Autobiography,empirical research and critical theory in desistance

Introduction

What kind of knowledge is necessary for practitioners, managers and policymakers to properly understand desistance − the process by which offenders give up criminal activity and become law-abiding citizens − and to act upon that understanding? Whose voice, or voices should be attended to? What counts as reliable evidence, or even as practice wisdom? There is no doubt that in the past two decades ‘desistance studies’ has emerged as a significant field in criminology, has (to a greater or lesser degree) caught the ear of British policymakers and has (to a greater or lesser degree) percolated down to probation and social work practitioners. Whether it has adequately informed policy and practice, whether it has been properly understood, is a moot point. To many practitioners and policymakers ‘desistance research’ has seemed like new knowledge, a departure from the kind of knowledge and evidence that was considered foundational to good practice even as recently as the 1990s − cognitive behavioural psychology focused on changing individual mindsets − and in that context, McNeill (2003) always said that taking desistance processes seriously would entail a ‘paradigm shift’.

The voice of the offender − or at least data from offenders − has been integral to the recent emergence of desistance studies, less so in the strand of it that derives from criminal careers research (heavily influenced by rational choice theory), more so in the strand influenced by narrative theory, which requires detailed attention to offenders’ life experiences. Shadd Maruna’s (1997, 2001) work, in particular, refocused attention not only on narrative-as-data, but also on the significance of a narrative restructuring of one’s own self-understanding as a key element in processes of personal change (see also Maruna, 1999). More commonly, offender’s words have been fragmented, lifted out of context, trimmed to support particular criminological theories or policy initiatives (including those based on rational choice theory) in ways that make nonsense of taking offender perspectives seriously, of understanding or respecting the person who lives the life and speaks the words.

The relative neglect of properly rounded offender (or ex-offender) perspectives in the desistance literature is surprising if only because narrative, life (hi)story or (auto)biographical method has had an honoured place in criminology, particularly in the USA (Bennet, 1981), with whole books being based around one person’s account of their involvement in crime (see e.g. The Jack Roller by Clifford Shaw [1966]; The Professional Thief by Edwin Sutherland [1937]; and CB Klockars [1974] The Professional Fence), some of which were studies of desistance avant le lettre, and demonstrably of use to criminal justice professionals. Despite the belated discovery of auto/biographical method by British sociologists of deviance in the 1970s, the more widely read accounts of offender’s lives by Tony Parker (Soothill, 1999), and some influential prisoner autobiographies (Boyle, 1977; McVicar, 1974) such literature has since became more marginal in criminology and, perhaps more surprisingly, in social work education (Goodey, 2000; Maguire, 2000; Maruna and Matravers, 2007 − though see Devlin and Turney, 2000; Hobbes, 1995; Nellis, 2002). This mostly reflects its perceived lack of fit with the conventions of scientific method, the belief that because individual subjective accounts (or single case studies) lack validity, reliability and generalizability they have nothing of comparable worth to recommend them to scholars and policymakers (Goodey, 2000: 474; Stake, 1978) (Maruna, 1997: 63; Maruna and Matravers, 2007: 431), However, the institutional dismissal of this literature may reflect something altogether different, and although there is a long tradition of ‘prisoner autobiographies’ contributing to debate on penal reform (Nellis, 2012), Garland (1992: 419) cited in Morgan (1999: 329), is right to suggest that offenders’ voices have also been subordinated in the ‘criminological monologue’, not so much for what they lack methodologically, but because of their potential threat to expert (or even common-sense) discourses:

[I]f only they were allowed to speak [offenders] might challenge some of the certainties with which we divide the world into normal and abnormal, right and wrong. (Garland, 1992: 419)

This article, jointly written by an ex-offender turned criminal justice social worker, and author of So You Think You Know Me? (Weaver, 2008), and a criminal justice social worker turned academic researcher, seeks both to reclaim offender autobiography as central to desistance studies and at the same time to show how such writing can both inform and be informed by academic research literature. As such we believe that it points towards the kind of fully rounded knowledge base that policymakers, managers and practitioners need if they are to fully understand − and even empathize with − the people for whom they provide (or fail to provide) services, and whose lives and circumstances may be more complex than simplistic rational choice theories of personal change, and naive policy initiatives that may be based on them, ever recognize.

Allan − the ex-offender’s story

In writing this article I realize that I am in a fairly unique position in as much as I am currently a Criminal Justice Social Work Team Manager in Scotland and I am also an ex-offender and former prisoner. In what follows, I intend to offer an experiential view of my own pathway to desistance and in so doing I will discuss what led me into an early life of crime; what this lifestyle entailed; that whole process of becoming an ex-offender and the barriers I faced trying to move away from this lifestyle.

