After Crime and Punishment Pathways to Offender Reintegration

The issue of reintegrating ex-prisoners and ex-offenders into the community has become an increasingly pressing one around the world. In view of the rapid increase in the sheer number of people coming out of prison and their notorious lack of success in post-prison life, former Us Attorney General Janet Reno described ex-offender re-entry as 'one of the most pressing problems we face as a nation'. Yet the issue of offender reintegration and resettlement has not been well served by the criminological literature, and the new policies and programs that have been set up to address the problem are not always 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 on the subject of desistance from crime from both the US and the UK, with a distinct focus on how this research might impact on the design and implementation of ex-offender reintegration policy.