ABSTRACT
In 2003, McNeill argued that desistance research required a major shift in probation practice; a departure from practices underpinned solely by cognitive behavioural psychology focused on changing individual mindsets to practices attending to the relational and social contexts within and through which desistance occurs. Ten years hence, precisely how such a paradigm shift might be realised in practice remains inadequately understood. McNeill (2006: 46) proposed that ‘offender management services need to think of themselves less as providers of correctional treatment (that belongs to the expert) and more as supporters of desistance processes (that belong to the desister)’. Maruna (2006: 16) similarly argued that reintegration properly belongs to communities and to formerly incarcerated persons, and that the role of the practitioner is to ‘support, enhance and work with the organically occurring community processes of reconciliation and earned redemption’.
