Morality tales: Young women’s narratives on offending, self-worth and desistance
| Author | Birgit Larsson |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550519860560 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Morality tales: Young
2019, Vol. 66(3) 318–334
ª The Author(s) 2019
women’s narratives on
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550519860560
offending, self-worth
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and desistance
Birgit Larsson
University of East Anglia, UK
Abstract
This article emerges from a study of female offenders’ participation in police-facilitated
restorative justice in one county in England. The qualitative study presented here is
based on life history interviews with 12 women and focuses on three morality tales that
emerged through narrative analysis: ‘offending as play’, ‘the strong woman’ and
‘work and a normal life’. The women used these tales to protect self-worth and justify
‘bad’ behaviour in order to counter professional responses which they viewed as
stigmatising. The paper concludes with implications for practice with girls and women
who offend, which may benefit police, probation and social workers.
Keywords
female offender narratives, moral identity, self-worth, desistance, restorative justice
Introduction
Women and girls who offend are in frequent contact with professionals, including
the police, youth offending or probation officers, and social workers. The majority
of female offenders have experienced abuse or violence and, as adolescents or
adults, carry this legacy in the form of mental health difficulties, alcohol and sub-
stance abuse, or antisocial behaviour (Corston, 2007). There is increasing recog-
nition that in order to hold women accountable for their offences, professionals need
to address underlying needs that contribute to their offending, including through
Corresponding Author:
Birgit Larsson, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.
Email: b.larsson@uea.ac.uk
Larsson
319
alternatives to the traditional criminal justice system such as restorative justice
(Gaarder and Presser, 2006; Corston, 2007; Verrecchia, 2009). To date, how-
ever, restorative justice for girls and women has been met with professional
resistance and practical challenges (Daly, 2008; Miles, 2013; Osterman and
Masson, 2016).
This paper reports findings from narrative research with women who experi-
enced restorative justice through the police in one county in the UK. The women
interviewed had had a range of contact with the criminal justice system prior to
restorative justice. While some were first-time offenders, others had previous arrests
and convictions. The three morality tales offer insight into how women made sense
of their offending, alongside other identities and experiences.
Literature review
The psychologist McAdams (1993) has pioneered the concept of narrative identity by
building on theories by Erikson (1963, 1968 [cited in McAdams, 1993]) and
highlighting the importance of storytelling during the life course. McAdams proposes
that by adolescence a person’s everyday narratives begin to form into a lifelong
‘personal myth’, accompanied by a cast of recurring characters and dominant themes
and imagery (McAdams, 1993: 5). We may, for example, see ourselves as heroes in
possession of agency or as victims in an unfair world (McAdams, 1993).
Narrative research has increasingly gained the attention of criminologists who
apply the methods to the study of criminal behaviour, particularly in terms of how
offenders understand their own offending and how they reflect on offending as part
of their identity (Maruna, 2001; Presser, 2004, 2009). Presser (2009: 185), for
example, cites Katz (1988 [cited in Presser, 2009]) in noting that offenders’ nar-
ratives are often ‘playing out a moral tale of some sort, one that posits its protagonist
as a particular sort of person’. Offenders have particularly been noted to use nar-
ratives to maintain a positive sense of self-worth and moral identity, regardless of the
type and frequency of their offending (Maruna, 2001; Presser, 2004; Miller et al.,
2015). While problematic for the criminal justice system and victims, Maruna
(2001) shows that this tendency to maintain a narrative of the self as ‘good’ is also
associated with long-term desistance. By narrating the self as positive, resourceful
and capable, narrators ‘talk’ these selves into being, simultaneously avoiding the
negative consequences of shame (Maruna, 2001), which may include anger,
defiance and self-loathing (Tangney et al., 1992; Rodogno, 2008).
