Resettlement: A people first approach to community (re)integration

Abstract

This chapter applies the four forms of rehabilitation to resettlement. We begin with a critical reflection on the history of resettlement, setting this out as an intractable problem, with a litany of failed policy attempts to bring greater cohesiveness between prisons and probation. This review includes the recent attempt of ‘through the gate’ initiatives from the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms and the current Offender Management in Custody reforms. The chapter then focuses on the four forms of rehabilitation. Personal resettlement should focus on the quality of practical support offered and be more responsive to intersectionality. A judicial approach should be a process of requalification – helping the individual overcome the practical barriers of re-entry. A social approach foregrounds the importance of social bonds and tasks practitioners with bonding and bridging people to support in the community. Lastly, a moral approach surmises that practitioners should help individuals overcome barriers to resettlement, rather than put extra barriers in place. We then turn to ways to reduce penal excess, suggesting a reduction in the use of recalls to custody, and a reduction in the use of short sentences. We conclude by highlighting several individual projects that undertake positive resettlement work but find these are undermined by a lack of funding from central government and the absence of a wider culture in prisons and probation that takes a desistance-based approach to resettlement.