Response, Rehabilitation, and Reconciliation: The Normative Dimensions of the Offender’s Desistance Journey

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

The literature on offender treatment and desistance from crime is in its formative period of development. To date, theoretical, empirical, clinical, and policy analyses have raised important questions about risk assessment, good lives programming, and socio-cultural critique. One issue at the center of this literature that has yet to be systematically considered is the role of values and ethics in the desistance process. This issue acknowledges that a moral sensibility or code is very much a part of official responses to criminal conduct, approved modes of rehabilitative intervention, and certified forms of reconciliation. What is not so clear is whether this “moral entrepreneurship” effectively promotes or impedes the journey of offender treatment and desistance from crime. The papers presented in this thematic panel aim to examine these dynamics.

Sub Unit

• Area IV. Criminal Justice Policy and Practice / 43. Prisoner Reentry

Individual Presentations

• Community-Based Recovery and Youth Justice - Brian Gregory Sellers, Eastern Michigan University

• Life Lines: Desistance, Social Relations and Reciprocity - Elizabeth Weaver, University of Strathclyde; Fergus McNeill, University of Glasgow

• Helping Others as a Response to Reconcile a Criminal Past: The Role of the Wounded Healer in Prisoner Reentry Programs - Thomas P. LeBel, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee; Matt Richie, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Discussant

• Bruce A. Arrigo, University of North Carolina at Charlotte