Shame is a deeply personal and fundamentally social emotion, which can negatively affect both the psychological and social aspects of desistance. It affects how we interact with others, how we see ourselves and how we are seen by those around us. Few contexts offer a more accentuated view of this than the context of sexual offending. Sexual offences are widely condemned, so persons who have committed a sexual offence often feel profound shame and meet contempt, rejection and anger from others. Desistance theory, which aims to shed light on the process of moving away from crime, provides a framework to explore the interrelatedness of shame as both personal and social. It goes beyond behavioural change, to incorporate changes in self-concept or identity as well as social reintegration (being recognized as changed). Thus, the process of desisting from sexual offending involves managing shame in order to recognize the moral gravity of one’s actions and integrate them in one’s self-concept/identity, and managing shame and (fear of) contempt and rejection in interaction with important others (such as therapists, friends and family). Moreover, it involves managing actual experiences of contempt and rejection in working towards social reintegration, with likely repercussions for self-concept and shame experiences. In this panel, we integrate interdisciplinary perspectives from psychology, criminal justice social work and criminology to explore shame as personal-social in the process of desistance from sexual offending. We present fine-grained interactional research on shame management and its implications in change work, and broader psychosocial analysis of the role of shame after having committed a sexual violation.

Desistance theory directs focus to the narrative identity work of seeing a future that is different from an offending past. This narrative identity work is done in various interactions with others, where the offences that the person has committed is made intelligible in a way that supports forward responsibility. Because sexual violence perpetration is widely and starkly condemned, creating this interactional space often requires shame management: finding ways of talking about the violation committed as unacceptable whilst still communicating accept for the person. Whilst theorized in both shame management theory (Braithwhaite 1989) and desistance theory (Maruna 2001), there is little research on how this person/action distinction actually is achieved in interaction. If talking about having committed a moral transgression involves fear of rejection and condemnation (Gausel & Leach 2011), then intersubjectivity can be conceptualized as the opposite: as various resources for achieving being with the person even as they are telling about actions that fundamentally threaten their status as members of our (moral) community. In this presentation I will discuss findings from an interactional analysis of 17 research interviews with young men who have committed a sexual violation. I will show how interviewers make use of a range of resources for using intersubjectivity on different levels whilst supporting the interviewee’s reflections on how they came to commit a sexual violation. I outline how interactional resources can be used to achieve primary (non-verbal), secondary (shared attention) and tertiary (verbal/epistemic) forms of intersubjectivity an parallel and interacting with the on-going shared project of accounting that the interactants are doing.

Participating in a restorative justice process can encourage sex offenders to recognise a genuine acceptance of accountability for their offending and thus assist their reintegration, support their desistance from future sexual offending and subsequently reduce their risk of re-offending. However, there are considerable concerns regarding the potential negative effects for sex offenders participating in a restorative justice process, such as fears for personal safety, vilification, stigmatisation, and emotional trauma. This paper examines how, when properly applied, restorative processes and principles can assist post-release sex offender participants in surmounting these adverse effects and therefore increase their ability to successfully reintegrate to the community. For example, by enabling the sex offender to articulate their sense of 'shame' in a rehabilitative and non-stigmatising manner, this can be part of a process of personal transformation and help to alleviate feelings of shame. Moreover, the potential for vigilante activity aimed at the offender as a result of the 'exposure' of participating in a restorative justice process is minimised by guaranteeing confidentiality and ensuring legal advice is available where necessary. Further, the inclusion of supporters of the offender and community members can also mitigate some of the negative effects of participation for offenders by promoting the formation of social bonds, improving the community's knowledge of, attitudes to, and openness for community reintegration for post-release sex offenders, this may in turn act as a potential safeguard against vigilantism and facilitate their reintegration into the community. Accordingly, the paper argues that robust preparation and adherence to proper safeguards and principles could assuage some of the potential concerns for sex offenders participating in a post-release restorative justice process and encourage more meaningful participation which will benefit all stakeholders in the process.

In this paper, we aim to review and elaborate the concept of tertiary (or relational) desistance and to set an agenda for further research on how and with what consequences criminalised people experience, or fail to experience, belonging. Borrowing the language of migration scholars, we suggest that both crime and punishment produce an array of problems associated with ‘contested belonging’ (Davis, Ghorashi and Smets, 2018). The ongoing development and increasing application of the concepts of tertiary and relational desistance has helped to expose the importance of analysing these problems, and of seeking solutions to them. While criminological work in this area remains at a comparatively early stage, it already seems obvious that we can neither properly understand nor effectively support desistance without carefully attending to questions of belonging.

Shame is a powerful emotional experience embedded in prevailing social and cultural norms. It is often conceptualised as the judgement or fear of judgement for who we are rather than what we have done. In relation to people who have offended, Braithwaite (1989) proposes shame can be re-integrative or stigmatising, where re-integrative shaming condemns the behaviour not the person, to enable their re-entry into society. This links to processes of building desistance narratives, where offending is positioned as external and not a reflection of who the person is at their core. Shame is particularly relevant to sexual offending and its treatment, as shame has been considered to be a barrier to treatment. Yet little research has explored how shame is expressed or responded to in treatment programmes addressing sexual offending. In this presentation I will discuss the findings from a study applying conversation analysis to examine 12 sessions of a court mandated groupwork programme addressing sexual offending. I will outline how shame manifests in the groupwork sessions, how practitioners and clients deal with this in the ongoing interaction, and how these interactions can function to promote desistance through processes aligned with the concept of re-integrative shaming. In how they navigated expressions of shame, practitioners were able to demonstrate empathy towards the individual, build motivation, instil hope and leverage optimism towards positive change, engaging clients in the treatment process. I will further discuss the paradoxes and dilemmas of shame for criminal justice interventions that address sexual offending with the aim of promoting desistance.