Virtues, Values and Desistance

Academic publishers seem to be becoming more and more enlightened about the benefits of open access! Steve and I have just finished a chapter entitled ‘A Moral in the Story? Virtues, Values and Desistance from Crime’ for an edited collection on ‘The Value(s) of Criminology and Community Justice’, edited by Malcolm Cowburn, Marian Duggan, Anne Robinson, Paul Senior (all Sheffield Hallam University). The collection is forthcoming from Policy Press. We’re grateful to the people at Policy Press and to the editors for permission to reproduce some of the chapter in this blog post — and for allowing us to make the the full draft available in our ‘Useful Resources’ page. So, see if this Introduction whets your appetite…

In this chapter, we draw on theories of desistance and research into desistance to argue that ceasing to offend is a process that involves the development of the motivation, capacity and opportunities to live well, in both a moral and a prudential sense. We present an argument that supporting people to desist from crime is likely to require forms and styles of penal practice that model ways of being and becoming ‘good’; and that central to such practice are questions of the legitimacy of criminal justice processes and of the moral performance of practitioners. In developing these arguments, our aim is to contribute to policy and practice debates about how best to configure and deliver key penal institutions and practices, particularly those associated with sentencing and sanctioning. However, since those institutions and practices inevitably reflect and refract their social, political and cultural contexts, the question of how to support the acquisition of virtues in the process of desistance inevitably forces us back to questions about the values, virtues and vices of society itself.

The relationship between virtue and necessity – between the moral and the prudential – has been much debated in moral philosophy. Although some philosophers draw a clear distinction between the two, for example in Immanuel Kant’s insistence that only actions motivated by a sense of duty can be morally praiseworthy, others regard the two concepts as overlapping. Indeed, Aristotle’s account of ethics implies that we cannot truly flourish as human beings unless we live well in the moral sense, so being a good or virtuous person is inevitably good for a person: Virtue is a necessity if we are to live a life that is good for us.

The relationship between necessity and virtue is also frequently discussed in literature. Though the origins of the phrase ‘to make a necessity of virtue’ may be unclear, its most famous use was by Shakespeare in Two Gentlemen of Verona. The scene in question finds our hero Valentine, having been banished (unjustly) by the Duke of Milan, wandering in a forest, where he is set upon by other outlaws. But though these outcasts are living beyond the law, and beyond the state, they seem somehow to know virtue (and beauty) when they see it. Moreover, seeing virtue, they seek it and willingly submit to it.

‘First Outlaw

                […] But to the purpose–for we cite our faults,
                 That they may hold excus’d our lawless lives;
                And partly, seeing you are beautified
                With goodly shape and by your own report
                A linguist and a man of such perfection
                As we do in our quality much want–

Second Outlaw

                Indeed, because you are a banish’d man,
                Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you:
                Are you content to be our general?
                To make a virtue of necessity
                And live, as we do, in this wilderness?

Third Outlaw

                What say’st thou? wilt thou be of our consort?
                Say ay, and be the captain of us all:
                We’ll do thee homage and be ruled by thee,
                Love thee as our commander and our king.

[…]

VALENTINE

                I take your offer and will live with you,
                Provided that you do no outrages
                On silly women or poor passengers.

Third Outlaw

                No, we detest such vile base practises.
                Come, go with us, we’ll bring thee to our crews,
                And show thee all the treasure we have got,
                Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.[1]

Shakespeare’s observations on human character were often acute, sometimes anticipating the development of subsequent social science, but is it reasonable to suppose that experiencing virtue and even beauty can have a similar effect on contemporary ‘outlaws’; on people who have offended? While it seems unlikely that such exposure to virtue could be a sufficient condition in and of itself of producing positive change, there are reasons to suggest that it might nonetheless be a necessary one.

In a recent film about desistance from crime, one of the most compelling moments features Bobby Cummines OBE, founder of UNLOCK, the National Association of Reformed Offenders. Bobby explains the starting point of his desistance process in a way that resonates with the Shakespearean scene above:

‘I was lucky. I had a good probation officer and a good education officer in prison who said to me ‘You’re worth more than that’ and gave me a bit of belief in myself. And also, in a way, being banged up all that time, and seeing people that was kind to me, and there was prison officers as well, and people when I came out that were really supportive of me, and they were just decent people. And I saw the beauty of society, and the beauty of those people in society, cause my world was an ugly world. We didn’t trust no-one, we injured each other – it was a violent and terrible dark place I was in and life meant nothing. But to see these people that was really there for no other reason than they was nice people – I saw the beauty of society, and I wanted to be part of that beauty. I wanted to be part of that society, not the society I was in.’[2]

This seems to be a contemporary example of exposure to virtue and beauty prompting and supporting change, but it is only one example. To explore the evidence for and arguments about the role of virtue in supporting desistance further, we begin with a brief overview of some research about the process of desistance from crime itself, examining the relationship between the moral and the prudential in the desistance process. Next, we focus move on to our substantive focus on what we know from research about how desistance is best supported, exploring what role the virtues and values of practitioners may play in the process. We conclude the chapter by suggesting some of the ways in which the cultural, social and political contexts of contemporary criminal justice might militate against the modelling of virtue by criminal justice practitioners, and thus the acquisition of virtue by those they supervise and aim to support.

[Read more here: Moral_in_the_Story]