Narratives of Punishment and Frustrated Desistance in the Lives of Repeatedly Criminalised Women

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Abstract

In England and Wales, the spectre of the ‘persistent offender’ has become increasingly important to penal policymaking in recent decades. Yet the means by which the criminal justice machinery seeks to punish and reduce prolific recidivism remain woefully under-theorised, both in relation to what we know about processes of desistance and re-entry, and what we know of experiences of persistent offending and gender.

Using data from life history interviews with women in two English prisons, this chapter critically interrogates the ways in which imprisonment, community supervision, and prolific offender schemes might serve to frustrate rather than foster the desistance projects of substance-addicted and repeatedly criminalised women, and to perpetuate rather than terminate their cycles of reconviction and reincarceration.

Keywords

Criminal Justice Probation Officer Criminological Theory Intensive Supervision Custodial Sentence 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of Law, Royal HollowayUniversity of LondonEghamUnited Kingdom

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