Hero to zero? Navigating and negotiating the harms of criminalisation as a ‘veteran offender’
| Author | Hannah Wilkinson |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505221095069 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Hero to zero?
Navigating and
negotiating the harms
of criminalisation as a
‘veteran offender’
Hannah Wilkinson
Keele University, UK
Abstract
This article offers an original insight into the experiences of former military personnel
navigating life after criminalisation in a time of austerity. Drawing on case studies of
in-depth narrative and visual interview data with two ‘veteran offenders’, the article
draws attention to a complex ‘dance of disclosure’around military service and crim-
inal records. The article demonstrates how the complexity of the pains of criminalisa-
tion can make (re-)finding a sense of purpose and self-worth difficult for former
military personnel who must continually decide whether to disclose or obscure their
military past, depending on the criminal punishment context. This critical analysis
makes visible a potential continuum of state harm for those criminalised and mana-
ged as ‘veteran offenders’.
Keywords
veteran offenders, criminal records, social harm, stigma, resettlement, military to civil-
ian transitions, identity
Introduction
It has been fourteen years since the National Association of Probation Officers
(NAPO, 2008) identified ‘alarming levels’of over 20,000 former military personnel
imprisoned or under community supervision in England and Wales. This led to the
national approach of asking all those who encounter criminal punishment systems if
Corresponding Author:
Hannah Wilkinson, Keele University, UK.
Email: h.r.wilkinson@keele.ac.uk
Article The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2022, Vol. 69(3) 318–336
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02645505221095069
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
they have ever served inthe military (Phillips, 2014; MoJ, 2019). Despite initial inter-
est in how best to support ex-forces personnel, criminal justice responses are still
limited to localised, ad-hoc examples of good practice (Murray, 2014; Moorhead,
2021). Strategic focus within policy, practice and research remains focused on
ways of identifying andcalculating numbers of ‘veteran offenders’, rather than under-
standing the complexity of their livedexperiences (Ford et al., 2016; Albertson et al.,
2017). In response, this article offers an original insight into the lives of two crimina-
lised veteransto reveal how the incoherent categorisationand governance of ‘veteran
offenders’fails to capture the nuances of navigating criminalised identities. Whilst
based in a UK context, this article has implications which transcend human-made
borders –with military to civilian transitions being an area of international political
concern (McGarry and Walklate, 2016; Cooper et al., 2018).
The words of ‘David’and ‘Oliver’presented here reveal how the homogenous
casting of ‘veteran offenders’–however well-meaning in terms of identifying and sup-
porting them –is fraught with exclusion and misrecognition. This article draws attention
to the lived experiences of navigating a complex ‘dance of disclosure’during post-
imprisonment transitions to civilian life (‘civvy street’). This involves people having to
risk the potential stigma of revealing their military past in addition to their criminal
records. Whilst disclosing one’s‘veteran’status may potentially facilitate access to
resettlement support, it may also prompt potentially stigmatising assessments of ‘risk’
and ‘vulnerability’by criminal justice practitioners. In what follows, I argue that the pres-
ence or absence of war experiences can further compound this dance of disclosure. I
also highlight some of the unwitting consequences and harms of current criminal punish-
ment approaches in terms of the re-criminalisation, re-stigmatisation, and excessive pun-
ishmentthatmayflow from being identified and managed as a ‘veteran offender’.
After a brief overview of how ‘veteran offenders’and their needs have been dis-
cussed in the literature, I outline the case study methodology used in the research.
My analysis then falls into three main sections. First, I detail what is meant by the
‘hero to zero’fall, showing that in different ways, both David and Oliver experi-
enced the traces of heightened risk management and shame due to their military
past, while also having their everyday suffering individualised and medicalised
through notions of ‘militarised vulnerability’. Second, I extend this analysis to the
socio-economic and political contexts surrounding their experiences of (re-)criminal-
isation. Here I argue that the narratives of David and Oliver offer a significant insight
into how the excessive punishment faced by ‘veteran offenders’is rooted in a wider
continuum of social harm which spans the life course (Pemberton, 2016) and is com-
pounded by the violence of austerity (McGarry and Walklate, 2016; Cooper and
Whyte, 2017). Third, I consider how this cumulative build-up of stigma and social
harm resulted in the participants facing difficulties when imagining and (re-)
finding a sense of purpose and belonging.
‘Veteran Offenders’in the Criminal Punishment System
The seemingly reactionary construction of the ‘veteran offender’as a political cat-
egory of risk management has rightly been problematised on the basis that it
Wilkinson 319
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