This article critiques the focus on responsibilisation of criminalised women within desistance research, policy and practice, through the neglect of the structural conditions surrounding women’s criminalisation and victimisation. The concept of the ‘good woman’ within these areas is grounded in patriarchal and neoliberal discourse. Drawing upon women’s narratives, we show this results in feelings of shame and stigmatisation, negatively affecting relational networks and leading to a denial of victimhood. Research from two complementing studies drawn together here suggest that positive relationships which challenge feelings of shame and stigmatisation are essential to women’s desistance both from crime and harm, and are therefore fundamental considerations for practice.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of assisted desistance from the perspective of women involved in the criminal justice system. It focusses on two community projects set up in the aftermath of the 2007 Corston Report, Northshire Women’s Centres (WCs) and the Housing for Northshire project.
Design/methodology/approach
Through analysis of a year of observation in these settings and 23 narrative interviews with staff and service users, the paper notes the differences between risk-focussed and desistance-focussed justice for women.
Findings
Neither projects are a panacea; however, they offer an insight into desistance-focussed practice. The findings would suggest that the projects provide social justice as opposed to criminal justice, particularly because of their flexible approach and awareness of the relational elements involved in female desistance.
Originality/value
The in-depth, qualitative data provided challenges the “payment by results” rhetoric which demands positivist research that promotes an understanding of desistance as a binary outcome. Implications for policy are considered.
While criminological literature, criminal justice practice, and to a lesser extent, state policy have acknowledged a link between women’s criminalisation and gendered violence (MoJ, 2018; Österman, 2018; Prison Reform Trust, 2017; Roberts, 2015), there has been much less acknowledgement of the role of historical and contemporaneous experiences of violence in the desistance scripts of criminalised women. Combining findings from two research projects exploring gender and desistance, this article argues that (i) criminalised women’s experiences of gendered violence are such that any exploration of gender and desistance which does not acknowledge this is incomplete, (ii) coercion and control can inform women’s entry into the criminal justice system, (iii) expressions of agency and resistance in abusive interpersonal relationships can also inform women’s offending, yet (iv) women’s experiences of desistance from crime can mask the harm they face in coercive, controlling, and violent relationships. Thus, the article argues for a reframing of desistance from crime as desistance from harm both theoretically and in practice, and considers what this might entail.
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