Now aged 51, I was born and raised in a seaside town in Ayrshire, the third youngest in a family of six children. Due to the loss of traditional employment industries in the 1970s, the town has never really recovered economically and has remained a rather desolate town with numerous social problems and large pockets of deprivation, crime and unemployment, which essentially formed the backdrop for my childhood. Although a bricklayer to trade, my father only worked periodically and my mother managed the family home. It wasn’t a loveless environment as my mother smothered me with love and she was always there for me. Likewise, growing up I had a good loving relationship with my brothers and sisters although I never felt a closeness or bond with my father and our relationship was always distant. He himself was raised in a very macho, aggressive, male-orientated environment and in many respects this was passed down to me from an early age. This was not particularly unusual in this era and in this area it must be said. Most males and adult males tended to share this same macho culture. In fact, an elderly uncle would often take me out to the back garden and teach me how to fight ‘like a man’ when I was around six years of age. Despite this aspect of my upbringing and socialization, I considered my childhood to be relatively normal until the age of 12 and this was when I first witnessed my father beating my mother in an uncontrollable, brutal drunken rage. Even at that early age, this proved to be a major turning point in my life. My father’s violence or the threat of his violence cast a long shadow over the family home. In many ways I lost part of my childhood and I became quite a resentful and bitter child.

As the violence in the home intensified it affected my family in different ways. Despite my young age at the time, I seemed to adopt that main protective role towards my mother. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight at times. I insisted on being directly by her side when my father was due in from the pub. I could never settle at school knowing she was home alone. Yet, at that age, I couldn’t do anything to actually prevent the violence and I always remember feeling an incredible sense of failure. As if somehow I was letting my mother down. It was around this period of early adolescence that I progressed from what could be described as sporadic acts of offending and/or anti-social behaviour in the community, to more sustained and serious incidents of offending behaviour that included vandalism, housebreaking, assault and just general mayhem in my own community. By the age of 15 I was what could be termed a classic prolific or persistent offender.

To understand why I was propelled into such a sustained and troublesome lifestyle there are a number of factors that must be considered. Due to the turmoil in the family home and each one’s individual coping strategies, I was being left to my own devices for long periods of time. I was by then opting out of school, rebelling and truanting with no particular questions asked of me. I suspect then that the teachers, who appeared to have no specific interest in the source of my dysfunctional behaviour, were just glad to see the back of me. I was also becoming more involved and reliant on like-minded peers, and as a result of this we quickly formed into an informal street gang, creating our own subculture within our neighbourhood. It must be equally recognized, however, that this lifestyle also provided a sense of belonging. It gave me and my friends an identity and a status that we would not have got anywhere else. I also learned during this period that violence was an effective form of communication. It certainly made people listen, and it made them sit up and take notice of me. I wasn’t alone in this; many young men from traditional, deprived, working-class communities in the west of Scotland where I grew up embraced this distinct macho culture and admired and celebrated the ‘hard man’. Indeed, aggression and violence remain an expressive means of communication for many young men who lack any form of power or status or indeed other resources. In my day, convicted murderer Jimmy Boyle was being touted in the tabloids as the ‘hardest man in Scotland’. Whilst other children would want to emulate film heroes or footballing heroes, I wanted to be like Jimmy Boyle and let’s face it, this was certainly far more within my grasp than anything else at that time.

And so, I hung out with this gang from early adolescence and I emerged as a persistent and increasingly violent young offender, and these behaviours and this lifestyle shaped and largely defined my life for the following 12 years or so. It should also be noted perhaps that throughout this period of my life, and even during the initial stages of my offending, I was well known within the system. I hadn’t slipped through any kind of net. For example, I was well known to the police. The police had attended my house on a number of occasions due to my father’s violence. My teachers at school were well aware that I was a dysfunctional and troubled child in many ways. I even had a social worker and attended Children’s Hearings on a regular basis. So was this on reflection a gap in provision? I don’t know but certainly there was a gap somewhere – maybe in communication, maybe in understanding, maybe, even, in interest. I think it is also important to say at this stage that I did not enjoy my offending lifestyle. In fact, for the most part I hated it. I hated the way it made me feel about myself and, since mid-adolescence, I felt increasingly trapped and I felt as if I had no way out. So much of the violence I was involved in was down to fear and the fact that I felt I had no alternative way of dealing with things at the time. This life basically meant that I was excluded from most of the activities that other young people were taking for granted. Admittedly, I was committing offences on a regular basis and, yes, violent offences, but I lived a life where I was also a victim of repeated violence and sometimes from so called professional people. In addition to this, however, and perhaps more painful in a lot of ways, most decent people just didn’t want to know me at the time.

