The gendered weight of desistance and understanding the ‘love of a good woman’: Desistance emotional work (DEW)

Abstract

Despite increasing academic focus on intimate relationships as positive influences on desistance, research has yet to examine the experience and impact of support provision for women who are intimate partners of desisters. This exploratory study draws on six in-depth interviews with partners of desisters to elucidate their experiences of support provision and the impact of desistance. This paper finds that women provide resources to their desisting partners, and that identities and agency can be strained through this provision. The desistance process entails an investment of emotional work and capital from intimate partners which is conceptualised in this paper as Desistance Emotional Work (DEW). Desistance research has not yet acknowledged the support needs of women who invest in their partner’s desistance, and so DEW should be considered further both theoretically and in policy and practice.

Working Together? Gendered Barriers to Employment and Desistance From Harm Amongst Criminalised English Women

“…Generativity was not new to the women, although there were post-criminalization examples of women taking on ‘hyper-moral’ (Matthews et al, 2014) roles, arguably as a reaction to the stigma emerging from their violation of legal and gender norms, women had life-long examples of often unpaid caring work. As noted in Barr (2019) women were full-time mothers, foster carers, took on mother roles to their partner’s children, were involved in Church-based volunteering and fundraising, offered advice, practical support and counselling to family and friends, supported their partner’s and (male) family member’s desistance (Hall & Harris, 2022) and provided care and dignity for friends in prison. In short, women provided gendered caregiving roles unrelated to their efforts to desist from crime.…”

“…Whilst many of the Northshire women noted the benefits of volunteering for their own mental health and social capital, others were unable to take on work that was unpaid due to other demands on their time and energy. Moreover, all of the women talked about other caring and generative roles they had with children, family and friends, not least with some of the women supporting the desistance of the men in their lives (Barr, 2019; Nugent & Schinkel, 2016; Hall & Harris, 2022). As Codd (2008) has argued, within families of incarcerated people, the burden of caring is likely to be placed on women.…”

Thinking about emotional work and emotional resources in women's voices in desistance and recovery

“…Lauren then presented her co-authored paper with Dr Lyndsey Harris on the emerging concept of Desistance Emotional Work, or DEW (Hall and Harris, 2022). DEW broadly refers to the range of life domains which may be impacted by supporting someone to desist from crime.…”