MATZA AND THE MOOD OF FATALISM IN THE DESISTANCE PROCESS

Mark Halsey*, Ruth Armstrong and Serena Wright

 

Drawing on interview data from three countries (Australia, United States and England), this article examines setbacks and recovery in desistance from crime. We show that giving up crime is a fragile project and that the implications of fragility in desistance are rarely integrated into pre- and post-release support options. To shine a light on the ‘phenomenological foreground’ of this fragil-ity, we use Matza’s concepts of desperation and infraction and analyse how and why would - be desisters come unstuck. We find that derailment in the desistance process (frequently articulated by interviewees as ‘fuck it’ moments) rarely signifies the desire to reoffend and more often equates to the loss of the practical and emotional capacity to desist from crime.

 

Key Words: Matza, desistance, recidivism, phenomenology, fatalism

 

 

Introduction

 

For nearly two decades there has been concerted interest in desistance from crime (Maruna 2001; Giordano et al 2002; Maruna and Immarigeon 2004; Laub and Sampson 2006; McNeill 2006; King 2013a) with the conditions that spark and sustain it the sub-ject of ongoing debate (e.g. Bushway et al. 2003; Burnett and McNeill 2005; Barry 2013). Evidence suggests that even for those who have ‘made it’, rebuilding one’s life after being convicted of a criminal offence frequently involves minor and more serious set-backs (Farrall 2002a; Bereswill 2010; Bottoms and Shapland 2011; Halsey and Deegan 2015; Wright 2015). In this article, we demonstrate that giving up crime is indeed a fragile project (Halsey 2007) but that the implications of fragility in the desistance pro-cess are rarely integrated into pre- and post-release planning and support strategies. In more specific terms, we argue that fragility—the omnipresent threat of the derailment of desistance—is especially pronounced for people evincing serious and lengthy custodial and release histories (see our respective data sets, below). Unlike, say, the airline pilot whose capacity to cope with major turbulence typically increases with each flying hour, the ‘battle -hardened’ would-be desister often becomes overwhelmed by circumstances in spite of having ‘been there’ many times before. Rather than viewing such relapses as entirely the result of individual shortcomings, we show this unravelling to be linked to bureaucratic (in)action over the legitimate fears and concerns of those struggling to desist. Our contention, therefore, is that the phenomenological foreground (Katz 1988) of relapse and reoffending has been under-examined in desistance research (but see Gadd and Farrall 2004; Agnew and Messner 2015), and that such knowledge is cen-tral for breaking the cycle of crime and reincarceration.

 

 

*Mark Halsey, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Centre for Crime Policy & Research, Law School, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia; mark.halsey@flinders.edu.au; Ruth Armstrong, British Academy Post Doctoral Fellow, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Serena Wright, Research Associate, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

 

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© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

HALSEY ET AL.

 

Our analysis of setbacks (and recovery) in the desistance process focuses on peo-ple who are trying to desist, but who nonetheless reoffend. Uniquely, we apply Matza’s (1990/1964) concept of the ‘mood of fatalism’ to would-be desisters’ lives and examine the sense of social and economic isolation that can quickly set in following release from custody. With a particular focus on the relationship between desperation and infraction, we show how Matza’s work enriches our understanding of why people temporarily and sometimes spectacularly give up the quest to desist from crime. In the parlance of those interviewed, we offer a detailed analysis of the situations where people subjected to criminal justice supervision reach a critical limit and simply decide, ‘fuck it’.1 Our ideas unfold through three sections. In the first, we briefly summarize the international data sets informing our work and the approach taken to the field in each study. Next, we closely examine the subjective factors leading to frustration in the desistance process and describe how the emergence of fuck it episodes—often perceived by outsiders as heat of the moment and highly irrational events—are in fact more typically the out-come of cumulative setbacks and perceived injustices. We argue that such moments arise not from individuals’ intentions to cause more ha rm, but from the lack of effective channels for resolving difficulties in the struggle to desist.

 

In the final section, we engage more purposefully with Matza’s ideas to untangle the aetiology of events arising from fatalism in the desistance process. Adopting a ‘Matza Plus’ approach, we consider how the lived experiences in our participant cohorts both confirm and expand the concept of fatalism as originally formulated in Delinquency and Drift. In keeping with a soft determinist perspective, we argue there are moments where things could have turned out differently for those in our research. We show that the key antidote to fatalism (i.e. real options for avoiding repeat criminal conduct) is the availability of mechanisms to restore a sense of humanism at the point when it is most vulnerable to compromise (see King 2013b). Our contention is that research on desist-ance can help shape responses to early infractions in ways that nurture more positive forms of selfhood.

 

 

 

Fieldwork/Project Data

 

Data for this article are qualitative and drawn from distinct interview cohorts in three countries: Australia (AU), the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (ENG).2 The Australian sample focuses on 14 young men (aged 25–29 years at final interview) interviewed repeatedly from 2003 to 2013 to better understand progressions and set-backs in the desistance process (n = 135 interviews) (see Halsey and Deegan 2015). By end of 2013, the 14 participants had collectively served around 33,000 custodial days with the majority first admitted to custody prior to age 13. This small but significant group had at least 10—but sometimes more than 30—custodial release episodes to age 18 and was convicted of a wide range of offences to age 29 including violent, prop-erty and drug offences. Experience of foster care, homelessness, drug (ab)use, poor schooling/low literacy levels, mental health problems and chronic unemployment were

 

1This phrase is not employed to offend readers’ sensibilities nor as some rhetorical flourish. Instead, it is an expression fre-quently used by interviewees. For them (as for us), it functions as a declarative marker of the fatalistic attitude arising from the intolerable circumstances apt to undermine desistance. For reason of style, we use the phrase without speech marks in the main body of our prose.

 

2All projects were approved by the relevant ethics committees of each University.

 

 

 

 

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prominent elements in their lives. Twelve of the young men identified as Caucasian, one as Aboriginal and one as Asian.

