Missed Opportunities: Perspectives of Incarcerated Israeli Women and Men on Their Unsuccessful Desistance

Abstract

The current study explores the factors that people incarcerated in Israeli prisons identify as contributing to their unsuccessful desistance. Twenty in-depth interviews were carried out with substance-involved men and women inmates. The findings showed that they faced subjective and sociostructural problems, reflecting interlocking axes of marginalization. However, the men and women constructed their narratives of unsuccessful desistance according to traditional gender roles: The men’s accounts were embedded in key concepts of masculinity such as unemployment, whereas the women’s accounts related to feminine notions such as motherhood. Possible implications for theory and intervention are discussed.

Keywords

desistance recidivism gender qualitative identity parenthood Israel

Introduction

The theoretical research of desistance from crime was greatly advanced by the seminal work of Laub and Sampson (1993, 2003), which shed light on the pivotal role of prosocial “turning points,” such as employment and marriages, in the desistance process. Other scholars (Maruna, 2001; Paternoster & Bushway, 2009) have placed much greater weight on individual-level factors, such as agency and identity transformation in the desistance process. However, there is a need for deeper understanding based on the integrated theories of desistance that take both structural and individual levels into account (Hannah-Moffat, 2015; LeBel, Burnett, Maruna, & Bushway, 2008). Furthermore, according to the “desistance paradigm” (Maruna & LeBel, 2010), desistance is not a “termination event” but rather a developmental process that may comprise many unsuccessful attempts before finally achieving and sustaining desistance. It is therefore crucial to examine the success and failure of desistance to understand the factors that lead to successful social reintegration from the perspective of people in prison (Cobbina, 2010; Gueta, Chen, 2015). Moreover, most empirical studies of theories of desistance are based on male samples, and scholars have questioned the applicability of those theories to women offenders, highlighting the need to investigate gender-specific processes of desistance and recidivism (Rodermond, Kruttschnitt, Slotboom, & Bijleveld, 2016). The present research seeks to fill this knowledge gap by exploring both structural and individual factors that incarcerated Israeli men and women identify as contributing to their failure to desist and examining the gendered meaning of their accounts.

To address this aim, we utilized a theoretical framework that drew on a social constructionist analysis of gender roles to develop greater understanding of the gendered construction and experience of unsuccessful desistance. The social constructionist approach acknowledges gender as socially and materially constructed and emphasizes the interaction, discourse, and interpretation that produce gender order (Gergen, 2001). It views gender and gender roles as the result of the normative prescriptions of masculinity and femininity that circulate in a given culture (Burr, 2015). Although “little empirical research has addressed men as gendered criminal subjects” (Wyse, 2013, p. 232), the literature indicates that desistance factors, such as employment and relationship, are gendered social institutions imbued with notions of masculinity and femininity (Carlsson, 2013; Opsal, 2012). For example, desistance was found to be linked to masculinity- and age-specific ideals of autonomy, control, and independence. Traditional gendered roles that emphasize “appropriate” conventional femininity (e.g., motherhood) were found to shape women’s self-concept and serve as catalyst for desistance (Giordano, Cernkovich, & Rudolph, 2002). However, despite the highly gendered employment arena, characterized by masculine ideals such as the “breadwinner,” Opsal (2012) found that early in their reentry, women used employment to construct prosocial replacement selves in their desistance narratives.

Background

Desistance, Recidivism, and Gender

Giordano et al. (2002) made an important contribution to the theoretical understanding of the study of desistance by showing how sociostructural factors interact with and inform human agency. Their theory of cognitive transformation posits that the desistance process begins when individuals choose “hooks for change,” that is, prosocial features of the environment, such as work or a romantic partner, that provide them an opportunity to transform their identities. They listed four fundamental cognitive transformations of self that initiate and eventually sustain change: (a) a shift in the actor’s basic openness to change, (b) the availability of hooks and the actor’s perception of the hook in a particular positive way, (c) the ability of the actors to envision an appealing and conventional “replacement self,” and (d) a transformation in the actors’ views of the deviant behavior or lifestyle itself. In their analysis of data derived from a detailed long-term follow-up of a sample of serious adolescent female and male delinquents, Giordano et al. (2002) found that neither marital attachment nor job stability was strongly related to female or male desistance. The authors also found gender sameness in the repertoire of hooks for change that the participants described, the language they used, and their descriptions of the entire change process, which they attributed to similar background factors, such as a dysfunctional family. However, they also found gender differences: Women more often cited their children as catalysts for the changes they had made, and the men attributed their changes more to prison or treatment.

In a more recent study, Farrall, Sharpe, Hunter, and Calverley (2011) presented a theoretical framework that places high value on inner processes of desistance but also acknowledges the pivotal importance of social structures. According to their integrated perspective on structural and individual-level processes in desistance, the process of identity construction is not an inner journey but is influenced by the wider social environment in which men and women in the process of desistance are subjected to a range of structural and psychological factors. Specifically, they argued that “actors’ own perceptions of both institutional structures and their immediate surroundings are what guide their ‘choices’” (p. 230). This process is mediated by “softer” emotions, such as hope, aspirations, and the culture of their immediate family.

