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Abstract: 

A fundamental, perhaps inevitable, problem with the “what works” paradigm is that it begins in the wrong place—that is, by thinking about how practice (whether “treatment,” “help,” or “programs”) should be constructed without first thinking about how change should be understood. Building an understanding of the human processes and social contexts in and through which change occurs is a necessary precursor to developing practice paradigms; put another way, constructions of practice should be embedded in understandings of desistance. This article briefly summarizes the case for the development of a new paradigm for “offender management” drawn from reviews of “desistance” research—that is, from studies that explore the processes by which offenders stop offending.

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Affiliations:  1: University of Glasgow School of Social Work and Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.