When discussing my past, people often wonder and sometimes question the role of my parents in my offending behaviour as a child. Well I think it’s safe to say that my father never had any influence over me. When I was young, my mother, as I indicated earlier, became quite reliant on me emotionally, financially on occasion and certainly for protection, which despite my best efforts I generally failed to safeguard. Although my mother’s love and commitment to me was unquestionable, my mother had her own troubles to deal with. She was a broken woman who struggled to feed her six children at times. She was downtrodden and battered on a regular basis. She couldn’t cope with her own life, let alone influence mine.

Due to my continued involvement in offending behaviour and being deemed ‘outwith parental control’ I was sent to an approved school at the age of 15, which essentially heralded the beginning of my journey through the juvenile and adult penal system culminating in a three-year sentence in Glasgow’s notorious Barlinnie Prison. Over the years I really struggled to cope with these places. For me they were certainly not the flagship of reform they claimed to be with the emphasis being predominantly focused on control and containment. Likewise, these facilities, and in particular the approved schools and young offenders institutions, were plagued by bullying, aggression, intimidation and violence, which is hardly the environment in which to promote change and rehabilitation. Moreover, I was removed from my community, from education, from friends and family, and processed through a number of these places, only to be returned to the exact same problems, fears and battles that I had left behind. I still remember vividly getting off the train on my way back from various periods of custody and my mates would be standing at the train station to welcome me home, laden down with bags of alcohol and tales of recent offending exploits. Absolutely nothing ever changed and the cycle continued unabated.

So what did change for me? How did I manage to overcome the barriers and eventually break the cycle of offending? Stopping offending for me was related to a number of factors. Like most offenders moving on from this lifestyle, it was a process and it was at times a long, lonely and difficult process. It wasn’t − and rarely is − a sudden event.

For me there were two significant relationships that in different ways gave me hope, determination and the courage to change. First, when I was aged 22, I met an older guy in prison who was nearing the end of a life sentence. He was previously involved in organized crime and had credibility in my eyes. During our time together he spoke about earlier beliefs, values and experiences that all conspired to result in his life sentence. More importantly, perhaps, he also spoke about the stark realities of crime and his ‘wasted life’ and he basically gave me a framework to examine the futility and destruction of my own offending behaviour and the effects this was having on my life and the people who cared about me. Given his past experiences, no-one else would have held so much sway over me in the same manner. Indeed, this was my first experience of a positive male role model; a convicted murderer.

The second relationship came in to play when I was released from the same prison sentence and involved the social worker I had had since childhood. On reflection, her value for me wasn’t necessarily in her profession, but her personality. She was a lovely, caring individual who believed firmly in the concept of change and rehabilitation, and she never lost sight of me during all those years of bedlam. She was also both supportive and respectful to my mother, which of course meant a lot to me. While I was still on parole licence, my social worker got me involved as a voluntary group-worker in a programme for young offenders. Working with these children was difficult and demanding but totally energizing and it gave me an overwhelming feeling of self-worth and self-respect. It reinforced to me at the time that this was a career I wanted to pursue. It also proved to me, for the first time perhaps, that not everyone saw me as just being an offender or ex-offender. In my social worker’s case, she was willing to give me a chance and knew that I had much more to offer, long before I could see it.

In addition to this, I was beginning to find regular employment on the building sites, which of course added to the feeling of purpose and self-worth, and I was beginning to feel that I had some sort of place in the world. Of particular significance for me in the change process during this period was the birth of my first son, Paul, followed the next year by the birth of my second, Allan. With this brought a steely determination that my sons would not experience the upbringing I had experienced as a child. In many ways I had to hit the ground running in terms of fatherhood. I had to learn it as I went along and I had to learn it fast. I knew I had to break that cycle of offending for my own two sons. I had to break that intergenerational pattern of the hyper masculine, hard drinking, abusive father. I did. Both of my sons are law-abiding young men and we have always had a strong loving relationship. Paul is a residential child-care worker and Allan is a social work student.