Statistics have shown that more than four out of 10 people incarcerated return to prison within 3 years of their release (Pew Center on the States, 2011). This alarmingly high rate of recidivism places the task of successful reentry at the center of the criminal justice system efforts (Wright & Cesar, 2013). Given the diverse individual and community-related factors regarding desistance, this data calls for a careful consideration of not only “what works” in reentry but also “what works for whom” in respect to gender (Holtfreter & Wattanaporn, 2014). This is particularly important since women are one of the fastest growing sectors of the prison population (Guerino, Harrison, & Sabol, 2011). Women’s problems with the law tend to be related to substance abuse, and this growth is therefore attributed to stricter policies on drug offenses (Hannah-Moffat, 2015).

Gender differences have also been demonstrated within the sociostructural factors. The contribution of marriage and intimate relationships to desistance has been well-documented (Laub & Sampson, 2003; Van Schellen, Apel, & Nieuwbeerta, 2012), showing that they contribute to desistance by creating direct social control that encourages more positive routine activities which inhibit involvement in criminal activity and raise the cost of offending (Herrera, Wiersma, & Cleveland, 2010). However, the characteristics of the partners of men offenders, typically women who have had no illegal involvement, in contrast to the partners of women offenders, have led Laub and Sampson (2003) to poignantly ask, marriage is “good for whom?” (p. 46). It has been shown that the limited availability of prosocial spouses for women living in high-crime neighborhoods leads women to avoid intimate relationships in favor of desistance (Leverentz, 2006). Although some researchers have indeed found that the positive influence of marriage on desistance is much more prevalent among men than among women (Doherty & Ensminger, 2013; Zoutewelle-Terovan, van der Geest, Liefbroer, & Bijleveld, 2012), others have claimed that marriage and intimate relationships are much more beneficial to women (Cobbina, Huebner, & Berg, 2012; Van Schellen et al., 2012).

Another important family factor that was found to contribute to desistance is the parenting role. Studies of parenthood and criminal offending have suggested that having children might be a more important factor for women rather than men in their efforts to desist (Giordano, Seffrin, Manning, & Longmore, 2011; Kreager, Matsueda, & Erosheva, 2010), specifically regarding drug-dealing crimes (Griffin & Armstrong, 2003). However, mothering in inadequate economic conditions and with a lack of social support adds strain to a woman’s life that may, in turn, lead to recidivism (Bachman, Kerrison, Paternoster, Smith, & O’Connell, 2016; Michalsen, 2013).

One of the major findings in the desistance literature highlighted the role of employment both in providing positive routine activities and the motivation to avoid crime involvement for fear of losing the job and in forming the identity of a breadwinner (Laub & Sampson, 2003; Maruna, 2001). Poverty and unemployment, however, were identified as contributing to recidivism among women (Rodermond et al., 2016). Gender comparisons have shown formerly convicted women to have lower employment rates than men (Cobbina et al., 2012), although this may be due to obstacles such as lack of child care (Rodermond et al., 2016). Research has consistently shown the negative effect of the stigma of a criminal record on the employment efforts of people released from prison, leading to increased unemployment (Pager, 2003).

The evidence of reduced employment opportunities associated with the stigma of prior involvement with the justice system has motivated what is known as redemption research—the examination of long-term risk of recidivism—to inform policy and practice regarding the use of criminal records in employment decisions (Curcio, Pattavina, & Fisher, 2018). For example, the findings of redemption research may offer guidelines to employers about the diminished value of old criminal records as a measure of the future risk of offending (Blumstein & Nakamura, 2009). In such studies, the point of redemption, or the number of years that a person must remain crime free before their risk of reoffending matches the risk of first-time offending (Bushway, Nieuwbeerta, & Blokland, 2011), was found to be shorter among women compared with men (Curcio et al., 2018). This suggests that policies and guidelines for employers’ use of criminal records, such as sealing and expunging criminal records, should be considered separately for men and women.

Subjective personal factors have also been found to be related to desistance. Specifically, the importance of identity change in the desistance process has been highlighted (King, 2013; Maruna, 2001; Stone, Morash, Goodson, Smith, & Cobbina, 2018). Paternoster and Bushway (2009) presented two versions of the self in the desistance process. First, a “feared self,” is the image of what the individual does not want to become; second, a “possible self,” is what the person could become if he or she ceased offending, which emerges during desistance as a clear alternative to the feared self. Thus, while the “feared possible self” may serve as a catalyst for change, for such change to endure, it must be sustained by a desired future identity (Paternoster and Bushway, 2009). Michalsen (2013) found that the desire to avoid reincarceration contributes to a reduction in crime.

Gender differences in individual-level factors of desistance are associated with drug abuse and mental health issues, due to more history of victimization and greater incidence of relatives or intimate partners as the perpetrators of such violence among women, compared with men (Holtfreter & Wattanaporn, 2014; Wright, Van Voorhis, Salisbury, & Bauman, 2012). Another aspect associated more with women than men is substance use with family members, and especially intimate partners, which impedes their recovery (Leverentz, 2006). However, drug problems have been found to be relevant to recidivism for both men and women, particularly because of the need for money (Walters, 2014). The limited access to effective substance abuse treatment, in correctional facilities as well as in the community, may also hinder desistance from crime (Huebner et al., 2010). The co-occurrence of substance abuse and crime may also contribute to recidivism due to substance-involved peers and low prosocial support (Skeem, Louden, Manchak, Vidal, & Haddad, 2009) and intense stress (Zhao et al., 2010).

