Living with Desistance

Book excerpt: In this new and distinctive contribution to the desistance literature, Dr David Honeywell draws on his own lived experience to consider his route through youth delinquency and prison to a life away from crime through education, and ultimately towards academia. Drawing on perspectives from criminology, sociology and psychology, this autoethnography offers a unique perspective to the desistance process and to social identity. Honeywell considers possible convergences as well as marked differences between the desistance and the convict criminology literatures. While desistance scholars have often emphasised the need for ex-offenders to cast off their criminal identities, Honeywell demonstrates how his own trajectory has involved him embracing this identity to develop an academic career. In doing so, this book emphasises the complexity of the desistance process, and the role of stigma, and also of hope. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, psychology and those interested in the lived experience of desistance.