Desistance And Supervision Research Paper ⋆ Research Paper Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This sample Desistance And Supervision Research Paper is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need help writing your assignment, please use our research paper writing service and buy a paper on any topic at affordable price. Also check our tips on how to write a research paper, see the lists of criminal justice research paper topics, and browse research paper examples.

Overview

This research paper explores the origins and development of arguments about the use of theories of and evidence about desistance from crime as a basis for developing approaches to offender rehabilitation and supervision. We begin by outlining arguments about the relative merits of offense-focused and desistance-focused approaches before going on to review the case for a “desistance paradigm” for correctional practice. In the final section, we outline the process and (some of the) outcomes of a recent project which aimed to further these debates by actively engaging ex-offenders, their families and supporters, frontline practitioners, managers, and policymakers in coproducing a set of recommendations for criminal justice reform, informed by their experiences of desistance and supporting desistance.

Introduction

Desistance theories and research seek to understand and explain how and why people stop offending – and stay stopped. The notion that such studies might provide a framework for offender supervision, and even for criminal justice interventions more widely conceived, has a long history – dating back at least to the work of the Gluecks (1937 [1966]). If, as they argued, desistance is about maturing out of criminal conduct, what could be done through criminal justice interventions to “force the plant” or to accelerate the maturational process? The question is, of course, a very good one, not least in the context of contemporary preoccupations with the economic, human, and social costs of reoffending by ex-prisoners (see, e.g., Ministry of Justice 2010) and with the broader challenges of ex-prisoner reentry.

And yet, between the 1930s and the end of the twentieth century, hardly any use of desistance research to inform sentencing and correctional policy and practice is discernible. Instead, the story of this era is the familiar one of the rise and fall and rise again of rehabilitative interventions, a historical cycle linked to but not fully explained by debates about their effectiveness or ineffectiveness. Though these two topics – the process of desistance from crime and the effectiveness of rehabilitative interventions – are obviously linked in several ways, the connections between them did not begin to be properly explored until the turn of the century.

Today, debates and discussions about desistance and how to support it through criminal justice interventions seem to be bubbling up all around the world of corrections, not just in jurisdictions with deep cultural and historical connections, like the UK and the USA, but also in places as diverse as Norway and Singapore.

This research paper does not aim to explain this upsurge of interest in desistance nor does it engage with the important and interesting question of when desistance research is relevant (and irrelevant) to criminal justice (see McNeill and Weaver 2010). Suffice it to say that unless criminal justice is concerned on some level with rehabilitation and reducing reoffending, desistance theory and research is unlikely to have much purchase. But to the extent that sentencing and correctional systems, and more specifically to the structure and practice of supervision, are concerned with these outcomes, understanding how and why people stop offending (with or without help or hindrance from the justice system) has obvious appeal. Throughout the paper, we use the US convention of referring to “sentencing and corrections,” meaning the end of the justice process where sanctions are decided and then delivered. Our particular focus is on supervisory sanctions, that is, those sanctions or elements of sanctions, like probation and parole, which involve the supervision of the sentenced person in the community.

Rather than seeking to review theories of and evidence about desistance itself, this research paper has the more modest aim of charting the emergence and development of the arguments advanced over the last 12 about the implications of this body of work for offender supervision.

Offense-Focused Or Desistance-Focused Supervision

The emergence and development (or perhaps the revival) of debates about how desistance research could and should inform the development of supervision owes a great deal to the work of Stephen Farrall (2002) and of Shadd Maruna (2001). Both books were based in research projects which drew on and developed earlier work by Ros Burnett; her Dynamics of Recidivism study (Burnett 1992) was critical in generating new interest in desistance research in the UK. Another important early foray into the study of “assisted desistance” (as opposed to spontaneous or unaided desistance) was undertaken by Sue Rex (1999), who argued explicitly that:

The knowledge we are beginning to acquire about the type of probation services which are more likely to succeed could surely be enhanced by an understanding of the personal and social changes and developments associated with desistance from crime. (Rex 1999: 366)

Thus, even while Farrall’s and Maruna’s research projects were ongoing, publications (like Rex’s) had begun to emerge which engaged directly with the question of how desistance theory and research might inform supervision.