Desistance from crime and recovery from substance abuse are similar, in that they are both transformational dynamic processes. However, they are two different processes, and it is necessary to explore the crucial role of drug use in the desistance process, the role incarcerated people ascribe to drug-use problems, and the intertwined relationship between drug use and crime during desistance (Colman & Vander Laenen, 2012). This highlights the need for research on substance abuse among both men and women in prison.

In accordance with social constructionist theory, we acknowledged that the notions of masculinity, femininity, in the context of unsuccessful desistance vary widely across societies and within sociocultural, interpersonal, and individual perceptions (Gergen, 2001). The Israeli prison context offers a compelling case for exploration of this issue, due to Israeli social gender context (Ajzenstadt, 2009). On one hand, Israeli society is governed by a strong patriarchy, in light of the central role of religion in daily life and the country’s continuous state of war and dominant discourse of masculinity, which affects both women and men (Levy & Sasson-Levy, 2008). On the other hand, Israel has adopted a modern Western lifestyle, in which women formally enjoy equality and freedom in education and in the workplace (Ajzenstadt, 2009). The Israeli penal system is characterized by a mixture of punitive objectives that combines retributive, deterrence, compensatory, and rehabilitative approaches. In the past two decades (1990-2009), in line with worldwide dissatisfaction with the consequences of rehabilitative and/or deterrent sentencing policies, Israeli legislators have adopted the “new penology” ideology, which focuses only on the high-risk population. This might be expected to lead to reduction in imprisonment rates. However, the ideology has not been reflected in sanctioning policies. In fact, the total rate of imprisonment imposed by the Israeli courts rose by approximately 37%; the total percentages of suspended sentences remained stable; and there was a 10% decline criminal fines. The absolute number of people incarcerated in Israeli prisons is 14,576. Approximately 25% (n = 1,773) of all those incarcerated for crimes in Israel are first-timers, nearly 33% (n = 2,420) have been sentenced to a period of 2 years or less, and almost 52% (n = 3,734) of the prisoners were convicted for nonviolent, nonsexual, and relatively minor offenses (e.g., disturbing the public order, drugs, and property offenses; Beker & Einat, 2016).

In Israel there is only one prison for women, Neve Tirza. It houses 225 women at full capacity; 52% of those incarcerated have been previously jailed, and the average period of imprisonment is 2.7 years (SD = 2.70). Approximately 58% of the prisoners were incarcerated for drug-related crimes. Most of them (63%) are single, 32% are divorced, and 5% married ( Einat & Chen 2012)—comparable, albeit not identical, with the situation in U.S. and U.K. prisons (Einat, Harel-Aviram, & Rabinovitz, 2015).

In Israel, research and data regarding the prevalence of recidivism among prisoners are scant, but it is estimated that the recidivism rate, when measured among prisoners over a period of 5 years, is 41.3%. Among parolees, 28.2% returned to prison within 5 years of their release, as opposed to 47.1% of the nonparolees (Israel Prison Service, 2015). The Israel Prisoners’ Rehabilitation Authority is the statutory body that bears the main responsibility for constructing and implementing supervised rehabilitation programs, mainly for parolees who were released from prison after serving two thirds of their sentence. A rehabilitation plan typically includes both a treatment/employment component and supervision components. (Assy & Menashe, 2014). This authority provides a wide range of programs provided in different frameworks. The most common type of program is that of parolee supervision and treatment in the community rather than in halfway houses (Israel Prisoners’ Rehabilitation Authority, 2015). Typically, these programs include group and individual therapy, family therapy, employment services, electronic monitoring, and special groups for people who have committed sex offenses. However, due to severe resource shortages, the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority has fallen short of providing services to all prisoners who might deserve those (Assy & Menashe, 2014). According to the latest data, in 2015, 73% of the prisoners released had served their full sentence, most of them without treatment or supervision. Women in Israel account for a very small segment (2%) of the Israeli prison population, but they are given the opportunity to enroll in gender-sensitive programs that address past victimization and mental health issues. Furthermore, research has indicated significant gender differences regarding 5-year recidivism: 24.2% of formerly incarcerated women compared with 41.7% of men returned to prison (Israel Prisoners’ Rehabilitation Authority, 2015).

Method

Participants

The sample consisted of 20 people incarcerated in Israeli prisons (11 women and nine men). The women were drawn from the sole women’s prison in Israel. The men were drawn from two of Israel’s state penitentiaries (maximum- and medium-security prisons). To be eligible for inclusion, inmates had to (a) be Israeli citizens, (b) have had a drug dependence or abuse problem prior to or during their incarceration, and (c) have been incarcerated on at least three prior occasions. The offenses of the participants ranged from property crime and drug trafficking to sexual assault and murder, and they were serving sentences ranging from 5 years to life. The age of the women participants ranged from 21 to 49 (M = 33) and the male participants from 21 to 53 (M = 38). Of the participants, 18 were Jewish and two were Muslim. All but three were born in Israel. All had been arrested numerous times (most were unable to accurately recount the number of times they had been arrested) and had served an average of five previous prison sentences.

Instruments

In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with each participant as open conversations directed initially by the guidelines but primarily proceeded according to the data revealed (Patton, 2002). The interviews included questions such as whether they had experienced periods of desistance in the past and if so, what was the turning point and what could they have done differently. Participants were also asked about the factors contributing to their return to prison as well as a number of spontaneous questions aimed specifically at eliciting discussion about their experiences of offending and the criminal justice system.

