
are then analysed, and the potential this holds for long-term desistance considered.
Prison-Based Democratic Therapeutic Communities
The origins of democratic1 therapeutic communities are generally credited to the
innovative attempts of a handful of psychoanalytically-oriented psychiatrists during the
Second World War to treat, in a more humane, egalitarian and constructive way, trau-matized veterans (Manning, 1976; Whiteley, 2004). The central premise is that troubled
people need to come to understand and re-experience, in real time and within the
real-life laboratory of a supportive social community, the ways of thinking and behav-
ing which have damaged them and perhaps, expedited their infliction of damage upon
others. Their difficulties with, for example, relating to others and regulating their
feelings can then be played out through the daily living-learning experiences (Jones,
1968: 106) and opportunities for self-discovery and social learning the community
provides, and explored in depth through group therapy. This requires an ideological
commitment to specific values and practices, none of which one would automaticallyassociate with a penal environment. The former include egalitarianism and informality,
empathetic tolerance, constructive scrutiny and collaborative working, and democra-
tized engagement in and shared responsibility for the effective functioning of the com-
munity (Haigh, 1999; Rapoport, 1960). The latter relate to the use of talking therapy
to unearth, understand and work through the (often unconscious) motives, unresolved
conflicts and learned maladaptive self-protective behaviours that can result from
traumatic formative experiences (Cordess and Williams, 1996; Malan, 1979), and the
wider promotion of a reflective culture of enquiry (Main, 1996 [1946]).
In prisons, this TC method is enacted through thrice-weekly slow, open psychother-apy groups of up to eight offenders or, in the language of TCs, residents and one or
more trained facilitator, who may be a psychotherapist, psychologist or prison officer. It
is in these groups, the relative permanence of which encourages trust and secure attach-
ment (Bowlby, 1969), where residents gradually dissect their entire life history, and with
the assistance of group members, attempt to discern connections between their problem-
atic past experiences and ongoing dysfunctional behaviours. These groups are comple-
mented by bi-weekly community meetings, in which all residents one of whom chairs
the meeting and available staff discuss and debate any issues which will promote the
effective functioning of the community. Additionally, residents participate in both unique
TC pursuits a series of unpaid rep[resentative] jobs, psychodrama, art therapy and
social events to which members of the public with a professional interest in TC prisons
are invited and other institutional forms of purposeful activity employment, educa-
tion and training, gym, visits intended to promote their self-development.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
6/23
4 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
The TC has been accredited as an offending behaviour programme for use in the
Anglo-Welsh penal system since 2004, alongside the cognitive-behavioural (risk-
need-responsivity) programmes which otherwise now monopolize correctional reha-
bilitation on both sides of the Atlantic.2A dedicated TC prison, Grendon, has, however,
been in existence since 1962, while four other English prisons Blundeston, Dovegate,Gartree and Send currently offer a single therapeutic community unit within, but
physically, and to varying degrees, operationally, distinct from, the host establishment.
Thus while Grendon is wholly self-contained and remains the only British prison to
operate according to TC principles across all six wings, residents in the units leave the
TC regularly to participate in work or recreational activities alongside mainstream
prisoners. Most TC residents are serving substantial sentences for serious offences
against the person. Notably, Gartree TC known to its members as GTC recruits
exclusively from the life-sentenced population of its host prison; while Grendon has
gained an international reputation for its expertise in working constructively with menclinically diagnosed as personality disordered and/or psychopathic, and who may have
been perceived as disruptive and dangerous elsewhere in the system (Shine and Newton,
2000). Send offers the only TC facility for British women prisoners. Between them,
these five establishments currently offer places for up to 498 men and 40 women, all of
whom must voluntarily apply for and be assessed as suitable for TC treatment.
The Research
This article draws upon qualitative material gathered as part of a semi-ethnographic,3exploratory study of prison-based democratic therapeutic communities. Its purpose, in
contrast to the evaluative studies or practitioner-oriented writings which have tended to
dominate this field (inter alia, Cullen et al., 1997; Genders and Player, 1995; Marshall,
1997; Morris, 2004; Newton, 1998; Parker, 2007; Shine, 2000; Shuker and Newton,
2008; Shuker and Sullivan, 2010; Taylor, 2000), was to appreciate (Matza, 1969) the TC
experience from the perspectives of serving residents, whose testimonies, as in prisons
sociology more generally, otherwise tend to be excluded.4The result was a sociological
and phenomenological account of the TC way of offender rehabilitation (Stevens,
forthcoming) the authors abbreviated expression for interviewees multiple contrastsbetween the way we do things here and system imprisonment which augments
previous understandings of what helps (Ward and Maruna, 2007: 12) people to change
in this environment.
The research was conducted in three stages during 2006 and 2007 at the TCs at HMPs
Grendon, Send and Gartree, and combined prolonged observation of and reserved par-
ticipation (Bottoms, cited in Liebling, 1999: 160) in the regime (including community
meetings and, whenever possible, evening association, though excluding therapy groups)
with in-depth semi-structured interviewing. In total, 43 residents at Grendon, 10 from
Send and seven from GTC, and 20 disciplinary, managerial and clinical staff, all but five
of whom worked at Grendon, volunteered to be interviewed. Of the combined resident
sample, 55 per cent were serving an indeterminate sentence, 58 per cent had been sen-
tenced primarily for violence, 17 per cent for robbery and 15 per cent for sexual offences.
At the time of interview, residents length of stay varied from four months to five years,
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
7/23
Stevens 5
but averaged 20 months at GTC, 17 months at Grendon and 12 months at Send. The
cohort therefore was one of self-selection people who wanted to discuss their TC
experience and who, as it unintentionally transpired, were often well advanced in their
treatment.5In effect, then, therapeutic persisters who had had time to progress towards
and to become aware of change were overrepresented in this non-random sample; a limi-tation of the research which may well be reflected in interviewees almost universally
glowing evaluations of the regime and their rehabilitative experiences within it.
All interviews were conducted in private, recorded with permission and lasted on
average around two hours, though this ranged from slightly under one hour to over six
hours, conducted over four sessions. Illustrative verbatim quotes appear in this article,
with the interviewees pseudonymous name, and TC location. Both the copious field-
work notes and interview transcripts were thematically coded and analysed in accord-
ance with the principles of liberal grounded theory. Key themes and findings thus
surfaced and were developed inductively from the data, but the ease of recognition anddevelopment of these themes was enhanced by the researchers prior theoretical sensi-
tivity to the desistance literature (Strauss and Corbin, 1998).
