Beyond personal reform: Adolescent drug-law offenders and the desistance process

Abstract

While much research on desistance addresses processes of change for repeat offenders during and after imprisonment, this article applies insights from desistance studies to novice offenders outside the traditional justice system. In Norway, increasing numbers of adolescent drug-law offenders have been diverted to alternative justice systems over the last decade. Based on in-depth interviews with youth enrolled in programmes to help them refrain from drug use, the article seeks to identify how the early-stage desistance process is understood by would-be desisters. Rather than ascribing the rehabilitative programmes' direct impact on their behaviour and thinking, the adolescents emphasised the importance of restoring relationships with parents and overcoming legal barriers. Accordingly, the analysis shows how concerns with personal reform were outweighed by (i) social and (ii) legal concerns. While the precedence of external concerns over personal reform may reflect the participants' age and level of criminal involvement, it also reflects a particular culture of intervention.

Social inequality in alternative sanctions: A register data study on all adolescent drug offenders in Norway 2005–2015

“…In such situations, one either looks to adjacent studies for relevant input or calls for more research in the identified area. In our case, a previous, interrelated study on the emerging alternative sanctions in Norway sheds some light on the matter, as it found that parental involvement was the key factor in the adolescents’ desistance processes (Sandøy, 2019). Parents stood out not only as the key motivators for change but also for consenting to these legal interventions in the first place.…”

“…The CWP with a trial period and terms is appraised as a more suitable sanction for young offenders, since it allows for the implementation of rehabilitative measures such as follow-up by social services and drug testing by healthcare workers (Sandøy, 2019). In this respect, it mirrors the ‘youth contracts’ introduced in Denmark in 1998, where support and supervision were transferred from the probation services to the social welfare system (Storgaard, 2005).…”

“…Similar to other European countries, Norway increasingly offers alternative sanctions for drug offences, targeting young offenders in particular (Lid, 2016; Sandøy, 2019). At the turn of the millennium, the penal repertoire was close to uniform, as nearly all cases of drug use and possession for personal use were settled with a fine.…”

The “public health” approach to illicit drugs: an eradicative drug discourse in a sanitorial disguise?

“…but a sanitorial discourse often tends to situate people who use illicit drugs as socially disturbed, weak and lacking in assertiveness, making the need for treatment self-evident (Jöhncke, 2009; Herzog, 2016, Lie et al , 2022). The sanitorial field includes many disciplinary elements: psychosocial counselling is often an obligatory supplement to the prescription of methadone and/or a probation requirement; some welfare programmes restrict or block access for people with drug offense convictions (Sheely, 2020); prison-based drug treatment is often accompanied by urine tests and the use of isolation cells (Nielsen and Kolind, 2016); minors convicted of drug offenses are directed towards obligatory “rehabilitation programmes” (Sandøy, 2018) and so on. Drug treatment courts are a particular interesting juncture at which the eradicative discourse meets the sanitorial, based on a “disease model of crime” where the therapeutic and coercive meet (Tiger, 2013): a sanction is often reduced if the person using drugs agrees to receive therapeutic treatment to get “clean” and “better.” People who use illicit drugs are reconstructed as “clients” rather than “offenders” (Donohue and Moore, 2009); one could say that they have moved “from one disciplinary authority to another” (Foucault, 1977, p. 226).…”

Finska fångars ambitioner om att upphöra med brott

“…Majoriteten av den nordiska forskningen har fokuserat på män, men på senare år har också kvinnors upphörande med brott belysts (Gålnander, 2020;Salovaara, 2019;Gjeruldsen and Jensen, 2021;Österman, 2018). Olika grupper av indi vider har studerats, såsom unga lagbrytare (Deuchar et al, 2016;Sandøy, 2019;Carlsson, 2013) och sexuella förbrytare (Kruse, 2020;Berggren et al, 2020). Påverkan av olika strukturella faktorer har också uppmärksammats i den nordiska forskningen, som betydelsen av arbete (Skardhamar and Savolainen, 2014), äktenskap (Skardhamar et al, 2015;Savolainen, 2009), skulder (Todd Kvam, 2019) och villkorliga domar (ToddKvam, 2020).…”