 

The US data stem from an ethnographic study of 48 men who were initially inter-viewed in 2007 just prior to release from prison, at two weeks post-release (n = 45), and then an average of eight months from their release date (n = 36) with weekly phone calls and regular informal interactions. The aim was to understand the realities of life after prison and to capture the emergent factors that support and strengthen desistance jour-neys, with a specific focus on the role of faith and faith communities. Nearly 90 per cent of participants self-reported previous convictions, with an average of 10 prior arrests. Most participants had previously served time in prison (79 per cent) and nearly two thirds were first incarcerated before age 18. The cohort had a mean age of 40 (at first interview the youngest was aged 23 and the eldest 64). The majority were in prison for an index offence that was violent or drugs-related. Other offences included property crime, several forms of drink-driving and one firearms possession. Alongside self-report data, official reconviction data were analysed for each participant two years post-release.3

 

The UK sample includes 12 women who were interviewed in one of two closed prisons in England, between May and November 2011. All except two described their ethnicity as White-British (Alex self-identified as Black British, and Mary as White-Irish). Six of the 12 women had been officially identified as ‘Prolific and other Priority Offenders’ (PPOs) (see Dawson 2005, for an overview and initial report into the impetus and implementation of this initiative) and the remaining six met the criteria for ‘persistent’ offenders (POs) with six or more convictions. The women ranged in age from 23 to 62 years (mean = 34 years), although the PPOs were on average 7.5 years younger than the POs in the sample. Nine of the 12 women were serving time for serious property and violent offences, or drug posses-sion/supply, with the remainder convicted or remanded in custody for robbery, theft and breach of an antisocial behaviour order (alcohol-related). Seven of the 12 women were mothers. Life history interviews explored the relationship between long-term persistent offending and periods of prolific offending extant within the women’s so -called ‘criminal careers’. In addition, interviewees were also asked to narrate the effects of various crimi-nal justice interventions on their lives—in particular, whether and how such interven-tions assisted or ‘frustrated’ the women’s struggles to desist from crime.

 

Consistent with a grounded approach (Glaser 1992), interview transcripts were coded and analysed for key emergent themes with a specific focus on the subjective, social and administrative contexts of derailment in the desistance process. While participants’ recourse to the phrase ‘fuck it’ might appear to reduce to little more than a way of justi-fying ‘failure’ in the desistance process, we think this seriously underplays the complex-ity of the situation. Instead, we find participants employed the ‘fuck it’ phraseology not to excuse their behaviour but to explain their actions and to take ownership over ‘their’ mistakes. We use our international multisite data to offer an informative glimpse into the derailing of desistance across different cohorts of participants.

in Action

At the heart of our analysis is Matza’s concept of fatalism. He writes:

3For a convincing discussion of the importance and ‘validity’ of self-report reoffending data, see the recent work of Farrington and Ttofi (2014).

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The delinquent is subject to frequent oscillation between sensing himself as cause – humanism – and seeing himself as effect – fatalism. Everyone experiences this oscillation. However, the delinquent may experience it somewhat more intensely because the precepts of his [sic] subculture are receptive to the older, traditional notions of fatalism. (Matza 1990/1964: 88)

 

By ‘older, traditional notions’, we take Matza to mean the more direct and sometimes brutal forms of control and discipline experienced by young people (‘delinquents’) and those who occupy the bottom strata of the social heap (Schutz 2004). It is the sense of being done to instead of being done with. In response to these situations, Matza (1990/1964: 189) contends that some individuals become overwhelmed by a state of des-peration—they feel themselves becoming ‘unhinged’ from the mainstream world with no (lawful) way back. Similar to Katz’s (1988) writings on the logics of humiliation and rage, Matza’s concept of desperation implies a fleeting if powerful moment that neces-sarily transforms into some other emotional and physical situation. As he contends:

 

Subcultural delinquents experience desperation when caught in the mood of fatalism. Naturally enough, they seek to undo or cast away so unpleasant and undesired a state of being. They seek, in other words, to restore the mood of humanism in which the self is experienced as cause – the state in which man himself makes things happen. (Matza 1990/1964: 189)

 

And he continues:

 

This understandable, even laudable, human desire leads to a remarkable and ironic turn of events. The restoration of the humanistic mood – and incidentally the restoration of the moral bind that is implicit in the responsible character of the humanistic mood – may be accomplished by the commis-sion of infraction. The delinquent is rejoined to the moral order by the commission of crime! (Matza 1990/1964: 189)

 

In order to engage with the prescient nature of Matza’s ideas, we commence with an extended interview excerpt.4 Following this, we will show how the elements of desist-ance derailment extant in this excerpt, recur throughout the broader range of our participants’ experiences. We then proceed to discuss Matza’s concepts of desperation and infraction in light of our data. Dylan,5 aged 34 years, was serving ten years for rob-bery and associated offences, committed while on parole. As with all our participants, he said he was trying to desist from crime but was facing serious adversity:

 

[My parole officer] wasn’t taking me seriously. I’d had a couple of occasions where I’d used drugs over that first six weeks but … I kept a grip on it. … [But] because of them couple of times … that’s why I started pleading for the help. [I said], ‘I need counselling. [Things are] starting to affect me,’ when really what I wanted to say to her was, ‘I’ve started to use drugs again.’ But I didn’t want to say that to my parole officer because she would have breached me [and] locked me up. And my partner’s pregnant [and it] would have left her with all the bills, And if I started to get that counselling it probably would have come out that … the drugs are an issue again. But I didn’t want to say it straight away because I didn’t want them to breach me. … I wanted them to understand that I’m starting to fall down a bit, [that] I’ve used drugs a couple of times, [and] these are the reasons I’ve used drugs. And hopefully they’ll understand and not breach me straight away, [and] get me the help [I need to] get back on track. What did the parole officer say?

 

4This interview formed part of the Generations Through Prison project (2013–16) (Australian Research Council FT120100284).

 

5All names used in the article are pseudonyms.

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Well … as soon as I asked for help [that became a problem]. … I’d go into the parole office and I’ve got tears [in my eyes] and I’m shaking. … And my partner’s in tears saying ‘Help him’ like, ‘He wants some help.’ And [my parole officer’s] basically told us … that, ‘It’s come down to money, funding. You [two] are both working. If this is what you need, it’s your responsibility to pay for the counselling yourself.’ And I said …, ‘Look, I’m not in a position where I can pay $100 [or] $200 for [an] hour and a half [counselling] session.’ We owe everything. We got car payments and petrol to get to work and we’re paying our own rent. It’s just me and [my girlfriend] paying $320 [per week] rent. … I said, ‘I’m asking for your help. It shouldn’t come down to money. I need counselling. I need help.’ And they wouldn’t do it. So then I got angry and thought, ‘You fucking cunts.’ Like, ‘I’m asking for help.’ … It was hard to do that. … I’d never done it before. So it was a big thing for me to go, ‘Right, I want to do the right thing. … I need help.’ … Like, a man needs counselling, … just that in itself [is a big thing to admit]. And then to be told, ‘No. It’s all about money, funding, and you got to do it yourself.’ I got angry and thought, ‘Fuck youse. Like, this is bullshit.’ I kept doing the right thing [for a while] but eventually it just sort of snowballed. I started taking days off … [and then] got on the gear this one day before work. … [Later that day] I went into a veterinary clinic. No one was at the front counter. [My] old ways kicked in. ‘Right, we need money. We’re in debt.’ Top drawer, stack of $50 notes, went to walk out – someone goes, ‘Excuse me,’ ‘What?’ … Jumped in my car. I then evaded them and took off. It becomes a robbery. … Now I’m on the run [and] haven’t reported for parole. … [In] three or four months [I’ve racked up] another 20 charges. And you know, six-and-a-half years [non-parole], basically. So that’s … where I’m at. (Dylan, AU)