Desistance, Identity and Self-Narratives
Theories of why people give up crime have traditionally been divided into ontogenetic
(or individual) and sociogenic (or structural) explanations (Maruna, 2001). The former
focuses upon the maturational reform of the offender by which he or she, almost
always, eventually grows up and out of crime (Glueck and Glueck, 1940). The latterhighlights the importance of acquiring in adulthood a stake in conformity: a valuable
social bond and legitimate routine activities, which prompt a re-evaluation of ones past
actions, present priorities and likely legacy. When these attachments are sufficiently
strong and meaningful, potential desisters are deterred from offending by having some-
thing to lose: someone who (a spouse or child, for example) or something (such as
employment) which they now value more than the seductions and sneaky thrills (Katz,
1988) of crime. Such offenders may therefore desist by default: not necessarily through
a conscious decision to change but by becoming informally socially controlled by the
responsibilities and rewards associated with going straight (inter alia, Farrall, 2002;Graham and Bowling, 1995; Healy, 2010; Laub and Sampson, 2003; Sampson and
Laub, 1993; Warr, 2002).
Of late, desistance scholars have additionally focused upon the subjective, purpo-
sivechanges to personal identity which may precede or coincide with the important
personal developments and investments identified in ontogenetic and sociogenic theo-
ries, and importantly, the interplay between the two (Farrall and Bowling, 1999).6
This integrated, interactionist perspective accordingly proposes that desistance resides
somewhere in the interfaces between developing personal maturity, changing social
bonds andthe individual subjective narrative constructions which offenders build
around these key events and changes (McNeill, 2006: 47, emphasis added; see also
Bottoms et al., 2004; Farrall et al., 2011). Research which has elicited offenders
accounts of their experiences of desistance highlights how they were able to create,
develop and internalize a self-narrative which explicated and reinforced the nature of
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
8/23
6 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
the changes undertaken by the individual, explained why offending no longer fitted
into their life story, and thus allowed for a new me to materialize. Two examples from
this literature must suffice.
In the seminalMaking Good, Shadd Maruna (2001) compared and contrasted the life
stories of 65 convicted offenders. The 30 people who were desisting from crime hadestablished a coherent and forgiving narrative, which made sense of their offending past
and presented a believable prototypical reform story. These desisters portrayed their
former offending self as a false identity, either by knifing off their criminal past by
denying that it was ever the real me, or by positively reinterpreting the sorrows and
indignities of their past into redemption and generative scripts. Conversely, those who
lived by a condemnation script felt themselves to be perpetually (and prematurely)
defeated by their personal failings and the structural barriers to resettlement.
Peggy Giordano and colleagues (2002) drew from 180 life history narratives of
offenders to theorize desistance as occurring through a succession of agentic cognitiveshifts. The potential desisters cognitive openness to change had to be matched by an
opportunity or hook for change (or in Sampson and Laubs (1993) language, turning
point). This hook may have been obviously significant at the time, or identified as
significant retrospectively because of the emotionally charged symbolism subsequently
projected on to it (Carlsson, 2012; Ebaugh, 1988). (Such creative cognitive rationaliza-
tion or revisionist gloss is, of course, a common feature of all self-narratives.) The point
is that this hook represents a shorthand description of what made and more impor-
tantly, continuedto make the process of change possible, because by recognizing (at
some point), connecting with and capitalizing upon the hook, the desister could craft arewarding replacement self. This consciously fashioned better version of oneself
accordingly provided a conduit through which all decisions could be filtered, and all
actions assessed, for their consistency with the pursuit of desistance, until eventually,
the old (anti-social, offending) self no longer seemed viable or relevant to the new
(pro-social) identity the desister now preferred. It is the catalysts for change that the
prison-based TC can trigger, and the new identities this can provoke, with which this
article is henceforth concerned.
The Acquisition of New Identities and Self-Narratives inthe TC
The creation of a new identity in the TC begins with the early realization that the thera-
peutic community prison would be not like a normal prison, well, not like anyother
prison at all! (Stewart, Grendon). In contrast to the entry rituals of degradation and
mortification (Goffman, 1961) they had encountered elsewhere, reception into the TC
was warmly praised by interviewees as a friendly, relaxed and reassuring experience,
which therefore immediately signalled to new arrivals they would be treated, not like a
con, but a human being (Winston, Grendon). In addition to the obviously unique aspectsof rehabilitation, the TC way, entrants to Grendon found that it functions without either
a segregation or a vulnerable prisoners unit, both of which are otherwise considered
essential for good order or discipline in secure prisons in England and Wales. Conversely,
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
9/23
Stevens 7
Grendon and GTC continue to benefit from dining rooms on each community, when
these were removed from most mens prisons during the 1980s, so that most prisoners
now eat within the confines of their cell (or, as many interviewees described it, the very
degrading practice of eating in a toilet). Each of these differences therefore under-
lined prisoners emerging sense that they had entered a different penal environment: arelatively normalizing, decent and sociable milieu, with an atypical culture and approach
to prisoner safety, control and interaction.
The symbolic importance of terminology
It felt strange at first, being called by my first name and calling [officers] by theirs.
In the system, you could find yourself on a charge for that! Ive done many a sentence
and never had it before.
How would officers normally address you?Surname. They refuseto call you Mr.
Whys that?
Theyd say, Who the hell do you think you are? They think if they say Mr, it means
youre as good as they are you know, a human being! When obviously, were just
cons! [laughs] (Wesley, Grendon)
Perhaps the most immediate marker of difference in the TC, however, is to be found
in the terms and modes of address used. As labelling theory attests, what one calls
people, matters, and may have very real consequences for the ways in which peopleinternalize that label and act in accordance with it (Becker, 1963; Lemert, 1951; Merton,
1957). One associates very different characteristics, qualities and skills, for example,
with the lecturer and the teacher, or the student and the pupil. Similarly, one struggles
to connect any positive associations to the offender, delinquent or prisoner; even
the ex-offender is one who is understood only in relation to his past criminality and thus
always defined by it.
