Living to Tell the Tale: Redemption Narratives, Shame Management, and Offender Rehabilitation.

Abstract

My name is Bill, and I am an alcoholic." Those simple words may be the beginning of one of the best known and most influential narratives in 20th-century American life. The preamble to the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) public speeches has been repeated so often in church basements, school gymnasiums, and (increasingly) Internet chat rooms over the past 60 years that it is easy to overlook just how powerful the phrase is. Far from peripheral to the method of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, the sharing and reconstruction of one's own life history is itself the core of the Alcoholics Anonymous method (Cain, 1991;Rappaport, 1993). According to O'Reilly, in Sobering Tales: Narratives of Alcoholism and Recovery (1997):Telling the story--it may be said that, in a sense, there is only one story in AA--enables the speaker to reconstrue a chaotic, absurd, or To preserve the sprat of authenttclty, the words of the speakers have been reproduced m thetr ortgmal form In a few cases, thts entatls some profamty.

The Liverpool Desistance Study and Probation Practice: Opening the Dialogue

“…see Maruna, Immarigeon, and LeBel, 2004;Maruna and LeBel, 2002;Maruna, LeBel, and Lanier, 2004;Maruna and Ramsden, 2004;Maruna, LeBel, Mitchel and Naples, forthcoming). In an effort to draw on both academic research and real world expertise in these applied discussions, all of these pieces have been co-written with criminal justice practitioners like Russ Immarigeon and Derek Ramsden and/or former prisoners (now 'convict criminologists' 1 ) such as Charlie Lanier, Thomas P. LeBel and Nick Mitchell.…”

The Resurgence of Religion in America’s Prisons

“…Religious spirituality has, in fact, been found to be a highly salient resource for many successful ex-offenders, especially under conditions of low emotional support and weak informal social control [61,62,[70][71][72][73]. Phenomenological analyses of the desistance process reveal that religion and spirituality frequently help offenders construct stories of change that become vital to an altered sense of self.. More importantly, religiosity seems to help desisters undertake preliminary agentic moves that, while often not outwardly visible to family members or justice officials, are the beginnings of an evolving self-narrative that is both pro-social and provides a redemptive path [61,66].…”

“…More seriously, any positive effects of religious programs may well be the byproducts of qualitatively "easier" inmates self-selecting into the program while being offered a richer menu of human contact and services. As a result, much of the research on faith-based programs is still qualitative and even sometimes anecdotal [62][63][64][65][66][67][68].…”

“…Indeed, religiously-motivated desisters often describe themselves as empowered or "fired up" to meet the challenges associated with constructing pro-social identities after release [61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68].…”

“…In order to address this gap in research, a number of studies utilizing exploratory "unstructured life-history narratives" have been produced and that help identify and investigate the subjective experiences of desisters, by way of "cognitive shifts", "identity changes", and attempts at "making good" described by successful ex-offenders [61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68]. As demonstrated in this previous research, religiously-anchored "redemption narratives" provide desisters with an important spiritual "toolkit" necessary for coping with what criminologist John Braithwaite calls "shame management" [69].…”