 

This scenario captures the multifarious elements of derailment in the desistance pro-cess—specifically, the rising tide of desperate circumstances, a succession of insur-mountable obstacles and the ensuing mood of fatalism. It demonstrates that fuck it moments are not solely reducible to the foibles and deficits of the offender (parolee). The de-escalation tactics employed by Dylan were wide-ranging: he asked his girlfriend to corroborate his precarious circumstance; he pleaded for counselling; he explained that he could not possibly afford to pay for psychological help out of his own pocket; and he told repeatedly of being on the cusp of breaking down. What Dylan did not do was to openly admit to his parole officer that he was using illicit drugs as a means of combating the mounting stresses in his life. His story reflects the four dimensions of fuck it episodes running through our data:

(1)  An inability to achieve and sustain success, often related to the number and com-plexity of conditions imposed by authorities post-release;

(2)  Serious communication breakdowns between parole/probation services and their clients;

(3)  A lack of institutional responsiveness when difficulties are communicated; and

(4)  Self-sabotage as the response to mounting obstacles on the path to desistance.

We now explain how these four themes materialized in our different cohorts and then consider what these episodes suggest for how we might de-escalate derailment of desistance.

Inability to achieve and sustain ‘success’

Participants explained how sustaining success was closely linked to earning an income, with failure aligned to receiving handouts, or worse, no income at all:

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The most difficult things are being able to have the money that I need to support my family and being able to get a job, you know, a good paying job that I can feel comfortable in. I think that’s the most difficult thing. It’s not drugs or alcohol or whatever. … But sometimes, … you just maybe fall back, and maybe get involved in that kind of stuff. …

 

And the times when you fall back, what do you think leads to that, what do you think leads to people falling back?

Not being able to support yourself in the way you really want to be supported. … I think that’s the biggest thing. … Just maybe getting frustrated and not having … opportunities that should be out there. … I think that’s the big [reason] for falling [back]. (Eli, USA)

 

Eli worked four different casual jobs over the first six months of his release, but things started to go downhill when he and his family were evicted from their social housing because of his prior drugs conviction. He subsequently lost his job and his drugs convic-tion then also barred him from receiving food stamps. Eli was eventually found drunk at the side of the road in his car and re-imprisoned. Jerome told a similar story. He got out determined to desist, found a job and also enrolled on a course to get his truck-driving license. But shortly after earning his license, his rented house was foreclosed and he and his family were given 48 hours to move. No refund on rent was paid and they ended up living on the floor at his mother-in- law’s house. Shortly after, Jerome was laid off from work. At interview he expressed the frustration of not being able to lead the life he desired:

 

[Life after prison hasn’t been as good as I expected] because of financial situations – not being able to do the things that I really want to do, not being able to buy that home for my wife that she really wants. … [S]ometimes [I don’t] know which way to … turn. But through it all [I’m] … still pretty much focused. But … I’m not comfortable because really I like to be able to have my own money to be able to do what I choose to do. (Jerome, USA)

 

Both Eli and Jerome located their frustrations in their inability to experience them-selves as cause—to be the men they wanted to be, to provide for their families and for themselves. For both, this led to their demise. For Eli, it was a low-level marijuana pos-session case that saw his parole revoked and he was returned to prison. Jerome headed to the streets to make money and to survive. A year later he was murdered. For the women, fuck it scenarios more frequently manifested as emotion-centred responses to seemingly unworkable situations. Their mood of fatalism often resulted in ‘inward-facing’ infractions. Most often, this meant an immediate and deliberate relapse to their substance of choice6 as a means of coping with (or suppressing the pain of) overwhelm-ing circumstances:

 

I was clean for about five years? And then I had … a daughter, a year after my son, and … I had post-natal depression. And … my partner was cheating on me and I just broke down. I thought ‘Fuck this’. And I relapsed. (Savannah, ENG)

 

Since drug use was frequently a breach of their licence conditions, relapse as the cho-sen method of coping ipso facto placed women’s chances of achieving success in severe

 

6All of the women in the English sample reported having an alcohol and/or drug addiction. This fits with findings from a systematic review of data from across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and New Zealand (Fazel et al. 2006:

 

• that identified the higher prevalence of drug and alcohol use and dependence among women in prison as of ‘particular concern’.

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jeopardy. Rarely did they have an individual to whom they could turn in such times of trouble meaning their paths to desistance and relapse were starkly solitary in nature.

 

Perceptions that community supervision acts to thwart rather than support desist-ance were a common precursor to fuck it moments:

 

[I returned a dirty urine while on parole so they gave me extra conditions]. I said [to my parole officer], ‘I’m working, how am I going to do this course, … this Ending Offending program you want me to do?’ And I sort of thought, ‘Well, I am ending my offending. I haven’t stolen anything. … I’ve been working, doing alright, and now you want to jack me up with this,’ … [And then I was refused permis-sion to travel interstate for the funeral of a family member]. … They flatly denied it. … That’s another reason why I sort of [thought], ‘Well, I’m [over] doing the right thing’. (Reggie, AU)

 

The signs of fatalism (‘You want to jack me up with this’; ‘I’m over doing the right thing’) are writ large here. Too often, the system of community supervision—when calculating success—fails to ascribe sufficient weight to client reductions in severity and frequency of offending. From a public safety perspective, this makes little sense. Arguably, if desistance as process were properly understood, most communities would tolerate technical breaches committed in the context of overall improvement in the desistance journey.

 

Communication breakdown regarding difficulties encountered

 

Sometimes being supervised after release can provide structure and support to people as they transition from prison to the wider community (Farrall et al. 2014). But for many parolees in our data sets, supervision rarely paralleled ‘support’. As Alex explained, ‘All I really want is just some support from them. … I don’t want to feel like they’ve got control of my life? ’Cos like when they’ve got you on licence, really and truly, you’re still a prisoner’ (Alex, ENG). Meeting the plethora of parole conditions is just one aspect of desisting from crime. The hardest part is knowing when and whether to speak up about emerging problems. In an era where community correctional officers privilege the compliance aspects of their role over and above the therapeutic dimension (i.e. the giving of encouragement and practical support), prisoners and parolees have learned that confessions of ‘weakness’ or intimations of setbacks (especially drug use) are likely to be used against them. This created a difficult situation for many of our interviewees, whereby honesty was rarely the best policy.