An interesting early example was an edition of Offender Programs Report (volume 4, issue 1) which, among several interesting short articles, included a paper from Maruna (2000) in which he argued for a marrying of the desistance and “What Works?” literatures, taking from the former its analyses of the “micro-mechanisms of change” at the individual level and from the latter an appreciation of the general principles of effective rehabilitative intervention.

That marriage however looked ill-fated when Farrall’s (2002) book was published. It challenged the somewhat narrow and managerialized interpretations of “What Works?” research which, at that time, dominated correctional policy and practice in the UK. As well as developing a searching methodological critique of the “What Works?” research, Farrall’s study (based on a qualitative longitudinal study of 199 probationers and their supervising officers) presented findings which suggested that motivation and social context were more clearly associated with desistance than probation supervision and that the focus of supervision (on risk factors and “criminogenic needs”) neglected the crucial roles of relationships and social capital in the desistance process. Farrall’s (2002) related proposition was that supervision should focus not solely on “offence-related factors” (or “criminogenic needs”) but also on “desistance-related needs.” The nature of the difference between the two approaches is perhaps best captured by one of the probationers in his study, in response to a question about what would prevent him from reoffending:

Something to do with self-progression. Something to show people what they are capable of doing. I thought that was what [my Officer] should be about. It’s finding people’s abilities and nourishing and making them work for those things. Not very consistent with going back on what they have done wrong and trying to work out why – ‘cause it’s all going around on what’s happened – what you’ve already been punished for – why not go forward into something.. . For instance, you might be good at writing – push that forward, progress that, rather than saying ‘well look, why did you kick that bloke’s head in? Do you think we should go back into anger management courses?’ when all you want to do is be a writer. Does that make any sense to you at all? Yeah, yeah. To sum it up, you’re saying you should look forwards not back. Yeah. I know that you have to look back to a certain extent to make sure that you don’t end up like that [again]. The whole order seems to be about going back and back and back. There doesn’t seem to be much ‘forward’. (Farrall 2002: 225)

Desistance and Supervision, Table 1 Ideal-type contrasts: offense-focused and desistance-focused practice

McNeill (2003), McNeill and Batchelor 2004), drawing not just on the work of Farrall and Maruna but on a wider range of desistance studies (as well as on “What Works?” research), sought to further elaborate what “desistance-focused probation practice” might look like. He argued that such practice would require thoroughly individualized assessment, focused on the interrelationships between desistance factors (linked to age and maturation, social bonds, and shifts in narrative identity), which build towards clear plans to support change. It would also require engaging in active and participative relationships characterized by optimism, trust, and loyalty, as well as interventions targeted at those aspects of each individual’s motivation, attitudes, thinking, and values which might help or hinder progress towards desistance. Crucially, in McNeill’s (2003) assessment, it would require work not just to develop personal capabilities but also to access and support opportunities for change, for example, around accommodation and employment. Finally, such practice would require approaches to evaluation which were themselves engaging, since such approaches would be vital in learning more from those involved about what persuaded them to desist and about the support that they needed to see their decisions through.

Beyond these practical prescriptions, and inspired by Farrall (2002), McNeill and Batchelor (2004: 66) went on to further elaborate the shift in practice dispositions or perspectives that desistance research seemed to suggest:

Table 1 above contrasts two notional “ideal types” of practice. McNeill and Batchelor (2004) were clear that this was intended only as a heuristic device; arguably neither of these approaches could or should exist in a “pure” form. Rather, the challenge, they argued, was to combine elements of both approaches in a case-sensitive manner. Hence, an offense focus must, of course, be necessary and appropriate given that, within any justice context, it is offending which occasions and justifies state intervention. However, being only or overly offense-focused might in some senses tend to accentuate precisely those aspects of a person’s history, behavior, and attitudes which intervention aims to diminish. It may also, they suggested, tend towards misidentifying the central problem as one of individual “malfunctioning”:

Being desistance-focussed, by contrast, implies a focus on the purpose and aspiration of the intervention rather than on the ‘problem’ that precipitates it. It also tends towards recognising the broader social contexts and conditions required to support change. Thus, where being offence-focussed encourages practice to be retrospective and individualised, being desistance-focussed allows practice to become prospective and contextualised. (McNeill and Batchelor 2004: 67)

Although Maruna’s (2001) book engaged less directly with the implications of his study for supervision, his ideas (conceived and elaborated along with his colleague and coauthor Tom LeBel) about “strengths-based” approaches to reentry and corrections were already developing in similar directions, informed both by desistance research and by a wider range of influences (Maruna and LeBel 2003, 2009). In essence, Maruna and LeBel (2003) exposed the limitations and problems associated with both risk-based and support(or need-) based narratives for reentry. The former, they argued, casts the offender ultimately as a threat to be managed, the latter as a deficient to be remedied by the application of professional expertise. By contrast, “[s]trengthsbased or restorative approaches ask not what a person’s deficits are, but rather what positive contribution the person can make” (Maruna and LeBel 2003: 97).

Drawing on his Liverpool Desistance Study (LDS), Maruna et al. (2004) engaged more directly with the implications of the LDS for supervision, but reached similar conclusions. Probation discourse, they suggested, should move away from risks and needs and towards strengths, seeking to support and encourage redemptive and generative processes, such as those involved in constructive service or voluntary activities. Such a discursive shift could signal the positive potential of probationers not just to them but equally importantly to their communities. Although they supported Farrall’s (2002) call for a more explicitly prospective or future-oriented form of supervisory practice, they also recognized the need for people to make sense of their pasts and therefore suggested the need for rehabilitative practices to support a reconstruction of the person’s personal narrative, one which recognized and repaired wrongdoing but which refused to define or delimit the person by their previous (mis)conduct.

A Desistance Paradigm

By the middle of the first decade of this century, debate about the implications of desistance theory and research had developed to the point where “A Desistance Paradigm for Offender Management” was proposed (McNeill 2006). The “desistance paradigm” was written in the context of a peculiarly British debate about how probation practice should be reframed in the light of both changing evidence and normative arguments. As such, it engaged with two preceding paradigm-defining papers, the first of which (at the height of the “Nothing Works” era) argued for a “Non-Treatment Paradigm for Probation Practice” (Bottoms and McWilliams 1979) and the second deploying emerging evidence about effective intervention approaches to propose a “Revised Paradigm” (Raynor and Vanstone 1994). McNeill (2006) used both desistance research and normative arguments to seek to displace not their earlier paradigms but what he perceived as the misappropriation and misinterpretation of evidence in a managerialized and reductionist “What Works” paradigm that dominated probation policy and practice at that time (Table 2). He summed up the four paradigms as follows:

McNeill (2006: 56–57) summed up his central argument as follows:

Unlike the earlier paradigms, the desistance paradigm forefronts processes of change rather than modes of intervention. Practice under the desistance paradigm would certainly accommodate intervention to meet needs, reduce risks and (especially) to develop and exploit strengths, but whatever these forms might be they would be subordinated to a more broadly conceived role in working out, on an individual basis, how the desistance process might best be prompted and supported. This would require the worker to act as an advocate providing a conduit to social capital as well as a ‘treatment’ provider building human capital. Moreover, rather than being about the technical management of programmes and the disciplinary management of orders, as the current term [in England and Wales] ‘offender manager’ unhelpfully implies, the forms of engagement required by the paradigm would re-instate and place a high premium on collaboration and involvement in the process of co-designing interventions. Critically, such interventions would not be concerned solely with the prevention of further offending; they would be equally concerned with constructively addressing the harms caused by crime by encouraging offenders to make good through restorative processes and community service (in the broadest sense). But, as a morally and practically necessary corollary, they would be no less preoccupied with making good to offenders by enabling them to achieve inclusion and participation in society (and with it the progressive and positive reframing of their identities required to sustain desistance).

