ABSTRACT
Desistance journeys are often spectacularly unpromising ones and the ever-increasing numbers of those who are trawled into the contemporary penal net are often disadvantaged in socio-economic and political terms. Our concern here is to understand how the business of the court might provide opportunities for the individual to begin a journey of desistance towards a crime-free life. Our aim is to argue that that reimagining rehabilitative processes within the confines of the court can aid the onward desistance journeys of the individual citizen. We will argue that the values, beliefs and behaviours that form the response to the guilty defendant – as a member of our community, as a citizen, as a participating member of the polity rather than an individual defined by the bad things they have done – are critical not only to personal rehabilitation but to building social and economic justice. The bridge between the legal/judicial and the wider social and moral aspects of rehabilitation is provided by Anthony Duff’s influential thinking, specifically his normative theory of punishment as the communication of censure. We are also concerned about ritual as part of the sentencing process and draw upon Maruna’s Reentry as a rite of passage in relation to the effective use of court-based rituals.