For many months prior to his release from prison, Matt was looking forward to living with his mother and starting a job. But in the days prior to his release, Matt’s mother (who had a long and established history of alcoholism, clinical depression and serious self-harm) lost her sister to a heroin overdose. As a result, she stopped attending work, subse-quently lost her job (at the very place her son was due to start employment), and moved out of her house to live with a new partner. This left Matt unable to pay the rent and associated bills in his licensed place of residence. The thought of trying to explain the complexities of this situation to his parole officer was out of the question: ‘[S]he’s fucking part of Corrections, they’re always backstabbers’. Matt was fearful of being breached for living between two residences—his parole addres s and his mother’s new abode. Worse, he was worried about implicating his mother in her sister’s death. As Matt recalled, ‘I [was] so worried about [my mum] so I kept fucking off from my [approved place of residence] to [where she was living] to check on her. And they done a check at my house, a curfew

 

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check, and I wasn’t there’. His initial sense of hope was quickly overshadowed by a fatalis-tic mood. In his words, and after being released from another period of imprisonment, ‘I just got fed up and thought, ‘Fuck it, I’m not going to just breach my bail, I’m going to do something else’ … and that’s what made me go on the run’ (Matt, AU).

 

The courage it takes to speak up about problems faced post-release can have life-changing (negative) consequences. Instead of strengths being acknowledged and built upon, deficits are too often mined7 such that many find themselves subject to further restrictive controls or fast-tracked back to custody. Here, the dead hand of risk aversion strangles any semblance of progress in desisting from crime. This is arguably why many would- be desisters refuse to recount openly (and in a timely way) to state employees what is actually occurring during their period on parole (or similar order). In the United States, David, a repeat offender with 16 custodial sentences (served during four periods of imprisonment),8 explained how his repeated drug use led him to stop reporting and to reoffend: ‘They have so many clients they ain’t trying to help nobody. … I had one dirty UA [urine analysis] and I sought help … They didn’t care if I didn’t come. Revoke. I was going to be off the streets’ (David, USA). Although he initially went to parole for help, it was not forthcoming. Getting into rehab required a change of address and David’s parole officer was reluctant to complete the paperwork. When he repeated his relapse, he just stopped reporting. His perception that parole’s main aim was to get him ‘off the streets’, rather than off drugs, is an apt if troubling example of how the mood of fatalism winds its way through the desistance journey.9

 

These communication breakdowns between criminal justice professionals and cli-ents were not purely the result of individuals being unable to tell parole and probation services about particular problems. Indeed, across all three data sets, it was the lack of responsiveness from such services when a problem had been communicated that ramped up feelings of frustration and sowed the fatalistic seeds of fuck it moments. However, in the US data set, there was evidence among those who reoffended that when parole offic-ers responded to infractions with a light hand—mandating rehabilitation rather than recall—this could pull people back from the brink and help them regain hope, reen-gage with their desire to desist and reinvest their efforts in the struggle this involved.

 

Lack of institutional responsiveness when difficulties are communicated

 

Asking for help is remarkably difficult for people leaving prison (Haney 2003). This is especially likely to be the case when would-be desisters are unable to find others who believe in them, or when people who could help remain unresponsive in the face of con-fessions about ‘not coping’. Time and again, we heard how women and men (like Dylan, quoted earlier), who had summoned the courage to communicate difficulties, were met with an absence of support. As Badger remarked, ‘[I] thought [Probation] were gonna help. … But when I come out of jail last time, they put me [a recovering heroin addict] into a hostel full of drug users, full of dealers. And they kept me in there even though I begged them, ‘You gotta get me out of here’’ (Badger, ENG).

 

7For further corroboration of this dimension, see the excerpt from case 065 in Farrall (2002b: 274).

 

8Some of David’s prison sentences ran concurrently.

 

9For an exposition of the way (ex)prisoners are viewed as objects to be managed instead of people in need of carefully cali-brated support, see Feeley and Simon (1992).

 

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Those in the US sample would often place more hope in faith-based communities and aftercare services to support them in ways that traditional correctional services might not. Unfortunately, this only resulted in similarly fatalistic responses when they too were found to be unresponsive. Terrance recounted the all-too- familiar narrative of mounting difficulties coupled with a disappointing response from those he believed would help him:

 

I had the idea that your mentor was someone you could talk to … [and] who would kinda help you along the way, not just financially but just through conversation or encouragement. Mine didn’t. … When I … told him that I needed to get some [financial] help to get through at least to next week, he called [the mentor coordinator] who told him, ‘Don’t give him nothing’… I asked him about a job and he wouldn’t give me a job. And that was a let-down right there. … I was saying, ‘I’m not asking you for money. ... You pay the rent, let me work it off, let me try to get myself back together.’ But he said, ‘I just can’t do it’. So then I talked to a preacher. He told me, ‘I went through this once before, the Church can’t do it, I can’t do it, …’ And that just collapsed everything. I figured these are two people that I needed to talk to the most, and both of them turned me down so, I thought OK, well I’ll just try to do it the best way I can. And I messed up. (Terrance, USA)

 

It was in these types of scenarios—where obstacles began mounting, and where having worked up the courage to confide in an individual or organization, a distinct lack of responsiveness ensued—that fatalistic and self - sabotaging reactions were most likely to occur. For Chris, his pleas to be kept busy from his first day of release fell on deaf ears: ‘I was on parole and … the condition was that I had to do these programs. … But they … wouldn’t give me no programs to do. … For three weeks … I was doing the right thing ...

 

going in, and reporting in. … I even went to the Parole Board [and] they said that I had to do programs … But they left it for so long … and I still didn’t get a phone call saying, ‘You have to go to do your program.’… And things went [downhill] from there’ (Chris, AU). Faced with this fateful period of uncertainty and unstructured time, Chris went on a crime spree that would make news headlines and result in a 16-year sentence.

Cathrine similarly told of a lack of appropriate responsiveness from key agencies dur-ing her moment of crisis. Instead of rewarding her substantive achievements in battling heroin addiction, she felt that child protection workers repeatedly moved the goalposts. This led her to fear she might never regain custody of her daughter:

We tried comin’ off the gear [heroin]. We was on 120ml of methadone,10 we’d reduced right down. It took us almost a year to reduce … down to like 5ml or something like that. And then … Social Services told me that, like, even though I’d come off my methadone, I’d have to be off my methadone for a further year before they’d even think of givin’ [my daughter] back to me. So … I just thought, ‘Oh my god, they’re never gonna give her back to me’, so I just went straight back on the drugs again. (Cathrine, ENG)

 

While such acts of ‘self-sabotage’ may not always make sense to the outsider, our data suggest they are manifestations of the pain and angst experienced by ex-prisoners who feel the need to repress the real dimensions of their struggles. However, these complex emotions do not quietly fade away. Instead, they are channelled into and through par-ticular actions. Our contention is that fuck it moments are concrete demonstrations of people attempting—through crime—to temporarily overturn the precariousness of their situation through returning to a realm in which their agency can be actioned.