Despite my initiation into fatherhood, many of my old friends, and indeed my brother, were still actively involved in offending behaviour and violence due to an ongoing feud with a notorious family in the town, with whom we had once been friends. Necessarily, there was an increasing expectation on me to become involved. However, committed to change, I no longer had the will, or indeed the heart, for this lifestyle. I had commitments and purpose in life and I no longer wanted to be part of this. As a response to this chaos, this threat to the new me, I moved to London with my wife and sons where we remained for several years. London at the time afforded me a degree of anonymity, as well as regular and well paid employment. It let me relax and embrace fully the concept of fatherhood and these factors combined allowed me to nurture and develop this change in my identity.

Due to a family bereavement we decided to return to my home town after four years, albeit with some degree of trepidation. However, life there had continued without me. The particular troubles I had left behind some years earlier had long been replaced with several other destructive conflicts. Many of my mates had not changed and were forced to make way for the younger guys in the town; they had since drifted into lives characterized by tenuous relationships, heavy drinking, sporadic work and occasional trouble.

With the recession in the construction industry biting hard in the early ’90s I decided to return to school in a local secondary school to sit two Higher grade subjects. This entailed attending classes at school with 4th and 5th year pupils. As the only adult in the class and one with a large battle scar emblazoned down my face, I felt torturously out of place. For the first month I really struggled to adapt to this environment, feeling awkward, embarrassed and painfully out of place. I was also conscious of the fact that the first and only other exam I had sat was when I was in prison. As a result, I was always worried about being ousted and escorted from class in the event that any police checks were undertaken, given my extensive history of offending. With a dogged determination, however, I stuck with it and grew to really enjoy the academic challenge.

Having gained the necessary academic qualifications, I applied for and was accepted to university where I gained a BA in social work. On completion of my study I was employed as Criminal Justice Social Worker, where I have worked for the last 18 years and I have been a Team Manager for the last 11. I also went on to complete my MSc in Criminal Justice and obtained a Practice Award in Advanced Criminal Justice Studies. I am also a qualified Practice Teacher and have supported a number of students through their placements. In 2008 I had my autobiography published, So You Think You Know Me?, and recently I played the narrator and protagonist in the documentary film The Road From Crime.

My own journey of change was long, lonely and at times extremely difficult. Yet, in some respects, I am still held accountable for my offending behaviour. At times I am still identified as the person I was and the reputation I had over 30 years ago, and this evokes mixed emotions in me, which sit sometimes comfortably, sometimes less so. Through my offending lifestyle I have caused some people great pain, and for that I will always feel remorse. Simultaneously, however, I do not and cannot regret that particular period of my life. If I did, this would unravel the multiple identities I embody. This ongoing journey of reconciliation with my former self and the law abiding husband, father, grandfather and social work manager I now am, has made me who I am today.

In all then, in my capacity as a criminal justice social worker, and latterly manager, I am, arguably, the living proof that people can and do change for the better. I know I am not the only (ex-)offender to have written a book, and when I did so I was not at all conscious of what social scientists call ‘biographical methods’, although I know about that now. My reasons for writing my autobiography were twofold. First, it forced me to examine who I was and to reflect on the journey I had made; this increased my self-understanding and made me think about the ways I had, or had not, used these experiences in my professional practice. I also wanted get a message about personal change across to a range of people – politicians, policymakers, professionals, former and current offenders and their families − and for them to carry that message forward. I knew enough by then to know that there was more to being a good social worker than just using personal experience, however useful that experience is. Training as a social worker introduced me to some academic literature and research evidence about offending and interventions, and since then I have been pleased to see the field of ‘desistance studies’ grow substantially − and to learn that some people use my book when they teach it! Participating in the film The Road From Crime gave me a further opportunity to engage with a wider range of people than my professional practice normally allows – former offenders, practitioners and academics, some in the USA. I have learned from them. I accept that auto/biographical knowledge is only one form of understanding, and while I do think it is essential for social workers to understand the realities of individual offender’s lived experiences, all the more so if there is a great deal of social distance between them, I acknowledge that a professional knowledge base requires more than this.

