Last month, I got the opportunity to sit down with Prof. Shadd Maruna, IACFP’s sponsored Distinguished Scholar at this year’s annual International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) conference, scheduled for the end of October in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We discussed some highlights from his upcoming keynote on lived experience as well as his perspectives on current research and practical approaches to rehabilitation in the criminal justice space.
Background
Prof Maruna grew up in southern Illinois, United States, during the wave of ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric that was prominent in the 1980’s and 90’s. His first experience in criminal justice was at a halfway house for justice-involved youth in Alaska, where he determined that research was more his calling than direct service. He moved to Liverpool, England on a Fulbright Grant around 1995, where he fell in love with the city and the United Kingdom, and has spent most of his career there since then.
Throughout his career, Prof. Maruna has worked at several universities across the globe, including Rutgers University, Cambridge University and Queen’s University Belfast. He is now back at the University of Liverpool, where he serves as head of the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. Prof Maruna is a longstanding member of the Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice Panel (CSAAP) and has worked with several community community-based organisations in the UK and Ireland. Prof Maruna’s current expertise is criminology (rehabilitation), desistance from crime, and community corrections. His focus on prison-based research commenced 10 to 15 years ago. His academic background is somewhat eclectic; he does not have degrees specifically in criminology or sociology, but rather in fields like philosophy, human development, and social policy.
A big focus of Prof Maruna’s current work is lived experience: how people who have been through the criminal justice system should be involved as collaborators, co-researchers, and co-designers, not just as research subjects. He views the inclusion of lived experience in research as an essential addition to making rehabilitation research relevant and effective for practitioners, and applicable to the people it is designed to help. During the COVID-19 pandemic when nearly all prison research across the world was put on hold, Prof Maruna and colleagues trained 99 incarcerated individuals as co-researchers, allowing a large-scale study take place without external researchers entering the facility. Although this process still had significant challenges associated, it became a fantastic example of the benefits of including people with lived experience in the research process. Prof Maruna is now studying the broader implications of including people with lived experience in a variety of criminal justice spaces. He plans to expand on this topic during his keynote talk at ICPA this October.
Perspectives on Current Systems
In addition to his current work, Prof Maruna also spoke about his perspectives on some current contemporary strategies in correctional research. We discussed what seems to be going well, in addition to what needs more work. Three main themes are highlighted:
- Modern Buzzwords in Practice
Prof Maruna emphasized that there are several new concepts including lived experience that are reshaping conversations around rehabilitation (e.g., trauma-informed care, neurodiversity even desistance-informed practice). He cautioned that, although important and impactful, these new labels are meaningless without real change to practices. People may use these “buzzwords” without making any significant changes to their work. Simply thinking about these concepts is not enough; we must incorporate them into our actions in research, practice, mentorship, and supervision strategies. Prof Maruna put it best when he said,
“Words are important, and I’ll never underestimate the power of a label, but what really matters is our practice on the outside… if our practices don’t change, if our clients say ‘no, I didn’t feel anything trauma-informed about the way they treated me,’ then it’s not trauma-informed practice – just rhetoric.”
- Decline of Prison Research
Citing Wacquant (2002), Prof Maruna also discussed the significant decline in prison research over the last several decades, while incarceration rates continued to rise. Although not necessarily intentional, overcrowding has pushed prison officials away from allowing external researchers into facilities. The extent of resistance to prison research has led many researchers to avoid even trying. However, Prof Maruna cautions against giving up entirely. It may require more work, but if nobody tries, good research can’t be done.
Now, Prof Maruna is seeing prisons become more open to research again, albeit on their terms. There are more obstacles to consider, including low staffing and overcrowded facilities, but Prof Maruna is comforted that he and other UK-based prison researchers are being allowed to do good, theory-driven research in prisons. It just takes a little extra effort and drive to do so. His plea was simple:
“Please don’t give up on [prison] research, because it’s … the last wall of defense against … just pure[ly] carceral. We just become warehouses if we give up on rehabilitation [and] research, in general.”
- Competing Theories
A final thought Prof Maruna shared on contemporary correctional research and practice pushed back on treating different rehabilitative approaches as competing theories. He emphasized the benefits of considering multiple theoretical perspectives. For example, the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) Model and Desistance Theory work better as complementary instruments than as adversaries. RNR focuses on what works in terms of programs, who fits best, and how the rehabilitative approach should adjust for individual needs. Desistance theory focuses more on a person’s longer term journey, which may or may not include programs along the way. Prof Maruna views these (and other rehabilitative approaches) as tools in a tool belt, which should be drawn upon as needed, rather than adhering to one tool, model or approach. As Prof Maruna said,
“You’ll have some people who succeed in a program and others who fail, and both journeys are important to understand, and that’s what some of the desistance research can give us, those kind of wider contexts of what might be happening to them.”
Looking Ahead
Finally, Prof Maruna shared his perspectives on the future of correctional psychology research and practice. Of course, there are obvious financial and bureaucratic obstacles. However, he emphasizes culture over structure, arguing that shifting the daily practices and narratives within an institution is more effective than policy change alone.
Prof Maruna recalled a conversation with a prison governor who wanted incarcerated individuals to display baby photos on their cell doors as a reminder of their humanity. Prof Maruna offered his own twist on the idea: picturing instead who that person might become – a future neighbor, a future colleague – rather than who they currently appear to be. He said of incarcerated people,
“Don’t treat them like the institutionalized person you currently see in orange; treat them like the person who you want [them] to be out on the streets, as your neighbor or your bus driver, or [whoever].”
Prof Maruna closed our discussion by reflecting on how rarely correctional staff get to witness the success stories of the people they’ve worked with, since those who do well typically don’t return to correctional spaces. Celebrating successes is important both for correctional staff and incarcerated people. Focusing more on next steps than past actions can help redirect individual motivations in their rehabilitation journey. These perspectives can also shift institutional narratives around correctional work, creating an environment that may be more open to facilitating and assisting in research and practical development.
We hope you can join us for more on these topics at Prof Maruna’s keynote at the ICPA conference this fall, titled “Who Owns Reintegration?: Collaboration, Lived Experience and Co-Production of Justice Outcomes.”
References
Wacquant, L. (2002). The curious eclipse of prison ethnography in the age of mass incarceration. Ethnography, 3(4), 371-397.
