ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explicate one of the key themes emerging from a decade-long study of repeat offending and desistance from crime among young male offenders in South Australia. That theme centres on the disparity between personal need and systemic offerings – what young men repeatedly narrate as key to getting desistance going (let alone sustaining it) as against the resources and approaches used by authorities to manage the ‘risk’ of reoffending. Here, the privileging of expert knowledge (psychological, managerial, actuarial) over personal need (the hopes and fears of young men in custody and beyond) meant that desistance was rare in the study cohort (n=14) and emerged in spite of, not because of, correctional practices and wider cultural conditions.