Desistance and Supervision, Table 2 Probation practice in four paradigms

McNeill’s argument had been developed partly as the result of undertaking a literature review which aimed to explore the key skills required of supervisors charged with reducing reoffending (McNeill et al. 2005). Importantly, both that review and the paradigm paper included and attempted to integrate findings from desistance studies, “What Works?” correctional research, and the wider literature on the characteristics of effective psychosocial interventions more generally. Despite different methodologies and disciplinary orientations, some similar findings were emerging in desistance and “What Works?” research, for example, about the importance of the worker/client relationship in supporting change and about the need for “brokerage” of access to wider services to address practical needs.

More recently, Maruna and LeBel (2010) have engaged directly with the promise of developing and employing a desistance paradigm for correctional practice. Like McNeill (2006), they begin with the recognition that evaluation evidence (about what works to produce particular outcomes) is not the only form of evidence that matters in developing evidence-based practice (EBP). To focus exclusively on evaluation evidence in guiding intervention choices is to miss the importance of evidence about the very processes that interventions exist to support. Echoing Lewis (1990), they suggest a shift in focus “from programmes to lives,” eschewing a correctional or medical model of change. In a more recent paper, McNeill et al. (2012a) have argued that it is simply wrong to treat desistance as the outcome of an intervention; interventions can contribute to change, but they do not “produce” it in any simple sense; desistance can and does exist “before, beyond, and behind” interventions. By focusing on and better understanding the change process, Maruna and LeBel (2010) argue, we may be able to better adapt supervision to contribute to (but not to “produce”) the process. It follows that a desistance paradigm must place the person changing and their change process (and not the program) center stage, a message that finds support among prisoners and probationers themselves, who are often resistant to being processed through more programmatic interventions (Harris 2005). Although the views and voices of “offenders” may not carry much weight with political or public audiences of correctional work, given the well-documented problems of supervision violation and program dropout, correctional practitioners would do well to heed the views and voices of those they are seeking to influence. Desistance research, in many respects, is one way (and only one way) in which these views and voices can be heeded.

Maruna and LeBel (2010: 72) sum up their argument for a desistance paradigm as follows:

the desistance paradigm argues that the search for ‘what works’ should not begin with existing expert models of crime reduction, but rather should begin with an understanding of the organic or normative processes that seem to impact offending patterns over the life course. That is, if turning 30 is the ‘most effective crime-fighting tool’ (Von Drehle 2010), then we should seek to learn as much as we can about that process and see if we can model these dynamics in our own interventions.

However, recognizing that the practical implications of such a perspective remain seriously underdeveloped (see also Porporino 2010); Maruna and LeBel (2010) go on to articulate one form of desistance-supporting intervention. Drawing on labeling theory, and on their earlier work (cited above), they make the case for an approach to corrections which stresses pro-social labeling; as well as avoiding negative labeling, this requires practices and systems that expect, invite, and facilitate positive contributions and activities from people subject to supervision and that then certify and celebrate redemption or rehabilitation – de-labeling and de-stigmatizing the reformed offender.

McNeill (2012) has similarly argued, further to his original arguments for a desistance paradigm, that the field of corrections needs its own “Copernican Correction” – one in which supervision and support services revolve around the individual change process, rather than requiring offenders’ lives to revolve around programs and interventions. Moreover, he argues for a shift away from seeing the “offender” as the target of the intervention (the “thing” to be fixed) to seeing the broken relationships between individuals, communities, and the state as the breach in the social fabric (or breach of the social contract) that requires repair. Importantly, this casts correctional agencies less as agents of “correction” and more as mediators of social conflicts. The objective becomes not the correction of the deviant so much as the restoration of the citizen to a position where she/he can both honor the obligations and enjoy the rights of citizenship.

From Paradigms To Practices Or Not

The arguments reviewed in the previous section are important, but they are arguably more concerned with reframing supervision than with redesigning it in practice. The clearest attempts at tackling the latter challenge are perhaps to be found in reports prepared by McNeill (2009) and McNeill and Weaver (2010) for the Scottish Government and the National Offender Management Service of England and Wales, respectively. Both of these reports represent attempts to respond to policymaker and practitioner requests for a more explicit articulation of the practical implications of desistance research for supervision practice; both share a similar reticence in responding to these requests. As McNeill and Weaver (2010: 6) explain:

One of the ‘problems’ with desistance research is that it is not readily translated into straightforward prescriptions for practice.. . As Porporino (2010: 61) has recently suggested: ‘Desistance theory and research, rich in descriptive analysis of the forces and influences that can underpin offender change, unfortunately lacks any sort of organised practice framework.’

