Adam Calverley,Cultures of desistance: Rehabilitation,reintegration and ethnic minorities

Reviewed by: Hannah Graham, University of Tasmania, Australia

The 2011 UK riots and the fatal police shooting of a young African-Caribbean man presaged the recent racialised representations of crime and deviance in British media. The ensuing moral panic and calls to ‘do something!’ by social commentators and a fearful public made little reference to empirical sociological and criminological knowledge of the issues. Rapid and reactive processing of offenders into an already overstretched criminal justice system saw the highest prison population ever recorded in England and Wales, encompassing a troubling overrepresentation of ethnic minorities. Notwithstanding the wider need to tackle issues of racialised reporting and pejorative social attitudes, books such as Adam Calverley’s Cultures of Desistance offer a measured and germane account of what is needed to support ethnic minority offenders leaving the criminal justice system.

Cultures of Desistance explores how structural and cultural differences affect the desistance processes of male offenders from three different ethnic minorities in the UK: Indians, Bangladeshis, and Black and dual heritage offenders. It offers qualitative insights that redress knowledge gaps about how and why these individuals stop offending and change their lives. Throughout the book, Calverley highlights how desistance and reintegration processes are influenced by different factors (e.g., cultural traditions, religion, and recreational and employment opportunities) and actors (particularly family and social networks). While situated in the UK, this book is among the first of its kind and represents a timely contribution to international criminology. The need for more sociologically informed and culturally responsive desistance research like this cannot be emphasised enough.

Calverley’s writing style is pragmatic and clear. Somewhat unimaginative chapter titles are a small price to pay for the refreshing clarity. This book started life as a PhD thesis, yet it avoids obtuse and insecure wordiness that can beleaguer postgraduate writing. Cultures of Desistance’s clearest strength is its sensitivity to issues of representation in two areas: ethnicity and culture, and crime and people with criminal convictions. It is detailed in its contextualised account of each ethnic group, locating the sample of research participants with respect to diversity and cultural solidarity.

Chapter one introduces and contextualises the research, while chapter two reviews the international literature on ethnicity, crime and desistance from crime. Both chapters are interesting and accomplished in their synthesis of themes and literature. One discernible absence is a lack of clarification of the meaning and use of key terms ‘rehabilitation’, ‘reintegration’ and ‘desistance’ in the title and throughout the book. The former two terms are well known, albeit contested, but the latter term – and the rapidly increasing body of scholarship and practices associated with it – may be new territory for some.

Chapter three provides a thorough and reflexive account of the qualitative research design and methodology. Calverley’s honesty and humility in speaking of issues of whiteness, authority, and legitimacy and his relations with probation and parole practitioners as gate-keepers in the participant recruitment process illuminate the discussions of sampling and data analysis.

Chapters four to six, devoted to each of the three ethnic groups, are similarly structured. Chapter four features stories of Indian offenders’ strategies for managing shame and exclusion, and explains how family relationships mediate their reintegration processes. Chapter five offers a similar overview for Bangladeshis, yet religion features more prominently in their views than in the Indian sample, with re-engagement with Islam seen as helpful in ‘going straight’. Also, the chapter yields fascinating insights into the micro-sociology of shared emotions in desistance processes, especially in individuals ‘demonstrating they are trustworthy’ and proving to their family that they have changed (p. 97).

Chapter six makes for compelling, but depressing reading. The interviews with Black and dual heritage desisters render visible the barriers to their desistance and lasting pro-social change. Issues featured include: social inequality (including a lack of social capital and human capital), experiences of differential policing and the pull of criminogenic networks amid blocked opportunities and acutely disadvantaged environments. The reader need not be British to discern the gravity of these issues for Black ethnic minorities in the UK post-2011 and parallels evident in America, Australia and other nations. Yet emergent stories of respect and self-improvement serve as hopeful affirmations that change, although difficult, is possible. One research participant, Benjamin, perceives desistance as contagious, hoping to affect his former peers: ‘I believe if I show the way through the things I’ve been through, maybe they’ll click and think, “oh it can be done”, but I have to set their example first’ (p. 133). The section about the gymnasium as instrumental in supporting desistance and belonging is excellent.

Chapter seven consolidates the research findings with a thorough sociologically informed analysis of factors that affect ethnic differences in desistance processes. A critical finding of the book is that ‘whilst the three ethnic groups shared the same fundamental mechanisms responsible for promoting desistance, the socio-structural and socio-cultural differences between them affected how, when and where these mechanisms operated’ which, ultimately, shaped the ‘direction of the pathways they endeavoured to take’ (p. 139). Indeed, the differences are pronounced and homogenous stereotypes are displaced, especially in the section on racism and masculinities. This study sets the scene nicely for others to follow with culture and gender-sensitive investigation of how women from ethnic minorities experience desistance and reintegration processes.

The book concludes with a skilled discussion in chapter eight of its implications for informing future research agendas. However, examination of its applications to policy and practice is, at just under three pages and in a book where ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘reintegration’ feature in the title, surprisingly brief. Given the potential of desistance and rehabilitation scholarship to inform penal cultures and practices, and given how significant the book’s findings are amid a season of far-reaching neoliberal cuts and changes to probation and ‘transforming rehabilitation’ in England and Wales, the lack of in-depth applied analysis is one arrant limitation in an otherwise accomplished text.

Overall, Cultures of Desistance is moderately advanced in the territory it covers and the invaluable new knowledge it contributes, but remains accessible and clear in its delivery. Calverley’s attention to detail ensures that the book achieves what any good monograph should: it is informative, relevant and interesting. Nuanced desistance research like this and other new studies (e.g., Glynn, 2013) have the capacity to be game-changers in shifting the focus of the race and crime debate away from pathology-based, criminogenic risk focussed research – which may inadvertently entrench negative representations of ethnic minorities – towards fresh perspectives and proactive partnerships which generate different, better futures and research agendas.