Little is therefore to be gained but potentially a great deal to be lost by constantly
referring to the user of probation services as an offender, or the person in prison as a
prisoner; let alone one who further labours under the reductionist branding of psycho-pathic or dangerous and severely personality disordered. Prison-based TCs seem
to have instinctively understood this point. Their commitment to create difference in
people by being different in their institutional practices is reflected in the tradition of
referring to prisoners in TCs as residentsand to prison wings as communities. Resident
is a morally neutral term but one which, in comparison with the coercive and custodial
connotations of prisoner, is redolent with agency. Just as people choose to reside in a
particular location, so people in TCs are reminded through this terminology that they
have chosen to apply to the TC and continue to choose to stay. When they no longer
wish to be a TC resident, they may transfer back to another establishment and become
a prisoner again. Community is a word warmly suggestive of common purpose and
belonging. TC residents are members of an autonomous community and are expected to
work collaboratively for the good of the community, through which their position as
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
10/23
8 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
one individual who must contribute constructively to their micro society if it is to func-
tion successfully, is effectively underlined. Conversely, one has no such expectations of
the disparate group of people assigned to a prison wing; or rather, merely the anticipation
that the resulting society of captives (Sykes, 1958) will, with varying degrees of
enthusiasm, adapt and adhere to the criminalistic ideology (Clemmer, 1958: 300)of the inmate code, and assimilate, negotiate or resist, in gendered ways, the prisoner
identity (inter alia, Bosworth, 1999; Carrabine, 2004; Corcoran, 2006; Crewe, 2009;
Goffman, 1961).
Furthermore, new TC residents are addressed, from arrival, by their first name and
invited to address all members of staff from officers and psychologists to the govern-
ing (number one) governor by theirs. To appreciate what an unusual, if often initially
unsettling, practice this is, one only has to consider the almighty fuss that periodically
accompanies managerial attempts to encourage officers to address people in prison by
their title or other preferred name; a practice championed by successive DirectorGenerals of the Prison Service in England and Wales and more recently enshrined within
guidance upon communicating with prisoners with learning difficulties.7The contro-
versy it still provokes, however, was apparent when a serving prisoner, Colin Gunn,
alerted readers of the prisoners newspaperInside Timeto his victorious complaint to the
Prisons and Probation Ombudsman about his and their right to require staff to address
them formally.8
In TCs, however, the mutually agreed and uniform use of first names was perceived
as putting people on a level (Peter, Grendon), and further distinguished the TC resident
they now were from the system prisoner they had been, in which its like youve lostyour identity because of your offence; thats allyou are. But using your first name gives
you that bit of respect back (Danny, Grendon). The reclamation of individuality implied
by the use of first names therefore symbolically reasserted to TC residents their primary
identity as a unique human being, and not merely one unit of the stigmatized collective
of just cons.
New roles and changing self-perceptions
These early indicators of institutional difference are developed through the differentand greatly enlarged conceptualizations of offender rehabilitation available to TC
residents. The diversity and detail of the TCs enabling culture is explored elsewhere
(Stevens, forthcoming). For the purposes of this article, three elements adequately illus-
trate the ability of the TC to engender self-perceptions of emerging or achieved change:
the successful performance of rep jobs, democratized participation in community meet-
ings and the reappraisal of the past and its relevance to the present through engagement
in group therapy.
Rep jobs require residents to assume responsibility for a task or function which is of
benefit both practically to the community and developmentally to the individual, since
residents were voted into rep positions on the basis of who would get the most out of it,
therapeutically; itll bring up issues for them (Peter, Grendon). Rep jobs for more
senior (therapeutically well advanced) residents could require superior communication,
interpersonal and organizational skills: contributing to the prisons drug strategy and
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
11/23
Stevens 9
violence reduction meetings, for example, or planning and orchestrating social events
for external invitees and visiting family members.
Community meetings an essential feature of the organization of a therapeutic
community (Jones, 1968: 87) provide a deliberative and decision-making forum, in
which residents are required to debate and vote upon, by show of hands, everything thataffects our community, because it is ourcommunity (Belinda, Send). These may range
from the relatively mundane proposed expenditure of the communitys social fund, for
example, or agreement upon invited visitors to the surprisingly substantial the com-
munitys constitution, the suitability of potential new residents or the viability of the
continuing membership of those residents who had violated the communitys rules.
What rep jobs and community meetings share is that they were perceived by inter-
viewees as self-esteem enhancing and dependency-reducing. TCs, with their psychiat-
ric origins in rebuilding men traumatized by war, understand that one way to make a
damaged person less damaging to others is to improve self-esteem: people who feelgood about themselves do not generally feel compelled to make other people feel bad.
As any popular psychology book asserts, the abusive lover or bullying boss mask their
own insecurities and inadequacies by displacing them onto convenient scapegoats.
More authoritatively, self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000; Ryan and
Deci, 2000) (a macro theory of human motivation and personality) postulates that
human beings are predisposed to seek autonomy, relatedness and competence a pro-
pensity to have an effect on the environment as well as to attain valued outcomes
within it (Deci and Ryan, 2000: 231) and that these fundamental needs (or innate
psychological nutriments) are essential for ongoing psychological health and develop-ment, motivation and the achievement of effectiveness, connectedness and coherence.
When these needs are thwarted, individuals will inevitably suffer psychological
distress and, Deci and Ryan contend, develop dysfunctional compensatory strategies
and substitute fulfilments, as seen most acutely in the emergence of psychopathy.
Supportive social contexts or environments, however, which satisfy these three core
needs, can provide an important emotional corrective and act as a powerful influence
upon the maintenance or enhancement of the motivation necessary to contemplate and
realize change. This accordingly explains why giving something back to the commu-
nity through competently executed rep jobs and having a say in community meetings,with the mutually beneficial consequences (valued outcomes) this entailed, was so
conducive to identity reconstruction and the development of better possible selves
(Oyserman and Markus, 1990):
[Being Family Day rep] allows you to better yourself and prove yourself to the lads and to
know that youve done something worthwhile for the community and its been massively
appreciated. I never really thought of myself as an organized person before or a generous
person but I am, thats what people have told me, because of the way I did that job. Yeah, I put
a lot of energy into that, I got real satisfaction out of it, and I felt proud of myself which aint
normal for me! (Alan, Grendon)
I never had a high opinion of myself at all. I just generally hated myself and never thought I
would amount to anything But its started to change for me, from actually achieving
things I always hated speaking up before and now I go into meetings with governors and
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
12/23
10 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
what have you and say my piece, and the lads look to me to get things done. Thats a big
responsibility and, you know what, Im bloody good at it! [laughs] (Callum, Grendon)
I never really believed I could be anything better; its very hard to think highly of yourself
when youre a drug addict and committing crimes, you know? [My rep job] showed methat Ive got a good head on my shoulders and it can be put to good use; I am capable of
more; I can be someone totally different, basically thats what this place gives you
Having that say [in community meetings] although obviously there are limits it doesnt
make us feel as if we are convicts. It makes us feel as if were humans, adults ... What we say
actually counts for something. Its our community and we have a big say in the running of it.
