After Crime and Punishment

Book excerpt: The issue of resettling ex-prisoners and ex-offenders into the community has become an increasingly important one on both sides of the Atlantic. In the USA the former Attorney General Janet Reno identified the issue as 'one of the most pressing problems we face as a nation' in view of the massive prison population and the rapid increase in rates of incarceration, while in the UK it has become an increasingly important issue for similar reasons, and the subject of recent reports by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and HM Inspectorate of Probation, as well as from the Social Exclusion Unit of the Home Office. Yet this issue has not been well served by the criminological literature, and the new policies and programmes that have been set up to address the problem have not been well grounded in criminological thinking. This book seeks to address the important set of issues involved by bringing together the best of recent thinking and research into desistance from crime, drawing upon research in both the UK and the USA, and with a distinct focus on how this might impact upon the design and implementation of ex-offender reintegration policy.