Beth − the researcher’s commentary

As Allan makes clear both above and in his autobiography, association with the gang afforded him, and his friends, a sense of protection and safety, of control and structure, of belonging and acceptance and, incrementally, power and influence that, to a greater or lesser degree, ameliorated the pervasive sense of disconnection and powerlessness they felt and the trauma they endured in various relational spheres. Peer groups provide a mechanism or structure where young people who, due to broken, distant or violent families, experience limited emotional support and fractured attachments, can make alliances, feel a sense of belonging and affirmation and form enclaves of security (Anderson, 2003; Seaman et al., 2006). It is similarly well established that experiencing trauma, feeling insecure and powerless can also be ameliorated through the adoption of dominant, if not exaggerated, forms of masculinities, manifesting in risk taking and violent behaviours as a mechanism for achieving respect, social recognition, influence and power (Deuchar and Holligan, 2010; Matthews et al., 2011). When young men, like Allan and his friends, experience alienation from the family, school and community, exacerbating existing frustrations and distrust towards the adult world, and in the absence of any significantly influential or credible, pro-social older role models, they can seek status and recognition elsewhere (Barry, 2006, 2007). In such contexts, an aggressive street culture and aspirations to realizing an image as a ‘hard man’ are, as Allan observes, viable alternatives in the absence of success or recognition in conventional or traditional areas as an expression of masculinity (Messerschmidt, 2000).

However, while the gang represented a site of belonging, or an enclave of inclusion, which met Allan’s needs for social interaction and participation, at the same time, their collective offending, the reputations they acquired and the ensuing interpersonal repercussions their violent interactions gave rise to, further constrained the possibilities and opportunities for alternative means of social participation, leading to increasingly marginalized and imprisoning lives that constrained their capacities to live differently. Yet, crucially, Allan’s narratives reveal an enduring desire to be something other than the person he knew he had become and that was equally attributed to him by others. Although he persistently engaged in offending with the group he exhibited low levels of identification ² with their shared ‘deviant sub-culture’ (Hall, 1966: 149). This crucial distinction can explain the disjuncture between his sense of self and the life he was living, but with which he nonetheless persisted with for many years. While he never fully identified with this ‘subculture’ (Hall, 1966) he was highly embedded in this world in terms of status, identification with the group and involvement in their collective activities (Hagan, 1993). ³ For Allan, his relationships within the group and the associated relational goods (Donati, 2011) ⁴ (of solidarity, loyalty, trust and social connectedness) that prompt and guide individual action, were more significant to him than any gains derived from offending and the tensions this generated are manifest in his portrayal of being imprisoned in a life from which he felt he had no means of escape: ‘I hated [my life]. I hated the way it made me feel about myself and, since mid-adolescence, I felt increasingly trapped and I felt as if I had no way out’. There is a sense, then, that he had long harboured an ‘openness to change’ (Giordano et al., 2002: 1000) but for many years lacked sufficient hope and opportunity to realize it.

The concept of ‘hope’ emerges as a dominant theme in much desistance research (see e.g. Burnett and Maruna, 2004; Farrall and Calverley, 2006; LeBel et al., 2008), although it is equally recognized that unless it is embedded in realistic and tangible social opportunities to change the direction of one’s life, it is not sustainable. Rather, ‘hope, expectation and confidence fade quickly on an empty stomach’ (McNeill and Weaver, 2010: 4). Manifest in Allan’s narratives are the central role that key relationships and involvement in volunteering and employment played in supporting his efforts to change over time although the impacts of and, indeed, the interaction between, these significant relationships, volunteering, employment and desistance are as complex, contested and contingent in Allan’s narratives as they are in the evidence emerging from desistance research.

Sampson et al. (2006: 467), for example, identify various mechanisms to explain the effect of marriage on desistance. They suggest that the influence of the marital relationship can be attributed to the interplay between the creation of ‘interdependent systems of obligation, mutual support and restraint that impose significant costs for translating criminal propensities into action’; changes in daily routine activities and patterns of association (see also Warr, 1998); informal social control through supervision, monitoring and direction; and the acquisition of a ‘respectability package’ (Giordano et al., 2002: 1013), or in other words, the idea of marriage as a process of deliberate responsibility taking, as emblematic of a conscious and conscientious transition to adulthood. Yet, while Sampson et al. (2006) suggest that marriage is not only correlated with desistance, but has a causal effect, in Allan’s case, this relationship was not causative of desistance nor was it conditional on his desistance. While both differential association (Warr, 1998) and social control theories (Laub and Sampson, 2001) suggest that an intimate relationship can limit criminal involvement by reducing opportunities for crime or access to peers (Warr, 1998) or by exerting informal social control over the individual (Laub and Sampson, 2003), this does not hold true for Allan who acknowledges that during the earlier stages of his marriage he continued to offend and to associate with his friends, despite his wife’s 'normative orientation', which is generally considered to positively influence behaviour (Giordano et al., 2003: 306). Indeed, Allan acknowledges that, in the early stages of this relationship, despite his attachment to his wife, being in a marital relationship at a young age brought with it new and additional pressures: ‘I did not know how to be in a relationship, how to be a partner or run a house… I only had my Da as a male role model’ (Weaver, 2008: 164).

