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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

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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


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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


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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.


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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,


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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


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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,


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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


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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


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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


12/23


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.


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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


14/23


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


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.


16/23


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,


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


18/23


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.

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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.

criminology and criminal justice 2012 stevens 1748895811432958

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