10A synthetic substitute used in the medical management of the symptoms of withdrawal from heroin.

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Self-sabotage as expression of the pains of transition

 

Fuck it scenarios do not only happen when lives are unravelling. Indeed, one of the most complex and least understood aspects of the derailment process is how things can turn bad even when people tell of having received ‘everything they need’ to start again (income, house, intimate relationship, support to manage drug addiction, etc.). Counter-intuitively, our data suggest that progress can be highly unsettling for some would-be desisters who reinterpret their improved position as inevitably short-lived. Here, the pall of ‘internalized blame and self-abuse’ or ‘self-punishment’ (Ramsey 1988: 100) can set in as people begin to consciously (and subconsciously) undermine positive develop-ments in their lives, particularly where someone feels their good (better/improved) fortune is ‘undeserved’. James’ experience provides a clear case in point.

 

I just got out [and] I was at home with my kids, like every time something bad happened, I looked around and thought to myself, ‘I’ve got everything I want.’ … [S]o I kind of just put everything bad that happened … to the back of my mind. … [But] it kind of … built up and built up. … At the time I thought … ‘Fuck it, I give up. … I’m going to accept that I’m a scumbag and [that] I’m going to be in and out of gaol for the rest of my life, and [so] see you later … I’ll go steal a car.’ [But then] I’ll think to myself, ‘Nah, nah, nah, that’s bloody stupid. Yeah, [I may have] already fucked up, I’ve already ran away from [home detention] so I’ve got a warrant. … But I love [my girlfriend], I love the kids, I’ve got the life that I want, I’ve got everything I need, so I’ll …I’ll hand myself in.’ … But at that initial point … just before I run away … the initial thought in my mind [is], ‘I give up. I’m just going to accept my past is going to be my future and give up. …’ And then I realise that’s not what I want. … I don’t want anything more but to have a good life with my family. (James, AU)

 

James had incredible difficulty growing into the fatherhood and intimate partner identities. He struggled, in other words, to make the transition from ‘offender’ to ‘non-offender’ and to genuinely inhabit the new roles that were required of him as a ‘changed person’ (cf. Maruna et al. 2004: 19). He felt overwhelmed by the fragility of the realities of life beyond prison walls. The sub sequent self -sabotaging is not reducible to cognitive distortion or psychological malady but instead stems from participants’ careful weigh-ing up of their circumstances (‘On all previous occasions I’ve not been successful in desisting, so why should I think I will be successful this time around’). Stability and fragil-ity in the desistance process go hand in hand. Importantly, Maruna (2001) has shown that deciding to desist is only part of the proje ct of becoming a (free) citizen. Another key dimension involves the wider community believing that fundamental personal change has occurred and responding with practical options for would-be desisters to cement their progress. Labelling theory demonstrates that if one cannot conceive oneself as a legitimate citizen, then one is very unlikely to engage the values and behaviours asso-ciated with such status (Becker 1963; Uggen and Blahnik 2016). In this context, the stigma of being a probationer or parolee plays directly into fuck it moments.

 

In the lives of our participants, the self- sabotaging response related to a sense of isolation despite modest success in putting some of the key building blocks for desist-ance in place. In the United States, David had a relatively well-paid job in a recycling plant. His boss was also flexible and responsive to the difficulties of David’s struggles with addiction. Despite this, David felt an overwhelming loneliness (he felt socially dis-connected from his workmates) and would often hang out with prostitutes and street folk. This led him eventually back to using drugs. He said, quite simply, ‘I turn to drugs

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mostly […] because I think something’s missing in my life’. In seeking to explain this, participants expressed a desire to feel a sense of belonging (in Roberto’s words, ‘people on the streets like me feel like this. We get love from each other’), and they gravitated towards the spaces and places in society where this sense of community was achievable. As Matza insightfully suggested, the fatalism that leads to criminal infraction is not just a move away from but also a movement towards a moral universe. If this universe is dif-ficult to authentically engage with in conventional (‘straight’) society, it is immediately available on the streets, however transient.

 

Theorizing ‘Fuck It’

 

Across each of the studies drawn on in this article (in spite of their distinct designs), we found that relapse and/or reoffending in the desistance process had more to do with resolving participants’ fatalistic moods and much less to do with wanting to harm others or the community generally. We also found that fuck it scenarios unfurled in broadly similar fashion, with each participant:

 

(1) Expressing the desire to desist from crime (or, at very least, the desire to significantly reduce the frequency and severity of offending);

 

(2)  Telling of moments where they felt themselves ‘sliding towards old ways’ (i.e. there was an ‘in situ’ as well as retrospective recognition of one’s dilemma);

 

(3)  Remarking on their inability to find timely and effective support in the early and later stages of ‘going off the rails’ (with efforts to ‘reach out’ often being met with castigation, stigmatization, alienation and where it involved infraction, being breached and/or reincarcerated); and

 

(4)  Conceiving of subsequent fuck it moments as ill-preferred responses to unworkable situations (involving their relationship to self, others and future).

 

Without doubt, fuck it moments have material (and sometimes tragic) consequences. The important task, though, is to explain why these events happen. Conceptually, and drawing again on Matza’s insights, we believe fuck it moments arise from the mood of fatalism and are actualized (i.e. given concrete effect) between the points of desperation and infraction. However, we contend that fuck it moments are not commensurate with the infraction. This means the movement from desperation to fuck it does not need to result in more crime. There is no telos at play here and it is this imminent instability (Matza’s soft determinism) that has implications for de-escalation strategies (see fur-ther below). Having said this, our participants unquestionably attested to feeling boxed in with few options for escape. Commensurate with Matza’s original formulation, they also described crime (reoffending) as restoring order in their lives—even where such order equated to immersion in the well- worn routines of (re)arrest, charge, remand, court and sentencing. There is a sense in which being ‘out of control’ (actioning a fuck it moment) allowed participants to achieve (some) degree of control over their lives. Indeed, the personal agency required to action a fuck it moment is, we would argue, an unacknowledged form of self-control. Where succeeding in terms of imposed param-eters appeared impossible, failing on one’s own terms was preferable. The real tragedy is that the prison cell frequently emerged as the only device capable of ending the ‘stark and frightening isolation’ experienced by those on the cusp of becoming (once again) criminal (Matza 1990/1964: 89).