Similarly, employment has been widely correlated with desistance (for a review of this literature see Owens, 2009; Rhodes, 2008), although it is increasingly acknowledged that employment in and of itself does not produce or trigger desistance; rather it is the meaning and outcomes of either the nature of the work or participation in employment and how these interact with a person’s priorities, goals and relational concerns that can explain this effect (Owens, 2009; Rhodes, 2008; Savolainen, 2009; Weaver, 2012). Indeed, as Owens states, the impact of work goes beyond getting a pay cheque or even the injection of a daily or weekly routine; ‘employment is part of the idea of what is acceptable’ (Owens, 2009: 50), akin to Giordano et al.’s notion of the ‘respectability package’ (2002: 1013), and communicates in itself, as Allan suggests in his narrative above, that one has a place in the world and a role to play – be it in society or even in one’s own family – as a reliable partner and provider or a good parent, for example. Indeed, the interaction between employment and investment in significant intimate relations and/or parenthood (which for some people works to encourage and enable change) has been generally observed (see e.g. Laub and Sampson, 2001; Owens, 2009; Rhodes, 2008). However, participation in employment can also herald new pressures and challenges (Weaver, 2012). In his autobiography, Allan observes that ‘the construction industry, and in particular steel-fixing…was…permeated by a hard drinking culture, which generally entailed working away from home for weeks at a time’ (Weaver, 2008: 16), which threatened to undermine the stability he sought to realize. Moreover, as one of the few Catholics employed in this trade at this time, the hostility he perceived this engendered ‘add[ed] further to my feelings of displacement and restricted any concrete sense of belonging, which, retrospectively, I was desperately seeking, to reinforce my changing sense of identity in the light of what I then perceived to be my new responsibilities and transition into adulthood’ (Weaver, 2008: 164).

Allan’s narratives thus suggest that neither participation in employment or investment in a significant relationship were, at this juncture, causative of desistance; rather, these social relations were experienced differently at different stages in his life. As the foregoing analysis illustrates, the impacts of these social relations need to be understood, then, in the context of the surrounding processes in which they are embedded, and under which circumstances such events or experiences are imbued with significance, or otherwise, and which directly influence their potential to bring about other changes (Carlsson, 2012). For Allan, in the earlier stage of his process of change, the constructive meanings and outcomes of these social relations were, at times, eclipsed by the pressures and challenges they engendered. As a means of alleviating these unfamiliar pressures, and in the absence of an alternative sense of stability, and source of belonging and social recognition, he repeatedly returned to a more familiar lifestyle and the company of his friends who conveyed mutual regard and respect, whose expectations were recognizable and among whom he knew he had a place. The phenomena of lapse and relapse is recognized in Bottoms and Shapland’s (2011) model of the desistance process; they suggest that despite taking action towards desistance, failure to maintain these changes in the face of obstacles, temptations or provocations may lead to relapse, although not necessarily back to the individual’s starting point, resonating with Prochaska et al.’s spiral of change (1992). They emphasize the need for reinforcing factors – perhaps emerging from within the individual or their changing social relationships. At this juncture, Allan writes that, despite sporadically resuming his association with his peers, ‘I had since recognized the violence and its trappings, in terms of reputation or so-called status as, progressively, holding less and less meaning for me’ (Weaver, 2008: 170). The increasing meaninglessness with which he apprehended his own involvement in violence was reinforced by his unexpected revulsion to an act of gratuitous violence, witnessed during a subsequent prison sentence. The reflexive self-examination this engendered resulted in a prolonged period of self-reflection in an attempt ‘to try and get to know myself better’ (Weaver, 2008: 174), manifest in participation in reading and practicing meditation and yoga.

