Good Intentions: Women’s Narratives of Post-Release Anticipatory Desistance in the Context of Historical and Contemporary Disadvantage and Trauma

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1557085120923403
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085120923403

Feminist Criminology

2020, Vol. 15(5) 519 –544

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085120923403

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Article

Good Intentions: Women’s

Narratives of Post-Release

Anticipatory Desistance in

the Context of Historical and

Contemporary Disadvantage

and Trauma

Rachel Hale1

Abstract

Desistance theorizing has concentrated on the male experience resulting in relatively

less knowledge about how criminalized women negotiate nonoffending, particularly from

a qualitative perspective. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with eight formerly

incarcerated women in Victoria, Australia, this research explores the anticipation of

desistance in the context of experiences preceding and following incarceration. The

findings highlight how individual-level intentions to cease offending can be eclipsed by

historical and ongoing disadvantage and trauma. In emphasizing the gendered socio-

structural barriers affecting women’s desistance efforts, this article contributes to a

small, yet important, emerging discourse—a form of critical feminist desistance.

Keywords

desistance, women, offending, gender, post-release

Introduction

Criminological theories regarding the cessation of offending (desistance) flourished in

the 1980s, extending on early age–based, maturational explanations (Glueck &

Glueck, 1937) to consider offender choice and rational decision-making (Clarke &

Cornish, 1985; Cusson & Pinsonneault, 1986). The relatively young field of inquiry

has since grown to examine the role of social bonds (Burnett & McNeill, 2005;

Farrington, 1992; Sampson & Laub, 1993), cognitive transformation (Giordano et al.,

1Federation University Australia, Berwick, Victoria, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Rachel Hale, School of Arts, Federation University Australia, 100 Clyde Road, Berwick, Victoria 3806,

Australia.

Email: r.hale@federation.edu.au

923403FCXXXX10.1177/1557085120923403Feminist CriminologyHale

research-article2020

520 Feminist Criminology 15(5)

2002), identity work (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009), and socio-structural influences

(Farrall et al., 2010; Maruna & Farrall, 2004). Male behavior sits at the center of most

desistance studies, a characteristic that has not gone uncriticized (Barr, 2019; Massoglia

& Uggen, 2007; Thompson & Petrovic, 2009). Subsequently, there is a lack of insight

into the experience of negotiating, anticipating, and actualizing desistance for crimi-

nalized women, situating this article within a discourse fundamentally focussed on one

portion of the offending population.

Criminalized women encounter unique challenges compared to their male counter-

parts, including increased financial insecurity, poverty and homelessness, and higher

rates of intimate partner and sexual violence (Belknap, 2007; O’Brien, 2001). It is

reasonable then to expect that male-based theories are unlikely to represent the reality

of desisting for women. A 2016 review comparing the findings of 44 studies of female

desistance with male-based desistance theories (Rodermond et al., 2016) indicated

that there are certainly common factors influencing desistance for both men and

women, including social connectedness, employment, and abstaining from drug use.

Nevertheless, qualitative studies revealed gender differences regarding the impact and

importance of those factors, disparities that are no doubt influenced by the broader

patriarchal structural conditions that lead to the criminalization of women—predomi-

nantly poor and Indigenous—to begin with (Barr, 2019).

Despite females comprising the minority of convicted offenders and prisoners,

increasing global rates of female incarceration offer credence to the study of women’s

unique pathways into, and importantly, out of crime. In the current neo-liberal climate

of mass incarceration in Western capitalist nations, of which the largest growth in

imprisonment rates since the millennium has been witnessed for women (Walmsley,

2017), there is much to be gained from studying the desistance pathways of criminal-

ized women. The aim of this current study, therefore, was to examine women’s experi-

ences pre-, during, and post-incarceration to understand the context of their desistance

efforts, framed by the following research questions:

1. Research Question 1: What are the pre-offending life stories of the women

and their pathways into crime?

2. Research Question 2: What are the women’s experiences with the criminal

justice system, in particular in prison?

3. Research Question 3: What are the women’s experiences following, and in

between, periods of incarceration?

4. Research Question 4: How do these experiences impact the capacity to desist

from offending and reintegrate post-release?

A sample of eight women participated in semi-structured interviews following impris-

onment in Victoria, Australia. The insights of six post-release support workers were

also included in the initial study, though their narratives are not presented to maintain

the centrality of the voices of criminalized women. The women spoke about their

experiences during childhood, pathways into offending, contact with the criminal (in)

justice system, and journeys from custody to community and often times back again.