The interviews were conducted in Hebrew, the native or second language of the participants. Each interview lasted between 1 and 1½ hr. Since prison policy prohibits the taping of interviews, we took field notes during the interview and transcribed them immediately afterward. This approach to data transcription is widely used and accepted in research conducted in prison settings (Martin, 2000). After each interview, we made notes about the general content and process of the interview as well as any observations regarding interactions that occurred before, during, or after the interview.

Procedure

The current research was part of a larger project that included mixed methods research in Israeli prisons ( Gueta & Chen, 2016). The project was approved by the committee of the Israel Prison Service who instructed the prison directors to collaborate with the researchers. To comply with the principle of anonymity, we asked prison staff to make the initial appeal to prospective participants. Those who agreed were then approached by the researchers who informed them of the purpose of the research. The participants signed informed consent forms provided by the Israel Prison Service which included a declaration of their voluntary agreement to participate and acknowledgment that they were free to withdraw from the study at any time.

Twelve women agreed to participate in the study. One woman terminated an interview midway because she was afraid of missing her chance to visit the prison store despite assurances to the contrary. Her interview was not included in the study. All nine men who agreed to participate in the study completed their interviews.

Data Analysis and Quality Criteria

We used a thematic analysis of the data, specifically the phases outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006), because this method has been shown to highlight the similarities and differences across a data set and to be useful in informing policy development. The aim was to study data at a latent level, examining the underlying ideas, constructions, and discourses that shape or inform its semantic content. First, the researchers read through the interviews to gain greater familiarity with the data. Next, each researcher independently coded the interview transcripts which resulted in an initial list of themes. We then sought the relationships between these to form overarching themes. After examining the themes that emerged in each individual interview, we conducted cross-case and comparative analyses to find consistent patterns in meaning, concepts, and themes with regard to gender across the 20 interviews. We then reached a consensus regarding the final set of themes presented in this article.

To establish transferability, we tested the reliability of the data in terms of credibility, dependability, and confirmability, as is typical in qualitative investigations (Lincoln & Guba, 1986). Two measures were used to further enhance of the validity of the study. First, researcher triangulation facilitated reaching a consensus on coding by means of debate and refinement of the final interpretation of the data and comments on the various drafts of the article. Second, an analysis of notes based on observations during and after the interviews. The authors’ extensive experience in psychotherapy and research with incarcerated people further contributed to the reliability of the current research. The analysis was conducted on the Hebrew language interview transcripts and subsequently translated into English.

Ethical Considerations

Given the sensitive research subject, we followed Coyle and Wright’s (1996) advice on using counseling techniques to conduct interviews. We made an effort to create a welcoming atmosphere and offered the participants professional support following the interviews, if needed. In addition, we used “processual consent” (Rosenblatt, 1995): In the course of the interviews, we asked questions such as “Are you ok to continue talking?” to ensure participants’ ongoing acquiescence. Due to their status as incarcerated people, we reiterated to participants that they were not obligated to participate and that any decision would have no effect on their criminal justice status.

Results

The participants’ explanation of their past unsuccessful desistance pointed to both subjective factors, such as personal choices, and sociostructural factors, such as unemployment (LeBel et al., 2008). However, the participants, typically, did not discuss each contributing factor separately or wholly independently of each other but rather demonstrated the dynamic relationship between them. Furthermore, the meaning of every theme varied between men and women in line with traditional gender roles. For many participants, recovery from substance abuse was associated with desistance from crime and by the same token, substance abuse was among the factors that played a critical role in the failure to desist.

Gendered Experiences of Parenthood

Six of the men and seven of the women reported having children. All the parents in the research (n = 13) mentioned their children as a trigger to “knife off” their criminal career and make an effort to get or remain free of drugs. For example, a 32-year-old man explained his emotional investment in a child to whom he was not biologically related. He attributed his previous motivation to desist to the toll his incarceration had taken on the child, since “I was like a father figure to him.” However, men tended to attribute their failures to desist to structural difficulties, such as inability to close former criminal records.

Criminal record (among men)

An example of this type of narrative was a description of the events prior to incarceration in which a 29-year-old man constructed his daughter as the motivation for trying to change his path:

I was clean for three years, facing very difficult challenges, but I was not willing to give up because . . . I was afraid about my daughter. I was afraid to fail her, to show her that Daddy had failed. I stayed in business three years. I was managing my life, until the criminal records came back to haunt me and blew up in my face and I entered [prison] again.

Loss of child custody (among women)

By the same token, the female participants constructed motherhood as a potential turning point in their past desistance. In particular, the months of pregnancy were marked as a special opportunity to recover from drug addiction, which they cited as central to their desistance. As a 34-year-old woman stated,

During the pregnancy with my first daughter, I [stopped using drugs] by myself without any help! It was important to me, but I didn’t go into treatment to keep on with it. Then I got pregnant again, and I used throughout the pregnancy. The child was born with withdrawal symptoms . . . It was tough . . . it hurts when you are released from hospital without the child, and the children were taken away from me, so I continued to use and sell [drugs].

In a similar cycle of drug abuse—lost custody—recidivism, a 40-year-old woman recalled how her desire to recover, relapse, and lost custody led to a loss of motivation:

I got clean and raised my daughter for two years, and then “the disease” got me again and I started using again and they took her for adoption, so I had nothing to lose and I didn’t want recovery or anything.