During this prison sentence, he also met and formed a friendship with ‘Donald Lake’ who, as Allan recalls above, further encouraged this process of reflexive self-evaluation. As with his own subsequent involvement in volunteering with young people involved in offending, both speak to the distinct role that people with convictions can play in formally or informally supporting processes of change. People are particularly receptive to influence where the change-agent is someone they can identify with, and, in this context, whose own experiences of offending and perhaps desistance can enhance their credibility and, in turn, people’s receptivity to their influence (Kelman, 1958). The distinct contribution of peer-productive ⁵ (Pestoff, 2012) relationships resides in the equitability, mutuality, reciprocity, solidarity and acceptance characteristic of these relationships and the practical, emotional, and identity-changing supports they afford (Veith et al., 2006), which can enhance self-efficacy, generate hope and build resilience. Moreover, this process not only benefits those being helped but those doing the helping, as Allan infers when he writes of the ‘dual benefits that could be gained by someone from my background and with my experiences working with young people’ (Weaver, 2008: 181). In this vein, Thomas LeBel has produced the most systematically robust evidence of the benefits of involvement in helping behaviours (2007) and advocacy behaviours (2009) for individuals' psychological wellbeing. He established a positive relationship between involvement in helping or advocacy behaviours and increased self-esteem and satisfaction with life, echoed by Allan who, through his experience of volunteering, gained a ‘sense of worth and self respect which I had never really experienced before’ (Weaver, 2008: 182). LeBel identified a negative correlation between an individual's helping or advocacy orientation and criminal attitudes and behaviours. This indicates that helping or advocating on behalf of others may help maintain a person's pro-social identity and facilitate the maintenance of desistance. Moreover, through participation in altruistic endeavours, the person giving help can internalize the idea that it is not a contradiction to one’s masculinity to exercise or express compassion and that one can feel effective and competent when helping those less advantaged, whose own problems can diminish the salience of one’s own (Toch, 2000). Beyond making a contribution to society, feeling part of society and earning the trust of others through the assumption of responsibility, discussed further below, were particularly significant in reinforcing and recognizing Allan’s commitment to desistance in these early stages. Allan maintained his involvement in volunteering throughout his first year after that prison sentence and, despite intermittent contact with his friends, but in the absence of any further criminal charges he began: ‘to see the possibility that there was another way of being for me and for the first time, I liked and respected the man I was becoming’ (Weaver, 2008: 184).

Allan attributes particular significance to his experience of fatherhood in reinforcing his commitment to desistance. This remains a comparatively under-researched dynamic of desistance and the existing empirical evidence is conflicting. While there is some evidence to suggest that parenthood can encourage extrication from gangs (Moloney et al., 2009) and contribute to desistance (see e.g. Monsbakken et al., 2013; Savolainen, 2009), other studies suggest becoming a parent has a negligible effect on offending trajectories (Giordano et al., 2011) or, in the face of financial pressures, for example, can even exacerbate offending (Wakefield and Uggen, 2008, cited in Savolainen, 2009). It is likely that a coalescence of factors will affect the dynamic experience of fatherhood (see e.g. Marsiglio and Pleck, 2004) and influence its significance and impact. Such factors include age, maturity, one’s experience of being parented, the status, nature and dynamics of the relational context within which a given form of parenting occurs, and individual personal, cultural and class contexts that variously constrain and enable the realization of this social role and identity consistent with one’s internalized values and beliefs. Perhaps as a consequence of this level of individual variation, numerous explanations as to how fatherhood contributes to desistance have been progressed and, in the main, echo those mechanisms associated with explanations for the marriage effect discussed above (Monsbakken et al., 2013). In his narratives, Allan infers that his negative experience of being fathered influenced his desire to become a ‘positive male role model’ for his children (Weaver, 2008: 198) and assume his paternal responsibilities with which he perceived continued offending to be incompatible. In this sense, fatherhood consolidated his already shifting priorities, although extricating himself from this lifestyle was rather more gradually realized (see also Moloney et al., 2009). A life already set in motion rumbled on in a different direction, and a violent intra-gang feud erupted and he was once more engulfed by events, ‘mixed loyalties’ (Weaver, 2008: 195) and conflicting expectations emerging from these disparate relational spheres. Ultimately, he came to the conclusion that ‘people [from my home town] were not going to let go of the “me” that they had known for so long, despite the fact that I was trying to shed my skin, and let another self surface. The process that I had begun would need to be continued elsewhere’ (Weaver, 2008: 196). He moved with his young family to London where a construction boom yielded further employment opportunities in steel-fixing.

This new environment, without the legacies of conflict and interpersonal feuds, liberated Allan from the restrictive reputations, imprisoning lifestyles and the cycle of violence that had characterized his life in his home town and opened up new possibilities for social participation, all of which gave him a ‘completely different outlook’ (Weaver, 2008: 196). Anonymity in a new environment contributed to the development of an alternative social identity, which, in conjunction with regular employment, represented an opportunity to see himself differently, to be seen differently and to live differently. Relocating to London thus afforded him an opportunity to ‘knife off’ (Maruna and Roy, 2007) the stigma and reputation he had acquired (and required) and withdraw from a world he no longer wanted to be part of. Removed from the sectarianism that pervaded the steel-fixing culture in the west of Scotland, the male-dominated environment and hard-working culture of the steel-fixing industry now represented an alternative interpretation and means of accomplishing masculinity and acquiring self-respect. Moreover, participation in employment itself enabled him to provide for his family, consistent with his internalized values and beliefs surrounding his assumed roles as a father and a husband, which, again, simultaneously provided a conventional means of accomplishing masculinity, a pro-social identity and social recognition and, in turn, self-worth.

