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Desistance, Rehabilitation and Programmes

Fergus McNeill

University of GlasgowFergus.Mcneill@glasgow.ac.uk

Twitter: @fergus_mcneill

Desistance

How can criminal justice impede or

support desistance?

How can criminal justice impede or

support desistance?

All a matter of perspective…?

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The person changing

The offender

Support services

The treatment programme

The reintegratingcommunity

The exclusionary community

Vindication

“Good old-fashioned social work vindicated at last -- we always said relationships, families and social contexts mattered!”

Vexation

“Oh sh*t, we're going to have to redesign all our systems, processes and practices again -- where do we buy the desistance programme?”

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Guilt

“We thought we were part of the solution; turns out we’ve been part of the problem. How do we change that?”

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Reconfiguration

“Change actually belongs to ex-offenders and reintegration is about communities; we need to place them at the centre and not the professionals! How do we do that?”

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So…

“…it is not enough for a sex offender program to enhance an offender’s empathy skills or equip him with the ability to cope with stress or emotional loneliness. Beyond these essential tasks practitioners should be looking to create social supports and opportunities, and to help create ways of living that follow from a personally significant, and ethically acceptable (redemptive) practical identity…” (Ward, T and Laws, R. (2010) ‘Desistance from Sex Offending: Motivating Change, Enriching Practice’, International Journal of Forensic Mental Health 9:1, 11-23, DOI: 10.1080/14999011003791598).

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Relative contributions to ‘treatment effectiveness’

• Asay and Lambert (1999)– Client and extra-therapeutic variables (40%)– Therapeutic relationship (30%)– Expectancy and placebo effects (15%)– Techniques unique to specific therapies (15%)

• Compare the shift to ‘Core Correctional Practices’ (Dowden and Andrews, 2002) and to skills-based supervision

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Rethinking programmes

• Theories and models of change– Programmes and the wider desistance process– Clarify their contribution not as the change

process, but as a resource in the change process• Programmes, case management and

supporting desistance• Individualising programmes

– General and individual responsivity– Rolling formats?

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Rethinking programmes

• Socialising programmes– Rethinking ‘social supports’– Involving significant others?

• Re-evaluating programmes– Skills for reducing reconviction?– Education for integration?– Measuring integration as well as/rather than

reoffending?

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17Based on McNeill and Maruna (2010); McNeill (2012)

Integration as a positive social good

18From Ager and Strang (2008)

Questions

• How effectively is programme work integrated with case/sentence management… and with the lived experience of imprisonment or supervision?

• How responsive and individualised are your programmes… honestly?

• How socially connected/connecting are your programmes?• What exactly is the role of programmes in the wider

project of integration?• How much or how little needs to change to better connect

programmes and desistance?

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• Thank you for listening

• For more information and free resources about desistance, see:

http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/discoveringdesistance/

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