Research involving the narratives of female offenders demonstrates that women
are particularly eager to narrate a positive moral identity because offending is seen
as both illegal and unfeminine (Fleetwood, 2015; Miller et al., 2015). Female
offenders sometimes tackle the stigma by highlighting caring or victim identities
within offending narratives (Giordano et al., 2002; Fleetwood, 2015). Similarly,
female desisters often provide ‘evidence’ of their desistance by describing new (and
traditionally feminine) identities such as ‘wife’ or ‘mother’ (Giordano et al., 2002).
Restorative justice is a well-established alternative to traditional criminal justice
practice with the concept of ‘earned redemption’ at its centre (Bazemore, 1999).
320
Probation Journal 66(3)
The definition of restorative justice most frequently used is Marshall’s (1996: 37): ‘a
process whereby parties with a particular stake in an offence collectively resolve
how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future’. The
theory behind this process has been described as being about supporting self-worth
and belonging despite offending, often with the assistance of family members who
can demonstrate that they care about the offender as a person (Braithwaite, 1989).
In order to support self-worth while tackling offending behaviour, restorative
justice aims to avoid shaming offenders (Rodogno, 2008), by focusing on the
inappropriateness of the behaviour rather than the person (Sherman et al., 2008).
The processes further try to encourage moments of empathy and understanding
between victims and offenders through ‘storytelling’ where individuals share their
experiences and points of view (Umbreit, 1998; Gaarder and Presser, 2006). In
recognition of the literature on offender narratives, restorative justice addresses the
tendencies of offenders to minimise their offending, often at their victim’s expense,
by training facilitators to ‘confront’ offender justifications (Bradshaw, 1998: 66).
This is, of course, a pure model of restorative justice. Restorative justice associated
with the criminal justice system in the UK, for example, faces a number of chal enges
beginning with, at times, a lack of adequate training for facilitators (Criminal Justice
Joint Inspection, 2012; Larsson et al., 2018). Recent research has described a lack of
referral for female offenders because of concerns over their behavioural and emo-
tional difficulties (Miles, 2013); a lack of personal support for female offenders while
in restorative justice (Miles, 2013; Osterman and Masson, 2016; Larsson et al.,
2018); and finally problematic behaviours in restorative justice by female offenders
such as victim blaming (Larsson et al., 2018; see also Daly, 2008).
The aim of this research was to create further understanding about female
offenders’ experiences in order to situate restorative justice and offending in the
larger context of women’s lives. The author was interested in the stories of women’s
experiences of restorative justice as offenders, women’s narrative identities
(offending and otherwise), as well as how women’s sense of their own self-worth
and desistance would be depicted within their life stories and link to their moral
identity. The study also raised questions about help seeking and accepting beha-
viours among women whom professionals may find harder to reach.
Methods
The data reported here was part of a mixed-methods study on police-facilitated
restorative justice in one county in the UK from 2007 through 2012. In the
county, police mainly used restorative justice as a disposal for offenders who
engaged in low-level offending and antisocial behaviour. Restorative justice could
be the only disposal or could be used alongside more traditional criminal justice
responses. Two forms of restorative justice were used: conferences, which involved
meetings between victims and offenders, facilitated by a police officer; and street
restorative justice, a conversation between a police officer and persons involved in
an offence, shortly after it had occurred and at the scene of the offence. Street
restorative justice could involve offenders and victims or only offenders.
Larsson
321
The study received ethical approval from the School of Social Work at the Uni-
versity of East Anglia, and went through a separate research governance appli-
cation through the constabulary. The study consisted of: 1) secondary analysis of
anonymised administrative police data on restorative justice containing 17,486
individuals, including 2588 female offenders; and 2) narrative interviews with 12
female offenders who experienced police-led restorative justice in this county,
sampled from the database. The narrative data is the focus of this paper.
As the police database contained sensitive information such as date of birth of
offenders, the agreement made between the constabulary and the university made
clear that the anonymised database would be accessed by the author on a security
encrypted police laptop. The database was used in two ways: for quantitative
analysis on how, and for...
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