(Nate, Grendon)
Two other themes can be gleaned from the above quotes. To assume a role success-
fully is to commit to the normative behaviours and attitudes associated with those roles
(Ebaugh, 1988). In successfully enacting their role in the community as an organizer, acommittee member, a responsible and autonomous individual upon whom others rely
the resident began to perceive that he or she was responsible, autonomous and reliable.
This subjective sense of accomplishment was objectively confirmed by the communitys
affirmation (thats what people have told me). Since ones identity consists of both
ones private self-image and ones social identity, perceived, bestowed and sustained
by others, the latter influences the former, ensuring that the looking glass self always
responds to interactions with, and the evaluations of, others (Cooley, 1902; Goffman,
1959; Jenkins, 2004; Tajfel, 1982). Seeing ourselves as others see us means that people
who want to desist from crime are more likely to do so when significant others here,community members believe in the offenders ability to change andcommunicate that
belief (Maruna et al., 2004, 2009).
Second, and similarly, although labelling theory has tended to emphasize the dire
consequences of stigma and spoiled identity (Goffman, 1963), and the Golem effect
of low expectations leading to poor outcomes, the converse can occur: a Pygmalion
effect when high expectations of better things propel a would-be desister to greater
self-belief and behaviours which concord with the attainment of better things
(Maruna et al., 2009). In overcoming the challenges presented by rep jobs and by the
demands of speaking up, residents were enabled to focus not upon their cognitive-behavioural deficits, failings and risk factors, but rather upon their skills, abilities and
potential. This capability-building emphasis, as advocates of a good lives model of
offender rehabilitation (Ward and Brown, 2004; Ward and Maruna, 2007), strengths-
based resettlement (Burnett and Maruna, 2006; Maruna and LeBel, 2002; Uggen
et al., 2004) and altruistic activity by prisoners (Toch, 2000) have identified, bestows
self-worth and the agentic determination to reorder the direction of ones life in pur-
suit of these strengths. The acquisition of new skill sets and discursive resources
which are not only consistent with rehabilitation, but positively exclude the behav-
iours, cognitions and self-concepts favourable towards offending, therefore contrib-uted to the process of differentiation from the old identity and the certification of a
new individual committed to change. In trying on and rehearsing new pro-social
roles in the TC, residents were thus encouraged, over time, to conceive of themselves
as someone worthy of esteem and respect, and capable of more, mastery and genera-
tive contribution.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
13/23
Stevens 11
Developing insight
The more I share my past that I didnt want to share, that I felt embarrassed about, the more
stronger I get because then Im letting these painful things go; Im not taking them with me.
The past will always be there, but I dont feel its allof me now. (Josephine, Send)
The work of small group therapy allows residents to tell the story of their life, includ-
ing their history of offending and the specific detail of their index offence(s). This
digging and delving into ones past, exploring the recesses of childhood memories,
excavating traumas against which the perpetrator of violence has been psychically
defended for many years, revealing guilty secrets, hidden things, nasty things about
me, that Im ashamed of, that Ive never told no one (Alan, Grendon), examining in
unflinching detail the thought processes behind calamitous decisions and the emotional
states experienced during offending, probing the connections between what has been
done to the offender and what he has done and thus the projection of his pain onto his
victims, is the very essence of forensic psychotherapy. It involves a search for under-
standing and meaning and requires both a willingness to reflect upon ones life and to
allow ones narrative identity to be challenged and changed as a consequence of that
self-reflection.
The TCs interest in the wholelife story, however also ensured that residents could
move beyond their imposed master status of offender or prisoner, whose cognitive
deficits and risk factors define the parameters of treatment, to that of the individual with
a multi-faceted life history and multi-dimensional needs, and for whom the commission
of criminal offences was only one neither fundamental nor permanent element ofthat identity. Such contextual and holistic understanding was not to deny the seriousness
of the offence or the offenders responsibility for it; indeed residents were acutely
attuned to self-pitying sad tales (Goffman, 1961) and techniques of neutralization
(Sykes and Matza, 1957) and could subject their group members to a robust cross-
examination, worthy of any prosecuting Queens Counsel. After all, you cant con a
con. Nor did this wider interest in the offenders life minimize the importance of risk
assessment for the TC staff who must still recognize, record and manage that risk. If,
however, as Alexander Chase claimed, to understand is to forgive, even oneself, then
comprehension of and reflection upon why one has committed heinous offences is nec-essary if one is to escape from the trauma of ones past, heal ones damaged and damag-
ing self-concept and reposition ones prospective self-narrative to allow for a happier
and personally meaningful future.
For TC residents, then, telling ones story was essential in order to make links
between what otherwise seemed like wholly unconnected or indeed determinedly com-
partmentalized aspects of the life story, but which in fact connected to illuminate the
true meaning (Charles, Grendon) behind their actions, and the emotional stuff [thats]
gone on that turns us to the way we are (Tony, Grendon). Residents narrative plotlines
exposed, situated and hence humanized their actions, but also challenged the damagingand self-limiting notions some residents had unconsciously created and passively
accepted about the inevitability of their life history, and the tentacular ability of crime to
grasp hold of an individual and intertwine itself into every aspect of ones identity.
Thieving, violence, was normal in my family may have worked as an explanation for
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
14/23
12 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
the residents initiation into crime but within the scrutiny of the small group, the deter-
minism it contained was challenged by any evidence that the resident was already deviat-
ing from the story by which he or she had lived. The narrative could thus be reframed
to reflect the adoption of a new normality, of attitudes, values and behaviours, within the
new normative milieu of the TC, and its implications for narrative emplotment beyondthe TC explored.