Gendered Experiences of the Role of Intimate Partners

Most men and some women referred to the positive role of their partners in their previous efforts to desist. However, one of the major differences between men and women was the type of support provided by their partners.

Unemployment and relational strain (among men)

The men saw their partners as caregivers; many of them emphasized the importance of their partners’ support in their decision to seek drug treatment and saw their partners as capable of influencing them to reduce their involvement in crime by “sensing” their escalation, helping them find jobs, and even relocating with them if necessary. They relied on constructing their partners as their “saviors,” reinforcing the gendered notion of women as caring. Despite the partners’ efforts, which were responsible for their initial inner motivation, these men saw structural factors, such as unemployment, as counterproductive to this support. For example, a 32-year-old man described his partner’s direct and active support during his previous release from prison but also cited the dynamic between structural factors, such as unemployment due to discrimination against exconvicts, and these relational factors:

[My partner] gave me something that I feel I did not get even from my mother and my ex-wife and not from anyone in my family. They fired me from work and with a past like mine I could not receive any regular job. Every time they told me to bring my criminal record, even in jobs where there is nothing to steal. They prefer to take someone who has no criminal record, even in a simple job where you can’t do damage. It was very hard and we tried to look for a job, really hard. She sensed that I was deteriorating, so we moved to live with her mother in another city and she supported me as I couldn’t find a job . . . then I got caught in some offense and here I am, and she continues to take care of me.

In addition to the positive role of partners, some participants, mostly women, also referred to their partners as a source of strain and as contributors to unsuccessful desistance. The male and female participants differed in this construction: Men saw the breakup of a relationship as a cause of relapse or recidivism; women described the relationship itself as a strain that contributed to relapse or reoffending. Men suggested that difficulties with their partners or wives were due to emotional intensity and that this contributed to their unsuccessful desistance through drug use. Specifically, their failed relationships made them unable to envisage a normative way of life and identity, and this led to despair and drug abuse as a way of dealing with the failure.

A 32-year-old man constructed such a sequence of events in his description of the interrelationship of intimate relationships, personal agency, normative identity, and inability to cope with the feelings that resulted from the breakup and led to substance abuse:

I finished my sentence, I got out, and got clean, but I got divorced. I had a lot of guilt, I don’t know what to call it—pain, failure—that led me back to drugs to forget everything. I could only see a life of drugs and crime, not a normative one, for me . . . the only way I could put up with what was happening was through drug use.

Partners’ partial support and counterproductive role (among women)

In contrast, the female participants pointed to the positive passive and partial support by partners that was hindered by their return to drug abuse or by their partners’ criminal involvement. For example, a 49-year-old woman stated,

During my ups and downs he didn’t divorced me . . . but I relapsed and started to use and sell drugs, so I ended up in prison again. My husband doesn’t come [to visit me in prison]. He is fed up of prison, but I understand him and I don’t complain about it. It’s enough that he sends me money.

For some of the women, due to the lack of family support and the homelessness in their backgrounds, they constructed the positive role of their partners as saving them from prostitution and thus partly preventing their criminal escalation. However, as seen in the narrative of a 35-year-old woman, the partner’s own involvement in crime hampered his support and eventually led to her recidivism:

I smoked [drugs] at home, so my parents kicked me out. I slept with drug dealers. I lived on the streets had seven arrests for drugs, but then I was doing better since my partner, he was an addict, but he did not want me to work as a prostitute so he brought me the drugs. We injected together, but he did not beat me. Then he went to prison and my life become “black” and I had nowhere to go, so I worked again [as a prostitute], did drugs and [drug trafficking] and got sent back to prison.

Some of the women saw their partners as one of the direct sources of the strain that led them to recidivism by providing drugs and thus hindering their desistance. One 35-year-old woman, for example, explained that men supplied her with drugs to have better sex with her. Another 42-year-old woman specified the role of men in her recidivism: “Men always used me, my partner kept me on drugs, so I would remain small and dependent on him.”

Gendered Experiences of Inadequate Interventions

Many participants, men and women alike, admitted that despite their wish to transform their lifestyles, they found this difficult without institutional support, such as treatment and parole programs. A 32-year-old man described his conscious decision to change his ways after his previous release:

I told myself, this time I’m not coming back to prison. I was sick and tired of prison, but I left and never went to a parole program. They didn’t give me a chance; they didn’t follow me. They say goodbye, and pack you off into the world, and you go out and you don’t find yourself.

However, men and women differed in their construction of their inadequate interventions and postrelease services in line with traditional gender roles. Men constructed their inability to avoid antisocial peers and take advantage of treatment as hindering their desistance. Women highlighted their vulnerability and victimization by claiming their need for more intensive treatment of their mental health and traumatic life experiences.

Delinquent peers and inability to take advantage of treatment (among men)

Most of the men, in contrast to the women, connected employment to desistance. Their determination to stop offending and get a job suggested a strong internal motivation and demonstrated notions of masculinity, such as independence, self-reliance, and power over their own actions. However, as pointed out by a 49-year-old man, the personal decision to recover and the motivation to work hard were not sufficient to counteract the influence of delinquent friends and family:

After prison, I decided to get clean and I opened a transportation company driving children. I worked 16 hours a day . . . then my cousin requested stuff [heroin]. I told him, I’m not in business anymore, but he called again. I said OK, we will get it for you, then he snitched to the police. Satan comes to your door.

