Abstract

Resettlement and correctional practices have been severely damaged by the ‘othering’ process in which offenders are not only seen as external enemies determined by their circumstances, but also as distinctive individuals who must be integrated and transformed into ‘us’. As Young (2011, 64) pointed out, ‘Ontological insecurity gives rise to a desire for clear-cut delineations, and for othering: it generates a binary of those in society and those without it, which is seen to correspond to the normal, on the one side, and the deviant and criminal on the other’. According to this view, individuals are divided between offenders and non-offenders and desistance is understood as a radical transformation in which offenders not only have to stop committing crimes completely, but also have to overcome all their social deficits by changing their lifestyle, identities, values, and aspirations.