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It is important to understand that the infraction—buoyed by the energy of the fuck it moment—was not in itself wanton or malicious among our cohorts. Instead, the infrac-tion (which in some cases simply meant failing to report to one’s parole officer) became the most effective, indeed often the only, means to restore the ‘sense of active mastery over one’s environment’ (Matza 1990/1964: 189). As Matza (1990/1964: 190) observes, ‘An infraction is among the few acts that immediately and demonstrably make things happen’. For our participants, the infraction brought ‘pleasure’ (an end to the angst of desperation and sense of helplessness) and ‘pain’ (more harm to family, to friends, to self and to one’s future). The injection of some stability and certainty into otherwise fragile and unstable lives somehow made the fuck it gamble worthwhile.

 

Although, in Delinquency and Drift, Matza was writing with a particular eye on juvenile crime, we find that his concepts (challenges to manhood, mood of fatalism, despera-tion, infraction, restoration to a moral order) are equally applicable and productive when applied to the experience of adult offenders. However, we would propose an extension of Matza’s original thinking—a ‘Matza Plus’ approach—that can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of derailment in the desistance process in three key areas. First, while Matza (1990/1964: 183) sought to determine ‘how, why, or when the will to crime becomes activated’, our work suggests that questions should focus less on ‘the will to crime’ and more upon factors which undermine the will to desist. That is, instead of being about a movement into crime, our contention is that fuck it scenarios (and by extension, the infraction) might be more appropriately viewed as episodes of

 

‘frustrated desistance’ (Wright 2015). Such a reimagining turns the perceived motivation for offending on its head and specifically acknowledges that most people (parolees, probationers, etc.), given appropriate opportunities, aim to live in a broadly conven-tional law-abiding fashion (Bottoms 2013). In short, fuck it moments signify the loss of the practical and emotional capacity to continue to desist from crime rather than the will to reoffend.

 

Secondly, the experiences of women in our work necessarily have implications for thinking through the salience of Matza’s ideas. Delinquency and Drift was written with specific regard to the lives of delinquent boys. Indeed, females are mentioned literally only a handful of times in the entire work and only then in the passive register (e.g. as someone to marry (p. 56), or as objects to ‘annoy’ and ‘exploit’ (p. 167)). But how might Matza’s ideas play out beyond the realm of crises of masculinity and into the domain of women’s experiences of imprisonment and release? We know that the stresses and strains women bear are qualitatively distinct to those of men, and that as a group, female (ex)prisoners have a disproportionately harder time reintegrating into the community (Uggen and Kruttschnitt 1998; Carlen 2002; McIvor et al. 2009; Halsey and Deegan 2014). It therefore makes sense to think that women’s experiences of the mood of fatal-ism, of becoming desperate, and of actioning a fuck it moment, might also play out in distinct fashion. Perhaps, therefore, instead of examining ‘masculinity anxiety’ (Matza 1990/1964: 53), it might be equally appropriate to speak of and explore femininity anxiety.

 

Our work shows that the derailment process differs in accordance with gender. For women, fatalistic thinking is imbued with the ‘failures’ of femininity and particularly of motherhood. In the Australian data, men often spoke of snowballing from breach-ing in minor ways (e.g. failure to report) to committing more major crime (e.g. armed robbery), and that this transition involved, quite literally, the phrase fuck it (or one of its variations) as a declarative and concrete marker of impending offending. In the US

 

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data, the will to belong and to survive underpinned low level offending that precipi-tated high level consequences, either through recall to prison or further involvement in street life exposing participants to the potential of lethal violence as both victims and perpetrators. In the English sample, not only was such major snowballing less appar-ent, but the precursive events to fuck it moments presented in different ways. Women’s transitions from desperation to the infraction tended to be triggered by threats to rela-tional and emotional stability (e.g. as a partner, as a mother, as a daughter). In contrast, men’s triggers towards the infraction tended to involve threats to economic stability (e.g. as being a competent ‘bread winner’ and provider). This builds on very recent work (Baldry 2014; Wright 2015) that shows how desistance (and, by default, relapse into crime) is gendered and how for women it is often based around the ‘experiential avoidance’11 (Hayes et al. 1999, cited in Nolen-Hoeksema 2012) afforded by substance abuse (self-medication). This is not to say that the fuck it trajectories of men in the Australian and US samples were immune from drug and alcohol abuse. However, there was a distinctly more introverted and emotive dimension to women’s fuck it experi-ences. At minimum, this suggests there are very powerful sociocultural scripts govern-ing how men and women are ‘permitted’ to unravel or to give voice to the desperate circumstances overwhelming them.

 

Our third point relates again to the role of the infraction. Matza (1990/1964: 189) con-ceived of the infraction as a means for ‘delinquents’ to ‘rejoin […] the moral order’. We detected something different in our work. Our participants were often scathing of the mainstream moral order—an order that sought their compliance over and above their inclusion in social, economic and cultural life. For them, there was more ‘morality’ in the cut and thrust of the street and criminal life. The infraction, therefore, was not an attempt to reclaim their place in a desired moral world so much as a device for taking control of their exclusion from it, thereby ending their current turmoil. This is one reason why those well down the desistance path sometimes self-sabotage their hard won success and return to what they know best.

De-escalating derailment

 

Prior to concluding, we think it essential to say something about how potential fuck it scenarios might be prevented or at the very least de-escalated. In short, how might those caught between desperation and infraction manage to escape this double bind? Our simple answer is that people need to be convinced (by someone or something) that not committing crime is absolutely commensurate with immediate improvement in their circumstance. Solutions have to rival the instant relief obtained through going on the run, illicit drug taking/chemical oblivion, a police pursuit or like. In short, there has to be sufficient reason for ‘putting skin’ in the compliance and (re)integra-tion game. Clearly, the threat of more prison time cannot continually be used as that reason, as it is well established that repeat offenders typically do not fear going back to prison (Burnett and Maruna 2004; Halsey 2006; Halsey and Deegan 2015). As one of the women remarked, ‘[The justice system sees prison] as a form of punishment but it’s not. It’s away from all the madness outside – time to just relax, chill, get your head back

11A form of emotion regulation—which can be achieved through recourse to mind-altering substances—used to suppress or avoid unwanted ‘thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories and urges’ (Hayes et al. 1999, cited in Nolen-Hoeksema 2012: 164).

 

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together, [and] then just go back out and start all over again!’ (Badger, ENG). This, though, is very different to saying most people would prefer to do more time.