Another gender difference was evident in the accounts of failed interventions and inadequate postrelease services. Men, in contrast to women, attributed their recidivism to their inability to take advantage of the postrelease treatments that were available. They showed awareness that success in these treatments required the ability, which they lacked, to envisage a normative identity. For example, the interrelatedness between structural opportunity and their capacity to imagine a credible future self was evident in the narrative of a 39-year-old man who expressed that despite access to potentially life-changing treatment, an individual may lack the necessary attitudes such as an optimistic outlook and the ability to visualize a new identity.

I went to the therapeutic community only to avoid prison. I finished the treatment and just after that I went to use [drugs] . . . I have a behavioral pattern of avoiding life problems. I have a pessimistic view of life, I always think of the worst that could happen. I can’t see myself as a different person, as normative.

Men also related to the different components of the postrelease treatments that prevented them from benefiting from these programs. They cited their inability to avoid antisocial behavior and to express emotion, both issues related to masculinity notions of retaliation and avoiding the expression of vulnerability. One 49-year-old man referred to the component of avoiding violence. He was aware that his participation in treatment could have been a turning point but instead he dropped out and ended up back in prison:

When I was released, I went to therapy to treat myself because I could not find the right way by my own. My great anger was that they [the prisoner rehabilitation authority)] did not offer me [participation in a program]. I went to a program by myself! I was at the day center where I ran into a guy with prison-like behavior [i.e., acting aggressively] and he tries to confront me and so I showed him who was who. I [attacked him] . . . I dropped out of treatment.

Embedded in this participant’s narrative is his anticipation that help would be offered to him rather than being initiated by him. His account also reveals that despite his choice to start therapy, he found it hard to avoid the confrontations of others and felt the need to retaliate despite the long-term implications.

Another element of treatment modalities that many men attributed to the failure of their therapeutic experience is emotional exposure especially in the group sessions. For example, one 32-year-old man described that despite his desire to avoid reincarceration, which he expressed as a sense of weariness, and his own initiative to start treatment, he found it hard to share and work through emotional issues especially in a group setting. This failed therapeutic experience was constructed as a missed opportunity that could have transformed his criminal career:

During my last sentence I got tired, I didn’t want to see prison, I was tired of the system, of all of this life. I said I had to do something after I was released from prison . . . [He went to a therapeutic community.] In the [therapeutic] community they press too much, it was hard for me to share, too much digging about feelings in groups. If treatment was individual, I would not have left. In groups, someone sniggers. You have no confidence in the group. I got in a mess with punishments, and I broke down and left. . . . It was a missed opportunity.

Traumatic experiences and mental health problems (among women)

The women described similar views to those of the men regarding the importance of treatment; most of them saw treatment of their drug problems as missed opportunities that could have contributed to their desistance. However, unlike the men, the women attributed their failed therapeutic experiences to insufficient emotional exposure and working through of their trauma and emotional state, focusing on their vulnerability and victimization. A 42-year-old woman who was homeless and abused by her partner expressed her unsuccessful desistance:

I feel I deserve to be punished. It’s not only because of him [my partner] that I have come back [to prison]. This is not my first case but my fourth. They gave me a probation officer. I recovered and relapsed again. I have a mental problem. I need to take care of my addiction.

Similarly, a 22-year-old woman attributed her unsuccessful desistance to substance abuse but further indicated her victimization:

I went with a certain person and then I was raped. I did not watch out for myself, I brought it on myself, I was looking for drugs, I was on drugs, it was inevitable. I’m angry at myself and don’t forgive myself for things that happened, because I was not with my mother when she was sick, I hurt my family, the people closest to me. I didn’t listen to them and I came back to prison.

And yet another 42-year-old woman constructed a similar unsuccessful attempt at desistance as the result of repeated sexual abuse:

I was in the [therapeutic] community and was clean for three years, and then I went back home and my brother raped me again and it brought me back to drugs. I went back to using and stealing, so I came back here.

Discussion

The aim of the current study was to explore factors identified by substance-involved men and women in Israeli prisons as contributing to their unsuccessful desistance. All the participants acknowledged making a decision to stop offending or using drugs, be it a reactive decision to adverse experiences, such as weariness from the prison life, or a proactive decision embedded in their role as a parent. This indicates that a “feared self” may serve as a catalyst for desistance (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009). For many of them, both men and women, recovery was an important means of successful desistance from crime, but they also noted the crucial role of their substance abuse problems in unsuccessful desistance. This referred both to use of drug as a means of self-medication and to the inability to recover from drug use as leading to crime and imprisonment. However, structural constraints and social pressures hindered their subjective motivation and, similarly, external social and structural opportunities were missed due to a lack of subjective motivation. These findings are in line with existing theories on desistance which highlight the need for a strong motivation to change alongside diverse social and structural support, a combination of “the will and the ways” (LeBel et al., 2008, p. 136). In contrast to the existing theories, which focus on structural variables or agency as creating a “false dichotomy” that conceals the interconnectedness of the social and personal worlds (Farrall & Bowling, 1999, p. 254), the current findings reveal that these factors are interrelated and coconstructed, reflecting interlocking axes of marginalization. This suggests not only the need to incorporate social, structural, and subjective factors to understand desistance but rather the need for a more interrelated and dynamic conceptualization of those factors. This is consistent with Farrall et al.’s (2011) integrated perspective of desistance and the role of “actors” own perceptions of both institutional structures and their immediate surroundings. Furthermore, the perceptions of the participants were mediated by “softer” emotions, such as hope and self-efficacy. Participants believed that a replacement self (Giordano et al., 2002) that does not offend was unattainable and described their helplessness and inability to exercise control over their fate. Consequently, they suffered a loss of purpose and guidance on how to avoid this unwanted fate (Healy, 2014). Thus, the findings corroborated Paternoster and Bushway’s (2009) assertion that a “feared possible self” may serve as a catalyst for change but long-term behavioral change is sustained by the ability to imagine a positive future self.

