Making desistance real: Implementing a desistance focused approach in a community rehabilitation company (CRC)

AuthorTammie Burroughs,Soren Mayes,Hazel Kemshall,Clare Thorogood
Published date01 September 2021
Date01 September 2021
DOI10.1177/02645505211025084
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Making desistance
real: Implementing
a desistance focused
approach in a community
rehabilitation
company (CRC)
Hazel Kemshall
De Montfort University, UK
Tammie Burroughs, Soren Mayes, and Clare Thorogood
London Community Rehabilitation Company, UK
Abstract
Desistance is now a key focus for probation practice in the United Kingdom. However,
how to implement desistance in the workplace has remained challenging, particularly
in the absence of practice guidance. This article presents the experience of ‘making
desistance real’ in the context of Community Rehabilitation Companies. ‘Identity shift’
is presented as a core component of the desistance approach adopted, and practice
designed to support services users to transition to a pro-social identity and their ‘best
life’ is presented. The article examines changes in assessment processes and tools,
outlines desistance informed interventions, and the engagement of practitioners in
delivering desistance.
Keywords
desistance, identity-shift, implementation, practice
Corresponding Author:
Hazel Kemshall, School of Applied Social Sciences, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1
9BH, UK.
Email: kemshall@dmu.ac.uk
Probation Journal
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02645505211025084
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The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
2021, Vol. 68(3) 347–364
Desistance as a critical focus of probation work has gained considerable momen-
tum in recent times (Healy, 2012; King, 2014; Weaver, 2019), with the resurgence
of interest owing much to the influential work of Maruna (1997, 2001) and a
refocusing of attention on the process of desistance primarily, although not exclu-
sively, in America, Canada, Australia and the UK (e.g. McNeill, 2004a, 2004b;
Maruna and Farrall, 2004; Weaver, 2015). The 20 years since the publication of
Making Good’ has seen extensive work to establish a desistance paradigm,
including arguments to establish a paradigm shift for probation away from cor-
rectionalism and punishment to desistance (McNeill, 2006). While the extent of this
distinctiveness and the paradigm shift are debatable, desistance has acquired the
status of the new probation trend (Maruna and Mann, 2019).
This article is based on the experience of one Community Rehabilitation Com-
pany (London CRC) and its parent company MTC. It is written by qualified probation
officer employees with over 50 combined years of experience (Burroughs, Mayes
and Thorogood), and an academic consultant to the CRC (Kemshall). MTC is a UK
subsidiary of Management and Training Corporation, a US-based service provider
specialising in Job Corps centres and correctional facilities, which has been pro-
viding probation and custodial services across England since 2015. Serving more
than 35,000 service users at any one time, MTC seeks to transform lives, build safer
communities and break the cycle of reoffending. Under the Government’s re-
nationalisation of probation services, MTC’s Community Rehabilitation Company
subsidiaries will cease to deliver probation services from 26th June 2021.
Academic work in the UK at the turn of the century was largely theoretical and
exploratory (e.g. Bottoms et al., 2004; Farrall, 2002; McNeill, 2004a, 2004b),
with subsequent work drawing on an increasingly multi-disciplinary approach to
formulate key explanations of the process of desistance (Bottoms, 2014; Bottoms
and Shapland, 2016; Bushway et al., 2001; Weaver, 2015; and Weaver, 2019
for a full review of theoretical approaches). As research attention has grown so has
policy and practice interest (Healy, 2010, 2012, 2013; King, 2013, 2014;
McNeill and Weaver, 2010; Maruna, 2010), including within the National
Offender Management Service (see for example HMPPS Guide to Desistance,
2019), accompanied by a stronger international emphasis on empirical evaluations
to establish what works in desistance (Bottoms and Shapland, 2016; Carlsson,
2012; Hart and Van Ginneken, 2017; Rocque, 2017; Savolainen, 2009; Vesey
et al., 2013; Weaver, 2013). By the time of Breaking the Cycle, (MoJ, 2010), and
Transforming Rehabilitation (MoJ, 2013); followed by the subsequent creation of
the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs); the quest was on in England and
Wales for practical implementations of desistance in the workplace. To this end,
CRCs bidding for probation work were encouraged to consider innovatory
assessment and management approaches with service users that reflected a desis-
tance focus (NOMS, 2012, 2013).
Assisted desistance has been described as the ‘actions organisations and
practitioners need to do to help individuals walk away from crime’ (Maruna, 2010:
1). In brief, these can be understood as practitioner behaviours and conduct epi-
tomised by positive relationships with service users combining fairness and
348 Probation Journal 68(3)

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