President's Address: Desistance Narratives and the New Social Movement of Formerly Incarcerated People

• In Event: ASC Presidential Plenary: Presidential Justice Awards and Presidential Address

Abstract

The role of self-narratives in the process of desistance has become well established: If a person want to change her life, she needs to change her story. The value of self-narratives have also been recognized in rehabilitative interventions, with “credible messengers” or “wounded healers” using their own stories as models to help mentees rethink their own. Too often, however, these processes (desistance and rehabilitation) are framed as individualistic processes, overlooking the social, cultural and structural factors impacting the availability of such routes to redemption. In this talk, Maruna will explore the emergence of a third use of self-narratives of change: as public narratives in a social movement. In an emerging “new social movement” system-impacted individuals (sometimes “experts by experience” or “people with lived experience”) use their stories to collectively advocate on behalf of people with convictions and confront the excesses of the criminal legal system. Maruna argues that this “lived experience” movement, with its mantra of “nothing about us, without us,” represents a fundamental challenge to both the criminal legal system and criminology as well. How we respond to this important movement will decide the fate of our field.

Author

• Shadd Maruna, University of Queens Belfast / ASC President