However, though this is a practical problem, it is not necessarily a weakness. Even if we wished that there was a ‘desistance manual’ that could be prescribed for practitioners, there is not.. . [D] esistance research itself makes clear that offenders are heterogeneous, their needs are complex and their pathways to desistance are individualised. Overly generalised approaches to interventions therefore are themselves inconsistent with desistance research. It follows that evidence based practice can only really emerge from practitioners’ reflective engagement and continual dialogue with those individuals with whom they work, and with the research that should inform how they work.

With this in mind, rather than offering a desistance manual or a desistance program, McNeill’s (2009) paper Towards Effective Practice in Offender Supervision is an attempt to summarize evidence about both desistance and “What Works?” in order to inform evidence-informed reflective practice. Instead of offering a predesigned and therefore homogenized intervention, he attempts to articulate the range of issues and questions with which a reflective practitioner would have to engage on a case-by-case basis in seeking to support desistance. The “offender supervision spine” that he delineates includes explicit suggestions about how to approach the preparatory, relationship-building stage of supervision, as well as assessment, planning, intervention, and evaluation. McNeill’s (2009) suggestion is that a supervisor working their way along this spine (in partnership with the supervisee) must be continually developing and testing evidence-informed “theories of change,” seeking to work out together “why and how we think that doing what we propose to do will bring about the results that we seek” and then to implement that plan and to evaluate its progress.

Beyond such emergent models of the supervision process, a number of broader practical implications of desistance research have been identified in the literature. In a very recent overview, for example, McNeill et al. (2012b) identify eight broad principles, the genesis of which is apparent above:

Desistance, for people who have been involved in persistent offending, is a difficult and complex process, and one that is likely to involve lapses and relapses. Criminal justice supervision must be realistic about these difficulties and find ways to manage setbacks and difficulties constructively. It may take considerable time for supervision and support to exercise a positive effect.
Since desistance is an inherently individualised and subjective process, approaches to supervision must accommodate and exploit issues of identity and diversity. One-size-fits-all interventions will not work.
The development and maintenance not just of motivation but also of hope become key tasks for supervisors.
Desistance can only be understood within the context of human relationships; not just relationships between supervisors and offenders (though these matter a great deal) but also between offenders and those who matter to them.
Although the focus is often on offenders’ risks and needs, they also have strengths and resources that they can use to overcome obstacles to desistance – both personal strengths and resources, and strengths and resources in their social networks. Supporting and developing these capacities can be a useful dimension of supervision.
Since desistance is in part about discovering self-efficacy or agency, interventions are most likely to be effective where they encourage and respect self-determination; this means working with offenders not on them.
Interventions based only on developing the capacities and skills of people who have offended (human capital) will not be enough. Probation also needs to work on developing social capital, opportunities to apply these skills, or to practice newly forming identities (such as ‘worker’ or ‘father’).
The language of practice should strive to more clearly recognize positive potential and development, and should seek to avoid identifying people with the behaviors we want them to leave behind.

This summary was produced as part of an ongoing project which aimed to develop a much more comprehensive and innovative response to the challenge to “operationalize” desistance (explained more fully in McNeill et al. 2012a). Rejecting the prospect of an often futile, counterproductive, and disrespectfully one-sided conversation between research and practice, the collaborators in this project have sought to foster a dialogue about supporting desistance involving academics, policymakers, managers, practitioners, ex/offenders, and their families and supporters.

