Abstract
Research and policy have both long recognized the association between ethnicity and crime, but focusing largely on negative markers such as overrepresentation. Desistance offers a strength-based approach to considering engagement in and disengagement from crime, and this book is a welcome and overdue addition to the desistance literature that focuses on how ethnicity, ‘an interactive factor with other determinants of desistance’ (p. 5), influences the processes of desistance in ethnic minority offender populations in the United Kingdom. This book draws primarily on Calverley’s interviews with Indian, Bangladeshi and Black and dual heritage offenders exploring their struggles towards desistance. The book is a narrative that presents and supports arguments using illustrative extracts from interviews with desisters, supplemented by interviews with practitioners working with these offenders, case notes and detailed descriptions. All together this begins to rectify the gap in the literature, identified by Calverley in Chapter 1, around the differences in ‘how and why offenders belonging to different ethnic backgrounds desist from crime’ (p. 6, emphasis in original).
Chapter 2 offers a concise but broad overview of relevant and foundational research into desistance, the process by which individuals cease re-offending. This literature review is a challenging endeavour given the current breadth of the desistance texts that draw upon a geographically wide range of studies. The following methodology chapter is comprehensive and a lengthy read. However, given the strongly qualitative nature of the research presented in this book, it does offer valuable insight into the research and its findings.
The next three chapters focus on the three ethnic groups of interest and explore their experiences of desisting. Chapter 4 is a detailed account of Indian interviewees’ efforts to desist as well as an overview of the historical, socio-economic and socio-structural environment in which this takes place, valuable for readers unfamiliar with this backstory. Chapter 5 follows a similar structure in its account of Bangladeshi desisters, and both chapters continuously link the findings back to the existing desistance literature. The findings highlight interesting differences between the two South Asian ethnic groups, with Indian desisters strongly influenced by family and less so by religion, while the latter is a central element of Bangladeshi offenders’ pathways to desistance. While for these two groups desistance tends to be a ‘collective project’, the processes of desistance for Black and dual heritage offenders is a more individualized process (p. 122). Chapter 6 focuses on the latter’s experiences, but the content of this chapter is a somewhat depressing contrast to the preceding two chapters, highlighting the significant challenges faced due to the absence of the supports that feature so heavily in Indian and Bangladeshi accounts.
Chapter 7 brings together the processes of desistance discussed in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 and explores the differences in the extent and direction in which macro-level and meso-level factors in families and within individuals impacted efforts to desist in the different ethnic groups. The differences were most pronounced at the meso-level where, focusing on social capital and social networks, Calverley contrasts the richness of familial, community and even religious social networks available to Indian and Bangladeshi desisters, to the scarcity of similar supports available to Black and dual heritage offenders. The findings show that the latter were more reliant on their own resources and support from statutory and voluntary organizations to provide ‘hooks’ or ‘blueprints’ for change and validation of their desistance efforts as compared to Indian and Bangladeshi desisters. Calverley then identifies the impacts of this on how and the extent to which structural forms and cultural expectations acted as mechanisms of desistance.
Calverley concludes with a summary of findings and a discussion on the implications of his findings for the desistance literature before offering some suggestions for research that may extend the current focus. However, while there is good consideration given to extending the research agenda, the consideration of how such findings may translate into policy and practice is very brief. Desistance-research is conducive to practical application and increasingly informing practice in fields such as probation, where it underlies case management approaches and, as highlighted in the title, rehabilitation and reintegration efforts (McNeill et al., 2010). It is therefore surprising that the author offers only a cursory consideration of the practical implications of his findings, especially given how the literature review revolves around the relationships between ethnicity and engagement in crime, and ethnicity and desistance, as well as how this operates at the policing, courts and correctional levels.
This is a valuable addition not only to the International Series on Desistance and Rehabilitation but also to the broader desistance literature that, till now, has expanded to cover a broad number of areas but, as Calverley identified, has largely neglected ethnicity as a variable. While Calverley suggests that this research can be extended to consider similar processes in other environments and offender populations, this volume already lays the foundation for that research area with the recognition and evidence that ethnicity needs to be taken into consideration when considering how to best support rehabilitation and reintegration efforts. To that end, I believe that this research is valuable not only to practitioners and researchers working with or interested in Indian, Bangladeshi or Black and dual heritage offenders, but also those outside of the United Kingdom for those who work with ethnic minority groups for whom historical, structural and social factors influence pathways to desistance.