However, the men and women diverged in their construction of these factors according to traditional gender ideals. The men’s accounts of unsuccessful desistance were embedded in key concepts of masculinity which have been firmly established in the literature, such as unemployment and a fear of showing vulnerability. The women’s accounts, on the contrary, related to feminine concepts such as the centrality of children and the influence of inner emotional problems. Parenthood as a trigger to desistance was mentioned by many participants, both men and women, in line with previous findings (Giordano et al., 2011). However, while men attributed their unsuccessful desistance, motivated by their children, to structural obstacles related to their criminal background, many women saw their failure to desist as a result of inadequate treatment and the strain of lost child custody. It has been found that parenthood has a greater positive influence on women than men and that mothers who have daily interaction with their children benefit the most from the status of motherhood due to the opportunities it provides for creating meaningful prosocial identity and positive routine activities and deflecting stigma (Rodermond et al., 2016). The current findings indicated that for women, the loss of child custody not only limited and decreased their motivation to desist but also created a strain that they self-medicated with drugs. These findings are consistent with strain theories, particularly in terms of the presence of negative stimuli and the inability to deal with strain (Broidy & Agnew, 1997).

The disparity between their accounts of romantic relationships and their perceived contribution to unsuccessful desistance revealed an additional gender difference. Men constructed their partners as caregivers and highlighted the significance of their support, thus reinforcing the feminine aspect of caring for others (Gilligan, 1982). For women, however, the support received from their partners was seen as partial, as found in previous studies (Leverentz, 2006). Furthermore, men saw their partners as indirectly responsible for their unsuccessful desistance, citing failed relationships as impeding their ability to see themselves as a normative (Maruna, 2001). This finding demonstrated the interrelation between romantic relationships and normative identity among men, showing that men “marry up” and upgrade their social status via marriage (Laub & Sampson, 2003). The analysis also suggested that romantic relationship may play a pivotal role in the ability to imagine a meaningful and credible new self (Healy, 2014). Women, however, in accordance with the existing literature (Bloom, Owen, & Covington, 2003), signaled their partners’ direct role in their unsuccessful desistance particularly through supplying them with drugs. Given the negative effect or only partial positive support of their partners, it is not surprising that some formerly incarcerated women recognize men as a significant source of strain and thus choose to distance themselves and avoid romantic relationships (Leverentz, 2006).

Finally, and also in line with the findings of other research, the participants asserted the need to be under some type of supervision, acknowledging their inability to desist on their own (Hanrahan, Gibbs, & Zimmerman, 2005). This is consistent with the findings of other research in Israel that people released from prison highly valued the role of treatment continuum and supervision in the community (Gideon, 2009). This may reflect the diminished efficacy of social welfare system for substance abusers in Israel (Peleg-Oren, Rahav, & Teichman, 2002). It highlights the need to provide tailored services to prisoners prior to their release.

However, men and women diverged in their attribution for failed therapeutic experiences. Men saw employment as an indicator of their motivation to desist but at the same time blamed the difficulty to obtain work following conviction for their unsuccessful desistance. The interrelatedness between employment and unsuccessful desistance was conveyed through feelings of stigma and social exclusion as in existing findings (LeBel et al., 2008; Pager, 2003). The centrality of employment may be related to the breadwinner role that encompasses normative elements of masculinity (Speer, 2001).

The absence of the subject of employment in the women’s narratives, contrary to findings of previous research (Opsal, 2012), may be explained by the low-level positions of formerly incarcerated women, which failed to provide them with beneficial status or identity (Rodermond et al., 2016). This is consistent with Giordano et al.’s (2002) finding that employment plays a less fundamental role in women’s desistance because they may be more likely than men to rely on other financial support and less likely to use this role to craft their identity.

While men attributed failed therapeutic experience to specific treatment components such as avoiding violence and emotional exposure, women expressed the need for more intensive treatment. This gendered effect could lie in the role that traditional notions of masculinity, such as self-sufficiency and avoidance of displays of vulnerability, play in men’s responsiveness to therapeutic programs (Day, Zahn, & Tichavsky, 2015). According to this traditional notion, to be a “man” is to be “strong,” and there is no room for vulnerability, which explains men’s reluctance to “talk about it” and to avoid treatment (Fischer & Good, 1997).

Furthermore, the men pointed at notions of masculinity—connected to what Anderson (1999) called the “code of the street”—that were counterproductive of desistance. Their therapeutic experiences could be seen to counter the values of masculinity that they adhere to, such as using violence to encourage respect. The therapeutic structure of many of the interventions for people released from prison is seen as paradoxical for some men: On one hand, treatment participation expects and rewards engagement in self-reflection which involves significant emotional expression; on the other hand, this same process may also harm the men’s hegemonic masculinity. As men are more compatible with the ideology of traditional masculinity, they are, it seems, more likely to hold positions that deny the expression of emotions and thus be less ready to express their feelings (Fischer & Good, 1997).