The project is entitled “Discovering Desistance” and is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (award no. RES-189-25-0258). Partnered in the USA by Prof. Faye Taxman’s Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (http://www.gmuace.org/), it aims to explore the experience and knowledge of these different stakeholders in relation to desistance from crime and how correctional supervision in the community can best support it. To this end, the project involves three key elements:

Developing, with key stakeholders, userfriendly methods of disseminating existing research about desistance from crime and about supporting desistance in offender supervision. This involved working with ex/ offenders, practitioners, and an independent film production company to make a documentary film about desistance (The Road from Crime; http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/theroad-from-crime) which was released in July 2012.
Facilitating dialogue through the “Discovering Desistance” blog site (see http://blogs. iriss.org.uk/discoveringdesistance/) where academics, ex/offenders, and practitioners have all made key contributions to developing the discussion.
Running a series of stakeholder workshops (across four jurisdictions) which aim at coproducing a set of clear recommendations about the further development of “practice for desistance” and beginning to delineate the features of an organized framework for offender supervision practice to support desistance. This is the focus of the ongoing final stage of the project.

Though it is too soon to report the findings of these workshops here, it is interesting to note that the ideas and proposals that they have generated extend far beyond supervision practice and into much broader aspects of reentry and reintegration. Some of the recurring “propositions” suggested in the UK-based workshops include the following:

Make greater use of reformed offenders: Participants called for more meaningful service-user (i.e., supervisee) involvement in the design, delivery, and improvement of policies and provision across the criminal justice system, involvement that could be part of clear career routes and would include developing ways of recognizing and rewarding skills. Participants argued that greater involvement of ex/offenders in mentoring schemes should be a key part of this involvement.
Reduce the reliance on imprisonment: Participants argued that there is a need to reduce the prison population (especially women, black men, those with mental health issues, and those on short sentences), with freed-up money reinvested in community justice.
Reorientate the philosophy of probation: They called for a rethinking of probation, making it more “holistic” or “humanized,” more focused on the service user’s wants, strengths, and aspirations, as well as aiming for more community involvement and a greater degree of flexibility and creativity.
Reconnect probation to local communities: Participants argued that, in the future, probation offices and officers need to become better connected with local communities.
Mobilize wider support networks: All of society needs to take on a responsibility for helping people stop offending (organizations, families, and individuals).
Focus on the positive, not the negative or risks: Participants suggested that criminal justice needed to focus more readily on the positives and what people have achieved and can achieve in the future.
Suggestions for supervision, release, and reintegration: Community supervision needs to work to challenge inequality and promote equality, equalizing life chances and contributing to social justice (pursuing both substantive equality and equality in the criminal justice process).
Redraft the [UK] Rehabilitation of Offenders Act: Participants suggested the need to redraft the legislation around criminal records, so as to really encourage and recognize rehabilitation, not stand in the way of it. Reformed offenders should have the opportunity to have their record “spent” much earlier than is currently the case.
Educate the general public about the processes of desistance: They suggested that there is a need to better educate the general public about the process of leaving crime behind and the lives of current and former service users in order to break down the “them” and “us” mentality; this would ensure that there is better public understanding that people are capable of change and that we all have a part to play in supporting change. Criminal justice agencies ought to demonstrate that positive change is possible and show that it is common.
Give people hope; show them they have a future: The criminal justice system needs to become more acquainted with hope and less transfixed with risk, pessimism, and failure.

Conclusions

Though, as this research paper demonstrates, many academics have worked hard in recent years to conduct and to disseminate desistance research, their voice in the debate about criminal justice reform is and should be just one among many. Others have different kinds of expertise to bring to this discussion. The Discovering Desistance project has been more about harnessing different forms of expertise than privileging or prioritizing one perspective. Perhaps its most important contribution has been to demonstrate the potential of “coproduction” in supporting change – at both the personal and the systemic levels (Weaver 2011).

As such, the impact on criminal justice – and more narrowly on correctional supervision – of engaging with desistance research is beyond the control of scholars and researchers; those working in and living with the correctional system have already started to talk and think about how and why people build new lives; the “desistance genie” is well and truly out of the bottle. In some respects, the work of academics in trying to stimulate new ways of thinking about supporting change in the criminal justice system and in the practice of supervision is complete. In other respects, it has barely begun. But while academics and researchers have plenty more work to do developing a robust, evidence-informed understanding of these processes and of what supports them, arguments over language, social attitudes, policy developments, and practice processes should not and cannot wait for research to provide “answers.” Rather, all of the stakeholders engaged with supervision – policymakers, practitioners, parolees and probationers, and families – need to press on with the urgent business of working out what to do to continue discovering and supporting desistance together.

