How and why people stop offending: discovering desistance

This is an evidence summary published by the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social services in Scotland (IRISS). It summarises evidence about desistance from crime and provides a series of recommendations for criminal justice policy, systems and practice

Could the values or value system of a competent person, disclosed in a living will, play a role in medical treatment decision-making processes under the Mental Capacity Act 2005?

Disclosing a value system in a living will could be in your best interests: Whilst doctors are recognised for being expert in medical matters they are nevertheless generally required by law to obtain the consent of a competent adult patient prior to administering a medical treatment.1 The need for consent underpins the right of a competent adult patient to refuse treatment, even life preserving treatment. Accordingly, bodily inviolability is a fundamental principle of law and violation of it, even for benevolent reasons, is prima facie punishable. Instead of which a competent patient has a right to self-determine what shall happen to their own body. In this way the subjective decision-making standards and methods of a competent patient inform, and are made determinative, of any decision to accept or reject a medical treatment. It is against this general background that the comments of Lord Goff in the case of Bland should be considered. There he suggested that the best interests test should comprise of something more than purely professional appraisal of a person’s medical welfare.2 To confine the test in this way, he said, would be inconsistent with the primacy given to the principle of self-determination and would ‘downgrade the status of the incompetent person by placing a lesser value on [their] intrinsic worth and vitality’.3 So as the title to this thesis suggests I am primarily concerned with legal provisions governing medical treatment decision-making processes in respect of formerly competent adult patients. More specifically it questions whether the values, beliefs and preferences of members of this patient group should be more favourably promoted, i.e. used and made determinative, in medical treatment decision-making processes concerning them based on contemporary understanding and application of the moral principle of autonomy

Reexamining evidence-based practice in community corrections: beyond 'a confined view' of what works

This article aims to reexamine the development and scope of evidence-based practice (EBP) in community corrections by exploring three sets of issues. Firstly, we examine the relationships between the contested purposes of community supervision and their relationships to questions of evidence. Secondly, we explore the range of forms of evidence that might inform the pursuit of one purpose of supervision—the rehabilitation of offenders—making the case for a fuller engagement with “desistance” research in supporting this process. Thirdly, we examine who can and should be involved in conversations about EBP, arguing that both ex/offenders’ and practitioners’ voices need to be respected and heard in this debate

Moral Panics and Punctuated Equilibrium in Public Policy: An Analysis of the Criminal Justice Policy Agenda in Britain

How and when issues are elevated onto the political agenda is a perennial question in the study of public policy. This article considers how moral panics contribute to punctuated equilibrium in public policy by drawing together broader societal anxieties or fears and thereby precipitating or accelerating changes in the dominant set of issue frames. In so doing they create opportunities for policy entrepreneurs to disrupt the existing policy consensus. In a test of this theory, we assess the factors behind the rise of crime on the policy agenda in Britain between 1960 and 2010. We adopt an integrative mixed-methods approach, drawing upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. This enables us to analyze the rise of crime as a policy problem, the breakdown of the political-institutional consensus on crime, the moral panic that followed the murder of the toddler James Bulger in 1993, the emergence of new issue frames around crime and social/moral decay more broadly, and how—in combination—these contributed to an escalation of political rhetoric and action on crime, led by policy entrepreneurs in the Labour and Conservative parties

Using ideas derived from historical institutionalism to illuminate the long-term impacts on crime of ‘Thatcherite’ social and economic policies

In this working paper, we outline our thinking on a very large and complex undertaking; namely the assessment of the ways in which the Thatcher governments of the 1980s may have had quite unintended consequences on crime via some of the policies which they set about pursuing for quite separate reasons, but which, nevertheless contributed to amongst other things, the upswing in crime in the 1980s. Our thinking is not heavily informed by theories commonly examined by criminologists; instead our thinking about both the causal antecedents of these governments and their approach to re-engineering society, and the causal antecedents of crime are informed by thinking inspired by historical institutionalist scholars writing within political science, and sociological and economic theories of crime causation. We outline historical institutionalism and identify the ways in which it may be of use to ourselves

Which probes are most useful when undertaking cognitive interviews?

This paper reports the use of verbal probes in cognitive interviews (CIs) undertaken to test the usefulness, validity and reliability of survey questions. Through examining the use of probes by three interviewers undertaking interviews as part the piloting of a cross-national crime survey, we examine which of the various types of probes used in CIs produce the most useful information. Other influences on interview quality are examined, including differences between interviewers and respondents themselves. The analyses rely on multi-level modelling and suggest that anticipated, emergent and conditional probes provide the most useful data. Furthermore, age, gender and educational levels appear to have no bearing on the quality of the data generated

Architecture and engineering of a supramolecular functional material by manipulating the nano-structure of fiber network

Three-dimensional fiber networks were created from an organogel system consisting mainly of elongated fibrils by using a nonionic surfactant as an additive. The presence of the surfactant molecules manipulates the network structure by enhancing the mismatch nucleation on the growing fiber tips. Both the fiber network structure and the rheological properties of the material can be finely tuned by changing the surfactant concentration, which provides a robust approach to the engineering of supramolecular soft functional materials.<br /

What ‘works’ when retracing sample members in a qualitative longitudinal study?

Attrition represents a significant obstacle to overcome in any longitudinal research project. It is, perhaps, most keenly felt when the data collected are from a qualitative study, since, unlike quantitative longitudinal research, weighting factors cannot be applied to ‘correct’ for any biases in the achieved sample and even a small number of ‘lost’ respondents can equate to a large percentage of the original sample. It is perhaps because of qualitative longitudinal research’s (QLR) reliance on, generally speaking, smaller samples that few have been able to shed much light on which re-contacting procedures are associated with achieving higher rates of retention. In this article, using data from a fifth sweep of a larger but particularly challenging cohort of 199 former probationers, we explore the strategies which helped us maintain high levels of retention in a QLR study. The article contains many practical suggestions which others planning or undertaking similar studies may find useful

Towards a rhizomatic understanding of the desistance journey

Although the ‘desistance as a (zigzag) journey’ metaphor has proved useful in terms of translating theory into practice, this article makes the case that it is insufficient for conveying the truly complex, social, unpredictable and ‘messy’ process of desistance from crime. The article uses what we know about the process of desistance to discuss the utility of Deleuze and Guattari’s (2013) rhizomatic theory in recasting the desistance journey metaphor. In doing so it is suggested that the desistance journey should be understood in terms of its endless and multiplicitous nature, a symbol of metamorphosis, and it argues that our focus should be on understanding the ‘desister as nomad’. This, the article concludes, holds important ramifications for the way in which we understand and implement desistance-focused practice in the criminal justice system