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Download fileRethinking social capital in the desistance process: The ‘Artful Dodger’ complex
Social capital has become a core component of our understanding of desistance in recent years. Some of this work however seems to present social capital as inherently positive, suggesting that increasing stocks in social capital is fundamental to the desistance process. Knowledge surrounding exactly how social capital is utilised within the desistance process, with the exception of acquiring social capital as a social good, remain underexplored. Through an analysis of the desistance narratives of young adult men serving community orders under the supervision of the probation service in England and Wales, this article argues that instead of being considered to be inherently good, social capital is perhaps better thought of as value neutral, consisting of both positive and negative aspects (some of which occur simultaneously). Desistance, then, is not simply about obtaining social capital (as many people with convictions possess stocks of social capital which supported their offending); rather it is about reorienting the type of capital one has available to them at any given time, from relationships which imbue ‘anti-social capital’ to those that imbue ‘pro-social capital’. Such a distinction has significant theoretical and policy interventions, arguing that it is pro-social capital which the literature makes reference to in terms of supporting desistance efforts. The article concludes by offering some tentative suggestions for future research, along with ways in which this distinction can further support how we operationalise desistance within criminal justice policy and practice.
Funding
University of Manchester
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy
Published in
European Journal of CriminologyVolume
19Issue
5Pages
1243-1259Publisher
SAGE PublicationsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The authorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Sage under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Acceptance date
2020-07-27Publication date
2020-09-28Copyright date
2020ISSN
1477-3708eISSN
1741-2609Publisher version
Language
- en