Bibliography:

Bottoms A, McWilliams W (1979) A non-treatment paradigm for probation practice. B J of Soc Work 9(2):160–201
Burnett R (1992) The dynamics of recidivism. University of Oxford Centre for Criminological Research, Oxford
Farrall S (2002) Rethinking what works with offenders: probation, social context and desistance from crime. Willan Publishing, Cullompton
Glueck S, Glueck E (1937 [1966]) Later criminal careers. Kraus, New York
Lewis DA (1990) From programs to lives: a comment. Am J Community Psychol 18:923–926
Maruna S (2000) Desistance from crime and offender rehabilitation: A tale of Two research literatures. Offender Program Rep 4(1):1–13
Maruna S (2001) Making good. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC
Maruna S, LeBel T (2003) Welcome home? Examining the “re-entry court” concept from a strengths-based perspective. West Criminol Rev 4(2):91–107
Maruna S, LeBel T (2009) Strengths-based approaches to reentry: extra mileage toward reintegration and destigmatization. Jpn J Sociol Criminol 34:58–80
Maruna S, LeBel T (2010) The desistance paradigm in correctional practice: from programmes to lives. In: McNeill F, Raynor P, Trotter C (eds) Offender supervision: new directions in theory, research and practice. Willan, Cullompton
Maruna S, Porter L, Carvalho I (2004) The liverpool desistance study and probation practice: opening the dialogue. Probat J 51(3):221–232
McNeill F (2003) Desistance-focused probation practice. In: Chui W-H, Nellis M (eds) Moving probation forward: evidence, arguments and practice. Pearson Education, Harlow
McNeill F (2006) A desistance paradigm for offender management. Criminol Crim Justice 6(1):39–62
McNeill F (2009) Towards effective practice in offender supervision. Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, Glasgow. Available online at: http://www. sccjr.ac.uk/documents/McNeil_Towards.pdf
McNeill F (2012) Counterblast: a Copernican correction for community sentences. Howard J Crim Justice 51(1):94–99
McNeill F, Batchelor S (2004) Persistent offending by young people: developing practice, issues in community and criminal justice, Monograph No. 3. National Association of Probation Officers, London
McNeill F, Weaver B (2010) Changing lives? Desistance research and offender management. Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, Glasgow. Available online at: http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/documents/Report%202010_03%20-%20Changing%20Lives.pdf
McNeill F, Batchelor S, Burnett R, Knox J (2005) 21st century social work reducing reoffending: key skills. Scottish Executive, Edinburgh
McNeill F, Farrall S, Lightowler C, Maruna S (2012a) Reexamining “evidence-based practice” in community corrections: beyond “a confined view” of what works. Justice Res Policy 14(1):35–60
McNeill F, Farrall S, Lightowler C, Maruna S (2012b) How and why people stop offending: discovering desistance. Insights: evidence summaries to support social services in Scotland, No. 15, April 2012, Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services. Available online at: http://www.iriss.org.uk/sites/ default/files/iriss-insight-15.pdf
Ministry of Justice (2010) Breaking the cycle. Effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders. Ministry of Justice, London
Porporino F (2010) Bringing sense and sensitivity to corrections: from programmes to ‘fix’ offenders to services to support desistance. In: Brayford J, Cowe F, Deering J (eds) What else works? Creative work with offenders. Willan, Cullompton
Raynor P, Vanstone M (1994) Probation practice, effectiveness and the non-treatment paradigm. B J Soc Work 24(4):387–404
Rex S (1999) Desistance from offending: experiences of probation. Howard J Crim Justice 36(4): 366–383
Weaver B (2011) Co-producing community justice: the transformative potential of personalisation for penal sanctions. B J Social Work 41(6):1038–1057