Allan returned to his home town with his family after four years in London. As his narratives reveal, he resumed his involvement in voluntary work and became increasingly active in his community before, ultimately, becoming a criminal justice social worker. Engagement in these kinds of practices and behaviours that make a contribution to the well-being of others has been termed ‘generativity’ (Maruna, 2001). Maruna defines generativity as:

The concern for and commitment to promoting the next generation, manifested through parenting, teaching, mentoring, and generating products and outcomes that aim to benefit youth and foster the development and well-being of individuals and social systems that will outlive the self. (McAdams and de St. Aubin, 1998: 132, cited in Maruna et al., 2004)

As discussed above, while participation in helping, advocacy and generative practices affords a means of developing and expressing ‘a coherent pro-social identity’ (Maruna, 2001: 7), similarly, in being given the opportunity to engage in such practices Allan experienced anew the relational goods such as social trust and social connectedness that he valued, and through which a new experience of self was realized. Trust is closely related to concepts of responsibility and mutual respect (Edgar et al., 2011). Respect essentially implies the mutuality associated with social recognition (Sennett, 2003). In turn, responsibility taking and being invested with responsibility is a means of social recognition and is the result of being trusted, which can engender a sense of responsibility on the part of the person feeling trusted. ‘Social recognition…expresses the capacity and need that…people have for longer-term reciprocal relations of trust and responsibility in the wider society’ (Barry, 2006: 136, italics in original). Actions associated with active citizenship ⁶ and generativity have been constructively associated with desistance precisely because they establish or reinforce notions of reciprocity and mutuality (Drakeford and Gregory, 2010) and, in that, social recognition (Barry, 2006), which can positively influence an individual’s self-concept. In particular, ‘[a]n emergent pro-social self-conception is…sensitive to “messages” from others about the self…People may see themselves in a new way in the “looking glass” that is provided by the views of others, whether through direct comment or via non-verbal responses during interaction’ (Burnett and Maruna, 2006: 95; see also Maruna et al., 2004). In this vein, volunteering and working alongside others in relation with whom these relational goods can emerge, can provide a relational web within and through which shifts in identities can be elicited and/or reinforced.

Conclusion

We set out in this article to outline the kind of knowledge-base that would be useful to policymakers, managers and practitioners who are interested in promoting desistance, in which fully rounded autobiographical accounts play a central, illuminating part. They are not enough in themselves, but it is in their nature as ‘human stories’ that they may lodge more vividly and more lastingly in professionals’ memories than empirical research. They can engage emotionally with people, elicit sympathy and inspire empathy in ways that scientifically gathered data, with its patina of objectivity, specially aspires not to. Allan’s narrative of desistance is unique in the sense that his individual experiences cannot be unproblematically generalized or universalized, but his starting point in life, the limited options and irresistible peer pressures with which he was faced are manifestly being faced by a new generation of young men today. Perhaps with the right kind of help, their pathways out of crime could begin earlier than his did.

In addition, as Beth’s commentary sought to show, Allan’s initial experiences of desistance were in no way idiosyncratic or exceptional; they resonate, even accord with, research-based understandings of the desistance process − at least the more sophisticated variants of it. Neither rational choice theory, nor deterrence, explains Allan’s desistance. Changing did require effort and choice on his part, but just as crucially it required support, opportunity and the faith of others. The meaning and outcomes of Allan’s investment in significant relationships, the judgement and trust of a social worker and his participation in volunteering and employment were critical in enabling and sustaining change. Numerous empirical studies have confirmed the importance of such things. To put it academically, and theoretically, it was the complex and contingent interaction of these opportunities for change, mediated through the lens of his personal priorities, values, beliefs, goals and relational concerns that imbued these events or experiences with significance, or otherwise, and which directly influenced their potential to support or hinder his process of change at different stages. To put it practically, desistance-based work with offenders requires going beyond a sole focus on the individual, as if their offending behaviour occurred freely and in isolation, to address the social opportunities and obstacles that either help or hinder desistance. It requires seeing offenders in the context of their relationships with communities (or lack thereof) and it requires the building of professional relationships and community networks to help them change.