This process was experienced by some residents as an explicitly reconstructive
endeavour, in which they perceived the purpose of therapy as like a jigsaw puzzle, with
all of these pieces on the table, and Ive got to put them in, one by one, to make the full
picture of my life (Jenny, Send). Previously, the cognitive and affective factors, and hid-
den motivations of the choices they had made, including to offend, had been invariably
mysterious to them. These men and women had been, in their own self-assessment,
closed off to their emotions, in denial about their lives and unknown, partially or
completely, even to themselves. The work of the small group exposed this opaque inter-nal world to the light of therapeutic insight, prompting the disclosure of the residents
past, the psychological truths (McAdams, 1993: 12) it contained for the story teller and
the potential for a re-storied self. As one senior GTC resident explained:
I needed to cry out and feel sad and I needed to feel this hate for myself and to feel the shame
and guilt and to give that child that I was, a voice. Being here has enabled me to cry I can
see now how everything in my life stems from what happened to me as a child and how all the
mistakes Ive made, and masking everything with drugs and alcohol, and the murder I
committed, all are related to notbeing able to deal with emotions before I like myself now.
I have much more peace of mind. I feel able now to draw a line under the past and move on.
Im not carrying around all that self-hatred any more, and its completely changed the way I
see myself and other people, because Ive learned to trust people again here Ive
discovered who I am.
Discussion: Desistance in Process
Definitions of desistance stress the difficulties of proclaiming that a person who once
committed crime has, in fact, permanently and irrevocably now ceased to do so. One
might argue that desistance can only ever truly be determined retrospectively, after theoffenders death (Maruna, 2001), or at least, after significant crime-free gaps (Bottoms
et al., 2004: 370). These caveats, of course, alert one to the folly of claiming that impris-
oned TC residents or indeed, anyone serving a custodial sentence can desist from
crime. If one understands desistance, however, as a causal process which begins prior to,
and continues after, the outcome of termination (Laub and Sampson, 2001: 11), and
which, after Lemert (1951), includes a secondary desistance in which the would-be ex-
offender assumes the role or identity of a changed person (Maruna et al., 2004: 274;
Maruna and Farrall, 2004), then it is appropriate to recognize that for those residents who
responded well to the TC regime, desistance in progress was identifiable while in the TC.For as much as TCs were described as providing a rehabilitative changing house
(Johnny, Grendon) with opportunities [that] are endless everything is here to help
you change (Andrew, Grendon), participants were also emphatic that its hard work and
its head fucking (Stewart, Grendon) and very painful (Keith, Grendon) and it wasfor
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
15/23
Stevens 13
themto do the hard, painful work to change: theres no magic wand here, you have to
rip yourself apart and put in the work to become a better person (Natalie, Send). Thus
while the TC had clearly provided residents with the initial hook for change and the
continuing supporting structure upon which to hang their aspirations for change, resi-
dents portrayed themselves as agentic individuals, actively choosing to pursue changeand intending to control the future direction of their life.
Accordingly, interviewees could recount numerous ways in which they were con-
sciously aware that they were changing and could connect these changes to prospective
desistance, because their revised self-concept no longer supported or was compatible
with offending: Im just not the person I was, and the person I am now, isnt interested
in the kind of things that land you in prison (Neil, Grendon). Their claims of desistance
in process could rightly be described as evidence-based because they were founded
upon what residents had achieved and had been told by the looking glass of others they
were achieving, and which logically explained to themselves and others why they werejust not the person they once were:
Sometimes its hard to measure how well youve done, aint it, but my people outside, they
knew me as the person I was and when I see them now, they say, Youve changed so much
I feel different anyway, but Im definitelydoing something right because my people say they
can see the new me I think I can take with me the changes I done here. I never had no hope
before, never saw my life being no different, but now, I amlike a new person; I amdifferent,
and my life outside will be too. (Lenny, Grendon)
That was seismic for me, that I didnt react [to a perceived threat of violence and statuschallenge]. I wasnt sitting there thinking, do the fucker which would have been my instinct
two years ago I was thinking that he wasnt worth it; that it wasnt a mature, right thing for
me to do to respond violently. And it tells me that if I can do it with that dickhead Ive had to
tolerate for months here, I can do it with a stranger. (Dominic, Grendon)
There was a time when I really had very little empathy.Now, I can understand another persons
point of view, another persons pain So I cant offend any more. People are not objects; they
are valuable human beings, with thoughts and feelings. I cant hurt anyone now, because I
understand what that hurt feels like. Id never felt my own pain before here, never mind have
empathy for someone elses pain, but once you do, you know, it changes everything. (Muktar,Grendon)
Such confidence may appear to those familiar with the phenomenon of re-offending to
be, at best, naively optimistic, and at worst, wilfully deluded. One may well protest,
well, they would say that, wouldnt they? However, hope for and belief in ones ability
to desist isempirically correlated with the long-term achievement of measurable desist-
ance and reduced risk of reoffending (Burnett and Maruna, 2004; Martin and Stenmac,
2010). Notably, the Oxford University dynamics of recidivism study (Burnett, 1992,
2004) confirmed that property offenders who articulated, prior to release, their firmbelief that they would desist, were most likely to do so. Ebaughs (1988) sociological
study of role exit also demonstrated that people who consciously and deliberatively
discard a redundant identity in favour of an equally actively constructed new identity, are
more likely to ensure their exit from the past becomes irreversible.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
16/23
14 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
The magnitude of this renegotiated storied self also needs to be understood within
the context of these research participants offending and prison histories. In the custo-
dial sentences these residents had already served and the correctional interventions
they had previously successfully completed,priorto reoffending again, nothing had
occurred to foster any hope for change, or indeed, any plausible, evidence-basedgrounds for hope. All earlier attempts at rehabilitation had produced little or no impact
upon their willingness or ability to desist from crime, or had fundamentally challenged
their view and expectations of themselves and of others; let alone had invited existen-
tial meditations upon who they really were and might dare to imagine they could
become. These interviewees had simply not encountered, in normal prisons, a social
environment supportive of rehabilitation or one able to nurture, reinforce and sustain
an emergent self committed to rehabilitation.