 

We believe a better response is to ensure that each ex-prisoner (whether a parolee, probationer or those who ‘max out’ and serve their entire sentence in prison) is sur-rounded with a dedicated network of people who can be contacted around the clock (literally 24/7) about issues weighing heavily on them. These problems need to be dealt with openly, fully and in ways that validate good intentions and progress, even where this involves apparent failures. We are not advocating that people should be ‘smoth-ered’ with support options. Instead, we would replace the mantra of ‘wrap -around ser-vices’ with the phrase or philosophy of truly responsive services. And we would remind that such services, at the end of the day, are reducible to the skills and relationships among people. This means investing in, and taking the time to build, lines of trust and legiti-macy with those juggling the multifaceted challenges of desistance. Most importantly, it means giving real and practical force to the concept of throughcare. Alliances need to be built up between would -be desisters and would-be support people (whether remu-nerated or volunteers) well prior to release (i.e. over months rather than mere days or a few weeks, or—worse—literally ‘at the prison gate’). The following excerpt—drawn from an 18-month action-oriented evaluation of a mentoring programme (called Step Out) for young males within six months of release from custody—gives some clue as to the value of having a trusted neutral source of support at the point when things start to come unstuck:

 

So what do you know now about having a mentor that you didn’t know before you commenced with Step Out?

Just that there’s people out there in the community in general that are gonna help you no matter what, … even if … you fuck up, or you do something wrong, and you think, ‘Well, I’m fucked. I’m going back ... to gaol […] I don’t know what I’m gonna do.’ And then all of a sudden you get this phone call [from Step Out] and it just feels like all your worries have just gone. You know, they sit there and they talk and they say, ‘It’s not the end of the world. Here’s a taxi I’m gonna call [so you can] come into the office [and] we’ll sit down [and] we’ll talk about it.’ And you ... just feel like a big weight’s been lifted off your shoulders straight away. Like, you feel like you’ve ... mess[ed] up, so you might as well go hard with all the crime and things. ... Then all of a sudden you get this phone call and everything’s alright and it’s just magically fixed like, you know, it helps so much ’cos you think, ‘Well, ... I’m going back anyway, I might as well just commit more crime’, and then you get this phone call and then afterwards you think, ‘Fuck, that would have been a stupid decision because it wasn’t even nothing to worry over.’ (Mike, AU)

 

A review of a ‘Together Women’ project in England and Wales—a community-based initiative designed to reduce women’s contact with the criminal justice system—simi-larly underscored the importance of responsive practitioners in de-escalating potential threats to desistance. Here, Pat describes how support from the project enabled her to stay on track following a period of derailment:

 

Yeah. I’ve been in trouble with the law again, actually, but that was through me alcohol and through me partner, but I would’ve possibly been in more trouble had I not had this place. And possibly

• done things, possibly … tried to harm meself. You know, if I didn’t have this place to come to, I would’ve just totally gave up, I think, a couple of times, you know. But instead, I’ve got myself up and come here instead, and it’s helped me. (Hedderman et al. 2011: 14)

 

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Respect—permitting people to maintain their dignity at the times when they are fall-ing apart—is an incredibly powerful social tool (Halsey 2008; Hulley et al. 2012). We think it is crucial to the success or otherwise of the parolee/professional relationship. The following excerpt shows how acknowledgement of progress—respect for the hard yards one has done—can defuse potentially dangerous situations. A supportive partner, a good word from a Parole Officer, sensible use of judicial discretion, can all change things for the better:

 

[When I got back to my house] there was cop cars out the front. … I took off. … I [went] to [the shop] and bought some screwdrivers and I was going to go steal a car and leave [town] because I thought I was going to get locked up. But I didn’t. … I rode to my girlfriend’s house and told her what hap-pened and she said, ‘Look, just go speak to them’. And so the next day we went and spoke to the [police]. … And then I went to court and the Judge said, ‘Look, because you’ve been out of trouble for so long, you’re doing well, I’ll just give you a $400 fine.’ … I [also] had a good parole officer [who] wrote to the Parole Board [of South Australia] and told ‘em [what happened]. And they said, ‘Look, nah. We’ll just give you a warning. We’re not gonna lock you up now cos it will just wreck everything’. Cos I reckon if I would have got locked up that would have changed my whole mind frame again. I would have been thinking, ‘Fuck this’. I probably would have only done three months, but then I would have got out and thought ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna run amok again’. … [But] the Judge said, ‘I’m not gonna lock you up over something so petty cos you’ve been out of trouble now for something like five years’. (Charlie, AU)

 

The key point here is that formal recognition of efforts to succeed, even in the face of failure, can help to neutralize fatalism and reignite hope. In our research, people who had been on the cusp of reoffending (or who reoffended) had managed to reconnect with desistance when their parole officers and others supported them. This bolstered the confidence and skills of those who wrestled with setbacks by allowing them to expe-rience themselves as the cause of their success. Morris, for example, had a difficult rela-tionship with his parole officer. When he came up dirty on a urine analysis, she wanted to send him to a closed rehab programme which would have caused him to lose his job. Ultimately, he took matters into his own hands and checked himself in at an open rehab so he could continue to work:

 

This time I didn’t run.

 

And how did that go down?

 

Great. … I mean they [i.e. parole, were] a little upset – they sent me to that class and I finished it, and if I don’t do it again, I’m OK. And like I said, the reason that I was doing it [i.e. taking drugs] … was because of companionship, the loneliness. Now I’m not lonely no more. I’ve got a home to go to, [my girlfriend and I] eat … I buy her roses, set bubble baths, we watch movies together. I’m content. (Morris, USA)

 

Risking a revocation to retain employment paid off for Morris—while his parole officer was not pleased, she decided not to violate him, and he met his girlfriend at work. Of course, we can never know how fine the line was for Morris between running or report-ing, or how fine the line was for his parole officer between revoking or supporting, or what might have happened if he had chosen fight or flight over reaching out. The take-home message here is that potential fuck it scenarios need not play out in predictable and destructive fashion. Most importantly, though, positive outcomes require a collec-tive effort. Encountering understanding and responsive support can restore a sense of

 

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humanism in the face of deep shame. It can provide a pathway to being trusted and becoming trustworthy (Armstrong 2013; 2014), and it can reignite subjective owner-ship of the reformation process (Werth 2011). By refusing to punish offenders for hon-esty and openness, practitioners are in prime position to tip the balance back towards ‘hope’ and to lessen the quantum of destructive moments in would-be desisters’ lives.

