Overview
- Winner of the Christine M Alder Book Award 2019, awarded by the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology
- Examines the three different categories of desistance from sexual offending: Retirement, Regulation and Recovery
- Prompts debate about the practical effects of labelling someone as being 'at risk' once released back into the community
- Encourages a reexamination of the impact of current interventions provided by the criminal justice system
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society (PSRCS)
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About this book
This book describes the complex process of desistance from sexual crime as told by 74 men incarcerated for sexual offenses and released back into the community. Unlike much of the research on this topic, Harris places strong emphasis on how men who have committed serious sexual offenses come to stop offending and end their ‘criminal career’. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Harris outlines three main strategies that the men employ in order to pursue offense-free lives. The Retirement Strategy is divided into those who appear to simply ‘resign’ and those who go on to ‘rebuild’ their lives. The Regulation Strategy characterizes desistance as a product of one’s ability to navigate increasingly restrictive legislation (‘restricted,’ ‘rehearsed,’ ‘resistant,’ and ‘reclusive’ desistance). The men who describe their desistance in terms of Recovery do so either through ‘rehabilitation’ or through ‘resilience.’ This original and engaging study will be of great interest not only to academics whostudy sexual aggression but also those who have survived sexual abuse themselves, and anyone working with survivors of sexual abuse, individuals convicted of sexual offenses, their families, and their communities.
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Keywords
Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Part II
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Front Matter
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Part IV
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Danielle Arlanda Harris, Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University, Australia.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Desistance from Sexual Offending
Book Subtitle: Narratives of Retirement, Regulation and Recovery
Authors: Danielle Arlanda Harris
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63200-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Law and Criminology, Law and Criminology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-63199-8Published: 22 January 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-87495-1Published: 04 June 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-63200-1Published: 25 November 2017
Series ISSN: 2946-2517
Series E-ISSN: 2946-2525
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 287
Number of Illustrations: 3 illustrations in colour
Topics: Sexual Offending, Crime and Society, Youth Offending and Juvenile Justice, Prison and Punishment, Forensic Psychology