It is not therefore fanciful to propose that when TC residents were able to enumerate
the ways in which they were different, and were enabled to rehearse new roles andcapabilities in the TC which reinforced that progress towards difference, they could
create their own self-fulfilling prophecy and embed it within the reconstructed narrative
identity actual desisters have been found to achieve. Hopelessness had been replaced
by hope, and low self-esteem by self-confidence and self-efficacy. A desistance-friendly
future was possible because there was already evidence of change in the TC: in residents
therapeutic discoveries and emotional disentanglement from their old self, the pro-
social roles they assumed and associated normative capabilities and qualities they inter-
nalized, the daily living-learning situations they successfully negotiated and the support
and validation of their fellow community members. In short, interviewees had createdthe necessary cognitive shifts to revise fundamentally the ways in which they identified
themselves, and in so doing, had become less likely to revert to an old offending self
and more likely to choose to retain the preferred new me.
Concluding Comments
Ive become here the person Ive always wanted to be; the person thats always been there
underneath but was scared to come out and got covered up with all the bollocks of my lifestyle
and attitudes I am the person now I was always meant to be, but who got lost somewhere
along the way. (Neil, Grendon)
Before GTC, I was kind of lost and really broken ... Ive changed so much. I honestly dont
believe I will ever offend again because Im not that person now. Ive found a better person
here. (Ben, GTC)
This article, based on exploratory research which sought to privilege TC residents
accounts of their experiences, proposes that the therapeutic community, with its commit-
ment to a radically different penal culture and mode of rehabilitation, socially enables,
produces and reinforces the emergence of someone different. The creation of a tempo-rary escape identity in prison is admittedly unremarkable as a student, lawyer or
sportsman, for example (Jewkes, 2002) and unilateral declarations of reform are not
uncommon, or at least, an expressed desire not to return to prison. The TC, however,
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
17/23
Stevens 15
presented the desister as an admirable and permanently achievable identity because the
indicators of rehabilitation were already discernible, to the resident and to others, and
was thus, uniquely within these research participants experiences, able to communicate
to them the genuine possibilities for other selves and other futures.
This constructive re-imagining of self and concomitantly, refashioned narrativetrajectory was made possible because residents lived within a community which
encouraged them to envisage and practice, through meaningful, rehabilitative-focused
activities and the pursuit of a holistic understanding of their life history, a cohesive
replacement self. First then, it mattered that the TC was different: that it pursued a
penal counter-culture as a therapeutic community with a pronounced ethos of change
(Stevens, 2011), for whom the constitution of their social identity could become an act
of power (Laclau, 1990: 33, cited in Hall, 2000: 18). Through the discursive signage of
differentiation in the TC, residents were endowed with a symbolically significant sense
of collective internal definition (Jenkins, 2004: 82), and approval for their sharedambition to change. As Jenkins (2004: 79, emphases in original) observed, Logically,
inclusion entails exclusion, if only by default Defining us involves defining a
range of thems also. The shared us or social identity residents enjoyed as members
of a superior penal club inherently contrasted with, and encouraged the repudiation and
disengagement of, all things that constitute the thems of the system, including their
ownold former offender identity.
Second, residents were encouraged, through their democratized engagement in and
responsibility for their community, to assume a repertoire of self-esteem enhancing and
capacity-building roles and to demonstrate attributes and identities not normally associ-ated with incarcerated criminals, and thus to perceive of difference within themselves:
the Pygmalion effect of higher expectations resulting in higher performance (Maruna
et al., 2004). The pursuit of the full picture of residents lives in group therapy, mean-
while, enabled them to understand how their past had influenced their present but need
not dictate their future. Residents could thus sew the constituent parts of their life into
the kind of cohesive redemption script Maruna identified among his desisters, which
both made sense of the past and made credible a desistance-focused future. The new, or
newly expressed and endorsed, identities, functions and characteristics which residents
accumulated gradually empowered them to erect a psychological boundary between thesystem inmate they were, the TC resident they are and the better person they aspired
to become. Just as Marunas desisters and persisters revelled in polarized cognitive
understandings of their lives, so the research participants in this study cognitively
divorced the person I was from the person I am now and wanted to remain.
Accordingly, this article develops existing understandings of the enablement of change
in TCs, and endorses studies of desistance which emphasize the importance of progres-
sive and positive changes to ones narrative identity, and the reassessment and reposition-
ing of the old self as a bridge, rather than a barrier, to an ideal new self and post-release
life. Beyond the blunt instrument of reconviction studies, however, researchers still know
very little about the durability of rehabilitation, the TC way, beyondthe TC; and conse-
quently one cannot know whether the TC does, in fact, produce and sustaindesistance
among its graduates. Further qualitative longitudinal research, including eventual evalu-
ation of the post-TC psychologically informed planned environments now being piloted
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
18/23
16 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
in four prisons,9is therefore needed to determine whether the improvements to residents
personal identities this research identified were maintained, and thus whether graduates
were truly enabled, as Giddens put it, to keep the narrative going.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. North American readers will be more familiar with hierarchical or concept TCs, which
specialize in the treatment of substance abuse, both in the community and in prison.
2. Both TCs and cognitive-behavioural programmes aim to impact upon the offenders thinking
and behaviour but in attempting to achieve this outcome, differ markedly in their approach
and scope. TCs investigate the hidden emotional meanings behind their residents pathologi-cal behaviours. They argue that the historical causesof problems must be uncovered and
understood in order to tackle effectively the symptoms of distress, including but not confined
to offending. Therapy is largely unstructured, non-directive and open ended, but is expected to
require at least 18 months, with residencies of two years or more usual. Cognitive-behavioural
programmes seek to teach rational offenders how to monitor and modify their here-and-now
faulty thinking and risky behaviours. These programmes theorize that offending results
from generic and readily identifiable criminogenic cognitive deficits and behavioural patterns,
and are delivered in accordance with a detailed, structured, programme-specific treatment
manual and last for a pre-determined duration of less than one year.
3. I describe the research as semi-ethnographic in recognition that it is impossible for any freeworld researcher to become completely immersed in, or truly experience the realities of, the
prison. Owen (1998: 2022) prefers quasi-ethnography for similar reasons.
4. Notable exceptions to this categorization are Miller et al.s (2006) co-researcher approach
with prisoner focus groups, Smartts (2001) collection of Grendon tales and Wilson and
McCabes (2002) analysis of three autobiographies penned by Grendon graduates.
5. The minimum residency criterion for participation was three months.
6. The chronological order and relative importance of these changes a puzzle which LeBel
et al. (2008) term the chicken and egg of subjective and social factors remains unclear.
7. Prison Service Instruction 201132Ensuring Equality, section H.6.
8. Call me Mister, Letters to the editor, Inside Time, December 2010. For representativemedia coverage of Mr Gunns complaint and its implications, see the The Daily Telegraph, 6
December 2010: He may be a murderer, but prison staff must call him Mr.