For the women participants, however, the need for more intensive therapy and the strain caused by continued abuse were the most commonly discussed issues regarding their failed therapeutic experiences. This may indicate that although the literature focuses on victimization as a key factor of gendered pathways to crime (Salisbury & Van Voorhis, 2009), victimization also relate to unsuccessful desistance. The women themselves, however, tended to attribute their failed therapeutic experiences to internal problems such as addiction and mental health. This corresponds to Benda’s (2005) findings that abuse and adverse thoughts and feelings upon release from prison are strongly associated with women’s recidivism. Furthermore, this construction may represent women’s propensity—particularly among women who subscribe to the traditional values of a feminine gender role (Efthim, Kenny, & Mahalik, 2001)—to internalize social problems and to blame themselves for perceived failures and punish themselves for personal inadequacies (Manion, 2003).

Conclusion and Implications

The present analysis contributes to the existing research literature on gender and desistance in two important respects. First, its focus on both individual and structural factors allowed the emergence of gender sameness and identification of the shared axes of marginalization of incarcerated people. This suggests that gender may be an important structure but also that it is interwoven with other social structures (Collins, 2004). Second, little empirical research has addressed men as gendered criminal subjects. Thus, the current findings may contribute to feminist theories of crime and promote a more dynamic understanding of gender construction, shifting the current focus of feminist criminology from women only toward greater attention to offenders as gendered subjects. This may enrich desistance theories by encouraging greater gender sensitivity. Furthermore, the results may inform the development of therapeutic strategies that address these perceptions, particularly in light of today’s highly gendered rehabilitative work (Wyse, 2013).

This study has a number of policy implications. Most notably, the findings suggest that to promote desistance, it is critical to provide both men and women with a wide range of practical assistance relating to employment, family support, and drug intervention. These factors do not, however, work in an isolated vacuum but rather in an interrelated manner with subjective factors, and thus there should be a focus on establishing agency and inner motivations to desist in tandem with structural and social support. Furthermore, gender-responsive treatment should be available not only for women but also for men. For example, while reunification of women with her children may not automatically lead to crime reduction, assistance should focus on providing continued substance abuse treatment and identifying the loss of child custody as a risk factor for women. Despite their beneficial role, marriage and intimate relationships may not automatically lead to a reduction in recidivism among men; this may require the availability of employment assistance, as well.

Furthermore, the findings support the negative effect of criminal record on emolument of formerly incarcerated people. Thus, they are consistent with the efforts of social movements and legislators to require removal of criminal record questions on applications for public and/or private employment, such as “ban the box” legislation (Vuolo, Lageson, & Uggen, 2017). For women, the quality of their relationships and the inherent strain may imply the need for the services that help them manage their intimate relationships and consider alternative social relationships. The dominance of the substance-use problems in the narratives of unsuccessful desistance reflects our current aim to explore substance-involved inmates and our recruitment of participants, in line with the well-documented identification of substance use as a key criminogenic risk factor for recidivism especially among women (Hannah-Moffat, 2015). This, in turn, suggests the potential merits of offering substance-involved incarcerated people interventions that address both problematic sets of behaviors (Elison et al., 2016).

Last, the meaning of employment and its influence on desistance were found more relevant to men than women. Postrelease programs for women may, therefore, need to incorporate a component of employment by creating a space for women to reconsider the meaning of employment to their life, given their shorter redemption point (Curcio et al., 2016). The need to train people released from prison, both men and women, to find more meaningful jobs and acquire education is all the more salient (Torre & Fine, 2005).

Although this study provides an in-depth understanding of unsuccessful desistance among men and women who are incarcerated, several limitations must be considered. First, the social and cultural contexts within which individuals live may influence the nature of reflexivity. For example, in the current study, unlike in previous research, the participants talked, on the whole, of the advantages and the need for postrelease programs. This inconsistency may be attributed to their position as incarcerated people and not parolees, which leads to a desire to conform to rehabilitation efforts (Farmer, McAlinden, & Maruna, 2015). In addition, the nature of this qualitative study precludes generalization since it was based on a small nonrepresentative sample of participants from a unique sociocultural background. For example, in Israel, women are given less strict sentences, and community service is more common. In addition, the participants shared a cultural heritage, social values, and certain social structural factors specific to Israeli society, and their narratives might be influenced by the postrelease programs available in Israel and their general experience in the Israeli criminal justice system. Furthermore, the participants had extensive involvement in substance abuse, and therefore, the findings are particularly relevant to incarcerated people with drug dependence or abuse problems. The findings can nevertheless be heuristically and tentatively applied to other relevant contexts (Lincoln & Guba, 1986). In future studies, it would be useful to use cross-continental studies to examine the similarities and differences of gender issues in reference to desistance.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Keren Gueta is a lecturer in the Department of Criminology at Bar-Ilan University. Her major areas of research are drug addiction among women, motherhood on the margins, and gender differences in crime. In addition to her academic roles, Dr. Gueta is a clinical criminologist and worked for the Israeli prisoner rehabilitation authority.

Gila Chen is a senior lecturer in the Department of Criminology at Ashkelon Academic College. Her major areas of research are drug addiction and treatment, youth at-risk, women offenders, male and female inmates, and gender differences in crime and substance abuse, and child abuse. In addition to her academic roles, Dr. Chen is a short term psychotherapist.

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