Rehabilitation,
Revolution and Roadblocks
London Practitioner Forum, 1st May 2013
Fergus McNeill
Fergus.McNeill@glasgow.ac.uk
Twitter: @fergus_mcneill
http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/discoveringdesistance/
1
Structure
•
•
•
•
Introducing the rehabilitation ‘fankle’
De-fankling rehabilitation
The five forms
Their inter-dependencies
– The Discovering Desistance project
– The Road from Crime
• Conclusions
Rehabilitation:
A bit of a fankle?
Raynor and Robinson (2009)
• ‘the action of restoring something to a
previous (proper) condition or status’ (OED)
1.An action
2.That restores
3.To a desirable state
• Implies…
4.[judgement against some normalising
standard]
5.[third party intervention]
A criminological definition
• ‘…taking away the desire to offend, is the aim
of reformist or rehabilitative punishment. The
objective of reform or rehabilitation is to
reintegrate the offender into society after a
period of punishment, and to design the
content of the punishment so as to achieve
this’ (Hudson, 2003: 26).
Problems
• Does this conflate the objective
(reintegration) with the mechanism (changing
the ‘offender’)?
• Does the nature of the mechanism matter?
• Does rehabilitation come after punishment?
• Does it shape punishment?
• Is it an alternative to punishment?
Late-modern rehabilitation?
• Not Rotman’s moral or principled
reformation, but a technical correction?
• Robinson’s (2008) analysis of ‘the evolution of
a penal strategy’:
– Utilitarian rehabilitation
– Managerial rehabilitation
– Expressive rehabilitation
• Punitive
• Communicative
The pains of rehabilitation
• Crewe (2009) on ‘soft power’
• Lacombe (2008) on sex offender programs
• Cox (2012) ‘Doing program or doing me?’
But what may be peculiarly demanding for the late-modern penal
subject is that, rather than being left to deal, before God, with his
or her own sinfulness and redemption, s/he is compelled to display
the malleability of his or her riskiness, to perform the reduction
and the manageability of his or her riskiness. At least in some riskbased systems, it is the credibility of this performance which will
determine progression in and release from punishment. In those
circumstances, rehabilitation is both disciplinary and punishing in
a particularly potent way…
Five forms?
McNeill (2012 and
forthcoming)
Raynor and Robinson
(2009)
Disciplinary
contributions
Personal rehabilitation
(Anthropocentric)
Correctional
rehabilitation
Rehabilitation and
reform
Psychology
Criminology
Social work
Social rehabilitation
Resettlement and
reintegration
Sociology
Criminology
Social work
Judicial rehabilitation
Rehabilitation and the
law
Law
Philosophy
Moral rehabilitation
(Duff, 2001)
Philosophy
Law
[‘Natural’ rehabilitation]
Criminology
Personal Rehabilitation
Social Rehabilitation
• The re-development of the self
• Capacity building
• The re-development of social
identity
• Informal de-labeling
Natural
Rehabilitation
(desistance)
Judicial Rehabilitation
Moral Rehabilitation
• Formal de-labeling
• Re-qualification
• Provision of three-way
redress/reparation
• The restoration of good character,
good community, good government
10
Personal Rehabilitation
Social Rehabilitation
• Work-based prisons
• Mentoring schemes
• Programmes and interventions
• Political discourses and public
attitudes
• Welfare reform
• Labour market conditions
Natural
Rehabilitation
(desistance)
Judicial Rehabilitation
Moral Rehabilitation
• Limited, risk averse reforms
• A one-way debt: them to us
• No state or civic duty to
rehabilitate, just individual and
organisational responsibility
11
Time for a real
rehabilitation revolution?
‘We want
land, bread,
housing,
education,
clothing,
justice and
peace’
• For more information, contact:
– Fergus.McNeill@glasgow.ac.uk
• Follow the Desistance Knowledge Exchange
blog:
– http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/discoveringdesista
nce
• Download ‘The Road from Crime’ at:
– http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/theroad-from-crime