9. These environments are intended to support and consolidate changes achieved elsewhere, includ-
ing in TCs; see: http://www.personalitydisorder.org.uk/news/wp-content/uploads/DHNOMS_
PIPE2011_Info.pdf.
References
Becker H (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press and
London: Collier Macmillan.
Bennett J (1981) Oral History and Delinquency: The Rhetoric of Criminology. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Bosworth M (1999)Engendering Resistance: Agency and Power in Womens Prisons. Aldershot:
Dartmouth.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
19/23
Stevens 17
Bottoms A, Shapland J, Costello A, Holmes D and Muir G (2004) Towards desistance: Theoretical
underpinnings for an empirical study.Howard Journal of Criminal Justice43(4): 368389.
Bourdieu P (2000) The biographical illusion. In: Du Gay P, Evans J and Redman P (eds)Identity:
A Reader. London: SAGE and The Open University.
Bowlby J (1969)Attachment and Loss, Volume I: Attachment. London: The Hogarth Press and theInstitute of Psycho-Analysis.
Bruner J (1987) Life as Narrative. Social Research54(1): 1132.
Bruner J (1990)Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Burnett R (1992) The Dynamics of Recidivism: Report to the Home Office Research and Planning
Unit. Oxford: Centre for Criminological Research, University of Oxford.
Burnett R (2004) To re-offend or not to re-offend? The ambivalence of convicted property
offenders. In: Maruna S and Immarigeon R (eds)After Crime and Punishment: Pathways to
Offender Re-Integration. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Burnett R and Maruna S (2004) So prison works, does it? The criminal careers of 130 men
released from prison under Home Secretary, Michael Howard. Howard Journal of CriminalJustice43(4): 390404.
Burnett R and Maruna S (2006) The kindness of prisoners: Strengths-based resettlement in theory
and in action. Criminology and Criminal Justice6(1): 83106.
Carlsson C (2012) Using turning points to understand processes of change in offending: Notes
from a Swedish study on life courses and crime.British Journal of Criminology52(1): 116.
Carrabine E (2004) Power, Discourse and Resistance: A Genealogy of the Strangeways Prison
Riot. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Clemmer D (1958) The Prison Community. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Cooley C (1902)Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Schocken Books.
Corcoran M (2006) Out of Order: The Political Imprisonment of Women in Northern Ireland19721998. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Cordess C and Williams A (1996) The criminal act and acting out. In: Cordess C and Cox M (eds)
Forensic Psychotherapy: Crime, Psychodynamics and the Offender Patient. London: Jessica
Kingsley.
Crewe B (2009) The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation, and Social Life in an English Prison.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cullen E, Jones L and Woodward R (eds) (1997) Therapeutic Communities for Offenders.
Chichester: Wiley.
Deci E and Ryan R (1985) Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior.
New York: Plenum.Deci E and Ryan R (2000) The what and why of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-
determination of behavior.Psychological Inquiry11(4): 227268.
Ebaugh H (1988)Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Elliott A (2001) Concepts of the Self. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Farrall S (2002)Rethinking What Works with Offenders: Probation, Social Context and Desistance
from Crime. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Farrall S and Bowling B (1999) Structuration, human development and desistance from crime.
British Journal of Criminology39(2): 253268.
Farrall S and Calverley A (2006) Understanding Desistance from Crime: Emerging TheoreticalDevelopments in Resettlement and Rehabilitation. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Farrall S, Sharpe G, Hunter B and Calverley A (2011) Theorizing structural and individual-level
processes in desistance and persistence: Outlining an integrated perspective. Australian and
New Zealand Journal of Criminology44(2): 218234.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
20/23
18 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
Gadd D and Farrall S (2004) Criminal careers, desistance and subjectivity: Interpreting mens
narratives of change. Theoretical Criminology8(2): 123156.
Genders E and Player E (1995) Grendon: A Study of a Therapeutic Prison. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Giddens A (1991)Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press.
Giordano P, Cernkovich S and Rudolph J (2002) Gender, crime and desistance: Toward a theory
of cognitive transformation.American Journal of Sociology107(4): 9901064.
Glueck S and Glueck E (1940)Juvenile Delinquents Grown Up. New York: Commonwealth Fund.
Goffman E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.
Goffman E (1961)Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates.
Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Goffman E (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Graham J and Bowling B (1995) Young People and Crime. Home Office Research Study No. 145.London: Home Office.
Haigh R (1999) The quintessence of a therapeutic environment: Five universal qualities. In:
Campling P and Haigh R (eds) Therapeutic Communities: Past, Present, and Future. London:
Jessica Kingsley.
Hall S (2000) Who needs identity? In: Du Gay P, Evans J and Redman P (eds)Identity: A Reader.
London: SAGE and The Open University.
Healey D (2010) The Dynamics of Desistance: Charting Pathways through Change. Cullompton:
Willan Publishing.
Jenkins R (2004) Social Identity. London and New York: Routledge.
Jewkes Y (2002) Captive Audience: Media, Masculinity and Power in Prisons. Cullompton:Willan Publishing.
Jones M (1968) Social Psychiatry in Practice: The Idea of the Therapeutic Community.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Josselson R and Lieblich A (eds) (1993) The Narrative Study of Lives. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
Katz J (1988) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic
Books.
Laclau E (1990)New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso.
Laub J and Sampson R (2001) Understanding desistance from crime. In: Tonry M (ed.) Crime
and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, Vol. 28. Chicago, IL and London: University of
Chicago Press.Laub J and Sampson R (2003) Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
LeBel T, Burnett R, Maruna S and Bushway S (2008) The chicken and egg of subjective and
social factors in desistance from crime.European Journal of Criminology5(2): 131159.
Leibrich J (1993) Straight to the Point: Angles on Giving up Crime. Otago, New Zealand:
University of Otago Press.
Lemert E (1951) Social Pathology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Liebling A (1999) Doing research in prison: Breaking the silence? Theoretical Criminology3(2):
147173.
Main T (1996) The hospital as a therapeutic institution. Therapeutic Communities: The InternationalJournal for Therapeutic and Supportive Organizations17(2): 7780. Originally published in
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic(1946) 10: 6668.
