Adam Calverley, Cultures of desistance: Rehabilitation, reintegration and ethnic minorities
| Author | Hannah Graham |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865814554339 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Adam Calverley, Cultures of desistance: Rehabilitation, reintegration and ethnic minorities. Routledge:
London, 2013; 230 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-67261-0, $150.00 USD (hbk); 978-0-415-62348-3,
$48.95 USD (pbk)
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 know-
ledge of the issues. Rapid and reactive processing of offenders into an already over-
stretched 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 offend-
ing 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 represen-
tation in two areas: ethnicity and culture, and crime and people with criminal convic-
tions. 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 prac-
titioners as gate-keepers in the participant recruitment process illuminate the discussions
of sampling and data analysis.
150 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 48(1)
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