 

Concluding Remarks

 

In this article, we have examined a critically important dimension of the desistance pro-cess using key concepts from Matza’s Delinquency and Drift. We have argued that the lived experiences of those positioned between desperation and infraction are key to under-standing derailment (and recovery) in desistance. We characterized these experiences as fuck it scenarios. They might more eloquently be called moments of intolerable vexation— moments when life’s challenges obscure avenues of possibility other than the infraction. But more than this, and in keeping with Matza’s (1990/1964: 29) seminal concept of drift, we have shown that it is possible for people to escape the double bind of desperation and the infraction without resort to further (serious) offending. This is rarely down to individ-ual ‘will’ alone and almost always involves the quality and timeliness of social interventions and support capable of dissipating the fatalistic mood in desistance journeying (Farrall 2016). We have shown the centrality of the relational to this experience: specifically that probation and parole officers (and supportive people generally) who appear more mean-ingfully attuned, and provide consistent engagement and encouragement, can positively impact the volatile space between desperation and infraction (see Farrall 2002a).

 

In contemporary terms, our work responds in part to the challenge laid down by Carlsson (2012) on turning points in the life course. The criminal justice system operates on the basis that each bail agreement, prison sentence or further period of probation or parole equate to opportunities for personal change. Occasionally they do. Most often though, the more profound turning points—the one’s that stick and give rise to an iron resolve—are those which emerge in the complex mix of personal and therapeutic alli-ances assembled around each person that can withstand setbacks. We therefore see fuck it moments less as turning points than ‘returning points’—as moments were people in crisis revert to the familiar and temporarily suspend their search for something different. Our research is also broadly consistent with Agnew and Messner’s (2015: 575 and

 

• claim that ‘individuals subjectively assess and cognitively simplify their world before acting’ and often conclude (quite rightly) that ‘their bond to conventional soci-ety has been severed irreparably, their prospects for success are nonexistent, or they live in a harsh and unjust world’. We think fuck it moments are concrete examples of the types of critical ‘thresholds’ or ‘Gestalt-like judgments about the life situation of individuals’ that Agnew and Messner (2015: 572) touch upon. In this sense, fuck it moments are not necessarily part of a larger ‘resignation script’ (Maruna 2001). Most, if not all our participants, were hopeful about their chances of desisting. Certainly, they had periods of resignation, but their lives were not completely structured by a defeatist outlook. In fact, the repeated ways in which they sought to avoid fuck it moments are testimony to participants’ belief in ‘redemption’.

 

Equally, our work connects with Giordano and colleagues (2002) conceptualiza-tions of the psychosocial dimensions of desistance. For us, fuck it moments are con-tiguous with crises in the construction of what they term the ‘replacement self’. All

 

 

 

 

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of our interviewees were open to change (wanted to change) and were fairly adept at distinguishing real assistance (jobs, education, new suburb to reside in, resolution of mental health and drug and alcohol problems) from ‘hollow’ opportunities (crimino-genic programmes and ‘tick a box’ assessments of ‘progress’) for desisting from crime. Fuck it moments can therefore be seen as visceral reactions to blockages on the road to building and sustaining a replacement self. Such moments cut through the complexity and messiness of the cognitive and behavioural effort required to cement desistance. This again has important implications for thinking about the nature and timing of sup-port extended to ex- prisoners. Chiefly, it points to the importance of building clients’ strengths (McNeill 2006) but also to the fact that the replacement self is a fragile project in need of constant attention. Those who support people released from prison need, at minimum, to be cognizant of t he sociology of stigma and the difficulties of rebuilding a legitimate and socially lauded self. Without this element, fuck it moments will continue to arise.

 

In our view, then, Matza connects well with current debates on desistance and offers a productive means for thinking about the phenomenology of breaching and reoffending. We have suggested, though, that the phenomenon in need of explanation is not a ‘will to crime’ or ‘repeat offending’ but rather, dissipation of the will to desist, grounded in a sense of moral exclusion. Here, it is essential to integrate the experiences of females when discussing the mood of fatalism and the challenges of staying out of prison. Of course, it is also important not to lose sight of the common humanity shared by all. Whether juvenile or adult, male or female, never incarcerated or repeatedly incarcer-ated, we are all capable of engaging the power and the destruction of fuck it scenarios. The decisive point, as Matza (1990/1964: 27) reminds us, is that ‘some … are freer than others’ to pull back from such moments or to defuse their negative dimensions. Neutralizing the destructive power of the mood of fatalism requires, we contend, more sensitive support for the day-to-day practice of freedom, and a criminal justice system that is more keenly attuned to the fact that most people try to and do desist from crime.

 

Funding

 

M.H. gratefully acknowledges funding from the Australian Research Council for the projects Understanding recidivism and repeat incarceration among young male offenders: A bio-graphical and longitudinal approach (DP0556471); Generativity in young male (ex)prisoners: Caring for self, other, and future within prison and beyond (DP094562); and Generations through prison: A critical exploration of the causes, experience and consequences of intergenerational incar-ceration (FT120100284). R.A. is grateful for funding provided by the UK Economic and Social Research Council for funding the project Life After Prison in America’s Bible Belt (PTA-031-2004-00108). S.W. thanks the UK Economic and Social Research Council for funding the project ‘Persistent’ and ‘prolific’ offending across the life-course as experienced by women: Chronic recidivism and frustrated desistance.

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

We are indebted to those who have shaped our ideas, including: delegates of the European Society of Criminology Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, September 2014;

 

 

 

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students of the Master of Applied Criminology, Penology and Management, Cambridge Institute of Criminology, United Kingdom, July 2015; practitioners of the Department for Correctional Services, South Australia, October 2015. Sincere thanks are also due to Peggy Giordano for encouraging us to write this paper and for her insightful comments, and to Frank Cullen who provided thoughtful feedback. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Luke Ajuila for his comments on an earlier draft.

 

 

References

 

Agnew, R. and Messner, S. (2015), ‘General Assessment and Thresholds for Chronic Offending: An Enriched Paradigm for Explaining Crime’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 53: 571–96.

 

Armstrong, R. (2013), ‘Life After Prison in America’s Bible Belt: An Ethnography of Release from a Faith-Based Prison Programme’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge.

 

—— (2014), ‘Trusting the Untrustworthy: The Theology, Practice and Implications of Faith-Based Volunteers’ Work with Ex-Prisoners’, Studies in Christian Ethics, 27: 299–309.

 

Baldry, E. (2014), ‘Continuing Systemic Discrimination: Indigenous Australian Women Exiting Prison’, in B. Carlton and M. Segrave, eds, Women Exiting Prison, 98–116. Routledge. Barry, M. (2013), ‘Desistance by Design: Offenders’ Reflections on Criminal Justice Theory,

 

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