Malan D (1979) Individual Psychotherapy and the Science of Psychodynamics. Oxford:
Butterworths Heinemann.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
21/23
Stevens 19
Manning N (1976) Innovation in social policy the case of the therapeutic community.Journal of
Social Policy5(3): 265279.
Marshall P (1997)A Reconviction Study of HMP Grendon Therapeutic Community. Home Office
Research Findings No. 53. London: Home Office Research and Statistics Directorate.
Martin K and Stenmac L (2010) Measuring hope: Is hope related to criminal behaviour in offend-ers?International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology54(5): 693705.
Maruna S (2001)Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives. Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
Maruna S and Farrall S (2004) Desistance from crime: A theoretical reformulation. Klner
Zeitschrift fr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie43: 171194.
Maruna S and LeBel T (2002) Revisiting ex-prisoner re-entry: A buzzword in search of a narrative.
In: Rex S and Tonry M (eds)Reform and Punishment: The Future of Sentencing. Cullompton:
Willan Publishing.
Maruna S, LeBel T, Mitchell N and Naples M (2004) Pygmalion in the reintegration process:
Desistance from crime through the looking glass.Psychology, Crime and Law10(3): 271281.Maruna S, LeBel T, Naples M and Mitchell N (2009) Looking-glass identity transformation:
Pygmalion and Golem in the rehabilitation process. In: Veysey B, Christian J and Martinez D
(eds)How Offenders Transform Their Lives. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Matza D (1969)Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
McAdams D (1985)Power, Intimacy and the Life Story: Personological Inquiries into Identity.
London: The Guildford Press.
McAdams D (1993) The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self.
New York and London: Guilford.
McAdams D (1996) Personality, modernity, and the storied self: A contemporary framework for
studying persons.Psychological Inquiry7(4): 295321.McAdams D (2006) The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press.
McNeill F (2006) A desistance paradigm for offender management. Criminology and Criminal
Justice6(1): 3962.
Merton R (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Miller S, Sees C and Brown J (2006) Key aspects of psychological change in residents of a prison
therapeutic community: A focus group approach.Howard Journal of Criminal Justice45(2):
116128.
Morris M (2004) Dangerous and Severe Process, Programme and Person: Grendons Work.
London: Jessica Kingsley.Newton M (1998) Changes in measures of personality, hostility and locus of control during resi-
dence in a prison therapeutic community.Legal and Criminological Psychology3(2): 209223.
Owen B (1998) In the Mix: Struggle and Survival in a Womens Prison. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Oyserman D and Markus H (1990) Possible selves and delinquency. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology59(1): 112125.
Parker M (ed.) (2007) Dynamic Security: The Democratic Therapeutic Community in Prison.
London: Jessica Kingsley.
Polkinghome D (1988)Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press.Presser L (2009) The narratives of offenders. Theoretical Criminology13(2): 177200.
Rapoport R (1960) Community as Doctor: New Perspectives on a Therapeutic Community.
London: Tavistock Publications.
Ricoeur P (1984) Time and Narrative. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
22/23
20 Criminology & Criminal Justice0(0)
Ricoeur P (1992) Oneself as Another. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Ryan R and Deci E (2000) Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation,
social development, and well-being.American Psychologist55(1): 6878.
Sampson R and Laub J (1993) Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Shine J (ed.) (2000)A Compilation of Grendon Research. Grendon Underwood: HMP Grendon.
Shine J and Newton M (2000) Damaged, disturbed and dangerous: A profile of receptions to
Grendon therapeutic prison 19952000. In: Shine J (ed.)A Compilation of Grendon Research.
Grendon Underwood: HMP Grendon.
Shover N (1985)Ageing Criminals. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
Shover N (1996) Great Pretenders: Pursuits and Careers of Persistent Thieves. Boulder, CO and
Oxford: Westview Press.
Shuker R and Newton M (2008) Treatment outcome following intervention in a prison-based thera-
peutic community etc etc. Mea culpa: A study of the relationship between reduction in crimino-
genic risk and improved psychological well-being.British Journal of Forensic Practice10(3):3344.
Shuker R and Sullivan E (eds) (2010) Grendon and the Emergence of Forensic Therapeutic
Communities: Developments in Research and Practice. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Smartt U (2001) Grendon Tales: Stories from a Therapeutic Community. Winchester: Waterside
Press.
Stevens A (2011) A very decent nick: Ethical treatment in prison-based democratic therapeutic
communities.Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice11(2): 124150.
Stevens A (forthcoming) Offender Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Communities: Enabling
Change the TC Way. Oxford: Routledge.
Strauss A and Corbin J (1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures forDeveloping Grounded Theory. London: SAGE.
Sykes G (1958) The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Sykes G and Matza D (1957) Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American
Sociological Review22(6): 664670.
Tajfel H (1982) Social Identity and Intergroup Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor R (2000) A Seven Year Reconviction Study of HMP Grendon Therapeutic Community.
Home Office Research Findings No. 115. London: Home Office Research, Development and
Statistics Directorate.
Toch H (2000) Altruistic activity as correctional treatment. International Journal of OffenderTherapy and Comparative Criminology44(3): 270278.
Uggen C, Manza J and Behrens A (2004) Less than the average citizen: Stigma, role transition and
the civic reintegration of convicted felons. In: Maruna S and Immarigeon R (eds)After Crime
and Punishment: Pathways to Offender Reintegration. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Vaughan B (2007) The internal narrative of desistance. British Journal of Criminology 47(3):
390404.
Veysey B, Christian J and Martinez D (eds) (2009) How Offenders Transform Their Lives.
Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Ward T and Brown M (2004) The good lives model and conceptual issues in offender rehabilita-
tion.Psychology, Crime and Law10(3): 243257.Ward T and Maruna S (2007)Rehabilitation. London and New York: Routledge.
Warr M (2002) Companions in Crime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whiteley S (2004) The evolution of the therapeutic community. Psychiatric Quarterly 75(3):
233248.
-
8/14/2019 Criminology and Criminal Justice 2012 Stevens 1748895811432958
23/23
Stevens 21
Wilson D and McCabe S (2002) How HMP Grendon works in the words of those undergoing
therapy.Howard Journal of Criminal Justice41(2): 279291.
Biography
Alisa Stevens is a Lecturer in Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Kent.Her research and teaching interests focus on the correctional services and offender
rehabilitation. Her book, Offender Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Communities:
Enabling Change the TC Waywill be published by Routledge.